Frankenweenie... End of story





















It is with great pride, yet tinged with emotion and melancholy that I announce the end of my involvement in Tim Burton's Frankenweenie.

It has been a great privilege to work with one of the great visual directors working today and after my collaboration with Wes Anderson I was indeed blessed with another great challenge.

It is almost 2 years that along with a small group of extremely talented story artist we embarked on visualising Tim's charmingly dark tale of a boy and his dead dog and I feel there's some of our best work in there.

What is left to do in story will be completed by the marvelous Rob Stevenhagen in the next couple of months while the rest of us take some well deserved rest and begin the anticlimactic process of seeking new challenges and new projects.

The past four months have been extremely tasking, working long hours out of Tim's own studio in North London, prisoners of his attic and our work, yet they feel rewarding and fulfilling.

I sincerely hope to work with the man again and that you all enjoy the film when it's out next year.

Cheers

Christian

WHITE-CAPE the comic... By Wes Anderson & Christian De Vita

Hey,

just a quick note this morning to show you all the pages of the comic that appear in one of the scenes in Fantastic Mr Fox.
If you've seen the film, it's the scene in immediately after Fox and his family are dispossessed from their tree house and dig their way to safety.
Fox, his family and Kiley are resting in a cave and cousin Kristofferson confronts Ash as the little nerdy Fox is reading his White-Cape comic, 'White-Cape vs. The Black Dog'.

We generally referred to that scene as 'Beagle Ticks' (or SQ0170_002-0032-01 if you work in production!) because Ash is spreading rumours around school that Kristofferson has Beagle Ticks and Pelt Lice.

Incidentally the titles of each White-Cape cover reflect the mood Ash is in, tracking his emotions throughout the film, and the title 'White-Cape vs. The Black Dog' comes from a little in-joke Wes and I had after a particularly hard 70-72 hour long working week.

The artwork is produced in inks on standard A3 drawing paper. I went for a sketchy Underground Comics style or something similar you'd find in Tales From The Crypt as it suits my lazy hand and I enjoy getting lost in fast, rough linework.

A friend of mine happened to find an interview Wes did last year in which he talks about the possibility of producing a White-Cape comic... Not going to happen.

But if you'd like to see the interview go here

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2009/11/16/exclusive-wes-anderson-reveals-possible-fantastic-mr-fox-spin-off-comic-book/

Hope you enjoy viewing these pages as much as I enjoyed drawing them.


































































All images are copyright of 20th Century Fox™ and © 2011 Fox and its related entities. All Rights Reserved. Property of FOX.

More WHITE-CAPE

As promised, folks...

Here are a few covers from the White Cape comic which appears in Fantastic Mr Fox.
I've singled out Alone in the Arctic Circle as this was one that Wes had me change at the last minute as he wanted the titles of the covers to reflect Ash's mood throughout the film, tracking his emotional state.
My original title Ice Madness was more a nod to 1950's horror comics like Tales from the Crypt, but also an in joke I had with someone on the production about Ren & Stimpy's Space Madness episode.

In the next few days I'll post some inside pages from the comic book I drew which was then taken by the props department, scanned and printed to a size that would fit the puppet of Ash for some scenes in the movie.

All artwork for the covers and comic pages was done in inks on paper by the way, all the text written by hand; the colours were added later in Photoshop.

Comments are always welcome!


Little BIG Panda storyboards

Immediately after Fantastic Mr Fox I was asked to storyboard the opening sequence to the film Little Big Panda, a Chinese-European production headed by Benchmark Entertainment Picture Productions.

It's the very first Chinese hand drawn 2D animated feature film to be produced for a 3D screening and although I was not on the project for long as I had other commitments with my own company One Hand Clapping, I thought I'd share with you some of my storyboards for this cute little Panda adventure.

Hoep you can tell I love to drawn clouds... Must be because I have my head stuck in the clouds most of the day!





Wes Anderson's WHITE CAPE.

It's about time I post some of my White-Cape work I did for Fantastic Mr Fox.

For all of those who haven't seen the film, White-Cape is the comic book character created by Wes and designed by myself that Mr Fox's son Ash reads throughout the movie.
At the time I was given freedom to design the character in my particular comic book style and create a number of covers and posters as well as some pages of the comic to be included in some of the more salient scenes of the movie.

Like the scene in which Ash forces cousin Kristofferson to sleep under his train set.

















So for the next few weeks I'll be posting some of the White-Cape artwork I produced for the film, included some which never made it in the final cut of the movie and some which was designed for an intended 2D animated section of a White-Cape cartoon that the animal children were meant to be watching.

Hope you all like!