More Molino!

The recent unearthing by Paddy Lamb of storyboard frames painted(!) by an Italian illustrator, Roberto Molino (deceased) caused quite a stir here at Storyboard Central.

Recently another illustrator from Austria, Bernd Ertl, very generously sent me a second batch of Molino's fabulous art. Many thanks, Bernd!


This time, not only do we have some great quickie storyboard frames to admire, but a handful of gorgeous painted comps...


... AND a whole pile of finished art print ads by the mighty Molino - wow!






I've now put everything by Roberto Molino in a set on Flickr - if any more comes my way, I'll be sure to present it here and add it to the archive.

Happy 1st anniversary, Harry Blogman!

I've featured Harry Borgman's work on the blog several times. Harry, who began his career in Detroit, has been doing comps and storyboards since before the days of markers - and then he literally wrote the book on using markers!


The other day Harry sent me a note to announce that he had just celebrated the first anniversary of his blogging career - yes - Harry Borgman is eighty one... but Harry Borgman's Art Blog is just one year old.

To mark the occasion, I thought I'd go take a look at that first post from October 22nd, 2008. Harry wrote, "What does an 80 year old illustrator do? NO MORE STORYBOARDS !!!!"

Congratulations, Harry - and here's to many more - both for you and your terrific blog!

There's always something interesting going on at Harry Borgman's Art Blog - go check it out.

A Couple of New Commercials

by Anson Jew
Website: A Goy Named Jew

A couple of production board jobs I did recently for Bl:nd. The Bl:nd website includes the finished commercials, plus a behind the scenes look that includes my storyboards.

ASGROW DELIVERS

WALGREENS: SAVINGS IN SEASON

Wes Chapman: "Quick On the Draw!"

Any renderer (for you kids, that's what we used to call "concept artists") who paid his dues in the Toronto ad business in the last 30 or 40 years of the 20th century will either know or know of the legendary Wes Chapman.


Chapman, who's business card is said to have been emblazoned with the slogan "Quick On the Draw", was renowned as the fastest wrist in the East (well, in Canada anyway).


Stories of Chapman's astounding speed and admirable drawing ability are still talked about with awe and envy among veteran storyboard artists when they gather together to hoist a few and shoot the bull.


Equally legendary was Chapman's reputation for his love of country and western - the music and the bars!


Stories are told of panicky ad men in need of renderings for 9 AM client meetings scouring Wes' favourite C&W saloons in the middle of the night, finding Wes well in his cups and cajoling (or threatening) him back to the studio where, inebriated, the master renderer would effortlessly draw everything and anything requested plus more (all perfectly delineated in spite of his condition) as though the drawings were pouring out of the end of his pen on their own.


Unfortunately, rendering being what it is, nothing more than the stories of Wes Chapman's renderings have survived the years... until now, that is.


Recently, T.O. storyboard artist Lee Strugnell tracked down this beautiful series of Wes Chapman renderings and forwarded them to me. At last we have the opportunity to see some examples of the gorgeous artwork that many of us had wondered about for all these years.


What purpose these drawings served has been lost to time. Were they used as finished art? Their large size suggests they were not storyboard frames... animatics, perhaps?


I had another thought: as a kid growing up in the early 70's I used to start my Saturday morning cartoon watching sessions very early! Around six in the morning the only programming for kids consisted of these very odd cartoons called "The Wonderful Stories of Professor Kitzel". These cartoon shorts mixed 'bigfoot' style animation with more realistic historical still-shot drawings that the camera would pan through as a narrator told the story of some historical event. Years later I saw a similar concept executed in a series of cartoon shorts called "Max the 2000 Year Old Mouse".


The non-cartoony historical still-shot drawings were quite similar to those done by Wes Chapman in this series. I don't know if Chapman did this group of renderings for either of those cartoon series... but perhaps for some similar 'educational' limited animation service?


We may never know. For now, I'm just delighted to be able to share Wes Chapman's fabulous drawings with you all. His work is a real inspiration. Many thanks to Lee for going to the time and effort to share this awesome Wes Chapman art with us all!

* And for those who have never seen those odd cartoons I mentioned ( and for those who have not seen one in years ) here's a "Max" I found on youtube. The historical drawings are not by Wes Chapman - but they're great - well worth taking a few minutes to enjoy:

Mystery Solved! It's Roberto Molino!

The mystery of who that magnificently talented Italian storyboard artist was has been solved by Patrick Lamb of Express Visuals. Paddy writes, "Hi Leif, the Italian artist is definitely Roberto Molino. I have kept my eye out for his work for ages, he was great."


That's a name that was suggested by Paulo Gaspare last week in the comments of the last post. A name I'm sorry to say I'm unfamiliar with.

Paddy found these two new examples of Molino's work online. The one above especially knocks me out... but they're both great!


Let's hope more Roberto Molino artwork surfaces. Very inspiring stuff! As Paddy says, "Molino had that looseness, lively thing going on. Absolute solid drawing and the confidence that comes with it leads to wonderful risk-taking with some. He knew what he was doing, so he just threw it down."

* Later that evening: On the advice of my friend David Roach in England, I did a little detective work on the Internet and found some more work by Roberto Molino. WARNING: this material is semi-nude and violent. It may offend some people and is definitely NSFW!

David writes, "Roberto Molino as far as I know never actually drew any comics but he certainly painted 100s of covers for various sex/horror pocket sized comics , similar to the work of Biffignandi."

The Unknown Italian Storyboard Artist - R.I.P.

Frank van Seijen of storyboards.nl recently sent a note and included these amazing boards:

"This may be interesting for your blog," wrote Frank, "the artwork is from an Italian artist we used to work with. He passed away some years ago."


"He made all the storyboards in aquarel, really fantastic!" And I have to say, they most definitely are.


Frank had no name attached to this work and even his invoices didn't give any indication of who the artist was. I could almost imagine that this might be the work of the legendary Jorge Zaffino. He did pass away a few years ago... but of course Zaffino wasn't Italian -- he was from Argentina.


Whenever I need help identifying European artists, I call on my friend David Roach in England. I sent David the scans... but even he was stumped.


"I've forwarded these on to my friend Alberto in Italy but neither he nor I can actually put a name to this artist," replied David. "We're both convinced we've seen his stuff before --- but who is he?"


For now I guess he will remain a mystery. A shame, because, as Frank van Seijen of storyboards.nl wrote, "you really don't see this kind of work anymore."

Many thanks, Frank!

Smells Like The '80s!

Okay, I feel guilty for not contributing so I thought I'd cough up some art from the bottom drawer, mid '80s thru mid '90s.These will cover a lot of typical job genres that I banged out back then. Seem's like only yesterday!

I think I made these images a bit small, just click on them to enlarge. Sorry!



Okay, does anyone remember Sheena Easton? she was one of the spokespersons for Chicago Health. Markers on marker paper with Xerox text. Don't try to read it.


Lifestyle boards were a mainstay. Kids, food, beer , haircuts. We had it all.



The gal's head is marker dyes wiped onto copy paper with Kimwipes (for glass cleaning) and prisma pencil. We used to fight for the pretty girl jobs.




This is either Fantastic Sams or Supercuts, I don't recall. Carnation stuff was endless frames of pretty girls lounging around the house, drinking the stuff, more lounging. Yes!



Kids were big. Kids at the mall, kids playing, kids fighting. I must have done a hundred Sunny Delight boards, thanks Asher/Gould Advertising!



I don't know how that bear got in here. Little did I know the OTHER bear was a foreshadow of things to come!



Let's eat! We did fast food, supermarkets, junk food, cereal, you name it. Here are two really different takes on Carls Jr. ads.



I don't have all the frames from this one, but the plant doesn't go for the SuperGro plant food, he of course downs the Carl's meal. It takes place in a greenhouse.Fun ad.






This was COMPLETELY different! Unfortunately it was a rush job ( the fun ones usually were. Dang!) The suit was skin tight latex with Carl's sauce dripping all over.


Is this getting too long? Anyway, I do actually have a few complete boards, (alas, not the color versions, usually didn't have time to copy them at the end of the day.)Here's one for beer that was fun to draw. Bigfoot!







Beer or Bigfoot photo? You have to make choices in life I guess.

This one was for LA Gear shoes (I think!) Can you say DREAM JOB! The other reason I included it was after seeing Leif's condom comps.





How about some theme park crap for a change of pace? These are a few frames from a Batman stunt show for Six Flags. These boards tended to go on forever (check out the frame number, these usually went to 40 or 50 frames. Oy.)



Terminator 3D! The Governator. Who knew THAT would happen?



Well that's about it for now, my scanner button finger is sore. Hope I didn't bore you with my trip down memory lane. Believe me, there's a LOT more of this crap in the drawers! Happy storyboarding, kids!

Chris