More Horton artwork.

These are some early concepts for Mt Nool in the jungle of Nool.

For this one I thought it might be poignant if the the mountain resembled a trunk as a symbolic monument to the watchful care the elephant took to find a safe home for the vulnerable speck.

Halfway through the movie Horton is chased by Vlad through the jungle. Below is a series of concepts I did based on storyboards for the chase sequence. The orange arrow represents Horton’s path through the jungle. The storyboards for this were ultimately scrapped and consequently my concepts were too. Such is the case in animation.

One of my favorite assignments on Horton Hears a Who was to design the speck. When I first got the assignment I didn’t think there was much to it. Then the director (Steve Martino) went into specifics of how he imagined this speck to look. Whoville wouldn’t be nestled on top of the speck, it would be protected by layers of spindling tendrils that begin solid and gradually transform into ethereal clouds. Then Whoville would be floating in the middle. After several iterations this is what I came up with below. As with most animated features it’s a team effort and eventually my work was handed off to another artist to refine it and apply it to the actual needs of the film.

I had drawn this a few weeks ago and finally finished up slapping some color on it. It’s heavily inspired by the 1957 Ferrari 250 TR. I love these old racers so much that I couldn’t help but trying my hand at designing one for the otters. Though it was fun to do a little more modeling on the coloring on this one I think I prefer the rough and dirty otter racers drawn previously.

Otter Racer
Otter Racer II

Here Missile Mouse is holding the Krengrack-8 a high impact laser rifle made by Krengtronic. The Krengrack-8 (or the “Big Gun” as MM affectionately calls it) has an effective range of 8 light-minutes at it’s highest setting. However, at that setting the generator only has enough energy for 10 to 12 shots. Missile Mouse is perfectly content using it at half power in close combat where the Big Gun has more than enough firepower to take out even the most fortified battle tanks. The Krengrack-8 is heavy, so Krengtronic outfitted the gun with a mini antigrav disc that reduces it’s weight by a good 90% making the gun much easier to maneuver with. Now if only they could figure out a way to make the generator smaller.

This was another MM commission piece. I’m glad I set this up because it forces me to come up with new MM stuff that I otherwise wouldn’t have thought of. Here’s a scan of the sketch before inking it:

This is it for my back log of 2008 drawings.

I’m thinking of putting a book together with all of these vehicle drawings for San Diego this summer.  Debating whether to make a more expensive full color book, or a cheaper black and white sketchbook.  What do you think?