Alien Admissions

Alien Admissions is live as of today! This is a project I created along with Andra Moldov and Matt Carpenter a couple years ago, which has finally been brought to life in an animated form. Its a super low budget short created for the web with high hopes to continue on and make more. Plenty of room for improvements but am happy with the results nonetheless given the small amount of time and budget that it was executed in. There was a lot of characters to establish in its first outing, so hopefully if we get another shot at it we can get out and explore their world more, and show how the aliens integrate into society in the most awkward way possible. Enjoy humans!

Rick and Morty DVD!!!

It has finally arrived! The anticipated Rick and Morty complete season 1 DVD came out on Wednesday with plenty of extras and commentaries from Matt Groenig, Pen Ward, Al Jean and many more. I spent a couple weeks concepting and executing the packaging after a few rounds of conversations with Justin Roiland and the folks over at Adult Swim and couldn't be happier with the outcome. The idea was to have the portal in the same exact position on the front and back of the slipcase seeing Rick and Morty leaving the living room during another fickle family fight on the back,  travelling to the front cover with Rick showing Morty the freedom of the universe, so it seems like a tangible portal that R and M have travelled through in your hands. Once the slipcase is taken off it reveals the amaray art of something commonly seen in the show "Oh shit Morty, runnnnn!!!". I tried to include the most influential characters seen in season 1 creating a 'Wheres waldo' effect treasure hunt of the Rick and Morty universe. The top version is poster art created in conjunction with the DVD but the poster wasn't part of the plan for the DVD release unfortunately. Hopefully soon they will add it to the official merchandise train. Enjoy!        

Ricksy Business

This is the bizarre creature featured in the finale episode of Rick and Morty called "Ricksy Business" that takes Lincoler down. The idea behind it was to create a menacing bioluminescence cat like creature. I did some pencil sketches while getting my car repaired over lunch and tried to add a mix of bat, saber tooth tiger, and chimera features into one animal. I wanted it to have lifeless eyes with no pupils to make it feel like the ultimate killing machine with no other purpose. Turned out to be one of the scariest creatures of the season, onward to season 2!!

Rickdiculous

So if you haven't seen this episode already than it would look like I have some serious explaining to do concerning the subject matter of the artwork above. The 2 BGs on top that Jeff Mertz designed are from "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind". I painted the bgs and assembled the multiple Mortys orientation on the showroom window to Evil Ricks layer. Disturbing, I know, took me some time to wipe the dirt off afterwards. The next three are quick concept roughs as a jumping off point to get the conversation going before we started production on this episode. Originally I had the idea that there could be these giant levers and giant wheels that all turned at the same time causing all the Mortys pain within their torture devices but when all the Mortys get released at the end proved to be too much of a logistical nightmare so we took them out. Lastly I worked on a special animated episode of NBC's Community- GI JEFF - as a props designer for a month. Above is the 'Submachopter' that was a special new vehicle just for this one off episode. A toy version had been made ahead of time for a fake live action GI Joe commercial within the episode so I had a model to work off of already to provide special views for the animated segments.  

Rick and Morty - Color Sketches

The top 5 are quick rough concept sketches providing a starting off point for the design and color palette to get the mood of a sequence and get the conversation started. The top one is my favorite, the ending to the Love potion #9 episode in what looks like a hopeless post apocalyptic world. The next one was for Anatomy Park, a first attempt at the haunted liver, the stringy meatball looking monster was the start to what became of the tuberculosis character. The spaceship rough was started on the shape of a dumbell and ended up being the final ship design. The Rick and Morty cronenbergs were so fun to make and were some of the first couple to be nailed down. We figured out early on that it would be intriguing if the cronenbergs were an amalgamation of various elements, i.e. what would your grandmother mixed with a baby and an alley cat look like, possibilities are endless, some of the seasons best characters were generated for that episode based on that idea. Next are some quick initial roughs of Prince Nebulon played by David Cross, the one second to the left was the jumping off point for the final design.