Dave Pimentel published a lovely book: "Evoke"

I've written on these pages several times already about my colleague Dave Pimentel.

Dave is a story artist who's probably the loudest cheerleader I know for drawing, drawing, drawing--at all times, in all places and with all media--and he's got the tweets, posts and sketchbooks to prove it.

He was lucky enough to be in the late Walt Stanchfield's gesture drawing classes at Disney. Stanchfield's philosophy and approach had a profound effect on him (as on so many others), and in the spirit Walt embodied he loves to share with and encourage other artists. He genuinely gets a charge out of not only creating his own work, but by seeing what everyone around him comes up with, whatever their take might be.

When I first started working with Dave I'd seize the chance to flip through his sketchbooks. He always had at least one in progress and a stack of what he'd just filled up on a shelf in the office. Each page was fun to look at, and each page was drawn from life. In fact, it was on those pages that I got to know his family before I'd actually met them--from the beautifully observed and executed sketches of them at the park, the bookstore, the beach, in the car...just engaging in ordinary everyday pursuits, but made to seem lyrical and alive on paper. The same was true of the anonymous passersby in his world, caricatured just enough to be recognizable as unique individuals. They all contained stories.

I hoped he'd self-publish a book of his drawings, and he has--he's also made it not only good to look at but to feel; it has a tactile, hard cloth binding with one of his ink brush drawings embossed on the oversize cover. He wanted it to resemble like the kind of 1950s-era books that all artists are drawn to(in my experience anyway) and it succeeds.

In addition to the many sketchbook excerpts he wrote a about a dozen pages containing the tips and ideas he uses in his gesture classes and applies to his own work. It's 100 pages of a very handsome and inspiring call to the pen, the pencil, and the sketchbook. Looking at it will make you feel good. And you'll really want to draw.





You can buy it from him here: EVOKE: The Art of Dave Pimentel

Walt Stanchfield Lives

It would be a safe bet that anyone working in the american feature animation industry has either known, heard of or seen the influence and artwork of the late, great Walt Stanchfield.

Stanchfield was a longtime animator at the Disney's from the postwar era through his retirement in the 1980s, but what made him famous beyond the walls of the studio were his handouts-his notes from the classes he taught in gesture drawing. Using a model in quick poses, the task was to capture the essence of an idea-to distill as economicallly as possible all the life, weight, and story the observer could find in the pose.


I really can't say much about Stanchfield that an old friend and student of his couldn't say much better: Dave Pimentel. Dave was an avid student of Walt's and took his lessons seriously-retaining enough to teach the "Stanchfield way" himself in recent years. I'd seen some of the notes and had the odd mishmash of 100th generation xerox copies passed on to me over the years, but sitting and doing it was something else again. There's no substitute for drawing, drawing, drawing, and the enthusiasm of a true believer like Dave really revs up the motor.

As you can see from Dave's post, the notes from his legendary drawing classes have been compiled into book form in two new volumes edited by Don Hahn. These are an absolute must for any artist-forget about their importance as "animation only"; there's gold there for anyone. Frankly, for someone who simply thinks idly of drawing for their own pleasure but no clue how to go about it, I'd point them to these books-but the contents are also bedrock for the most serious draughtsman. As Dave points out, this guru of the pen was also full of life lessons. He must have been an incredible person to know. I wish I'd been able to meet him as well as take his classes, but at least there's a benefit of these new books. A lot of thanks are due to Don Hahn for getting them into print.

Dave P just for fun

For no particular reason than that I hadn't checked his blog for a while and found this there when I did.

"Scrambled Ink" starts to spill

The other day an advance copy of Scrambled Ink-the book that I and six of my friends had collaborated on-arrived in my mailbox. It's a weird feeling, to be able to finally hold an actual book. In hardcover, 180 pages and with a gracious foreword by Mike Richardson(owner/publisher of Dark Horse), it's slated to be on shelves in bookstores everywhere in July as well as, of course, online.
Dark Horse did a beautiful job-they're really a class outfit. Diana Schutz(our editor), Dave Marshall and Tina Alessi all went above and beyond with its production.

I'm very proud of my friends who managed to produce beautiful extracurricular work while busy variously animating, doing story and visdev. We're all very different from one another and our stories reflect it, but when I flip through the book I see the personalities of these guys I've come to know and love on the page, and the stories seem to me to go together in much the same congenial way we did sitting under the olive trees at work eating lunch, chatting cross-legged on the floor of one another's offices, crammed into an Amtrak booth bound for San Diego or leaning furiously over the foosball tables. Good times.
I hope it finds readers who enjoy reading it anywhere near as much as we did doing it.


There's plenty more where this came from, but here's a sampling of what's inside the covers:

a page from "Burger Run" by Dave Pimentel

Ken Morrissey's illustration from "Greedy Grizzly"; he wrote and illustrated it, with an assist on the prose from Keith Baxter

a glimpse of J.J. Villard's work

Dave Derrick's is a story set in Africa

Ennio Torresan's roman a clef, highly autobiographical

...and me(plus my inspiration on my mousepad there):



The table of contents; click to enlarge
When the book's more readily available we're probably going to do a couple of shindigs with it(the fun part of publishing!), which I'll post about here as they're scheduled.
Certainly most of us will be lurking in San Diego the week of the Con. Hope to see you there!

Podcast and Post alerts

A quick heads up to let readers know that Clay Kaytis has just posted a new episode of his Animation Podcast, this one an interview with Disney veteran Dale Baer. He's a man with a long and distinguished history as well as an enormous amount of goodwill in the industry; I've known dozens of people who worked with or for Dale and not one had anything but very happy memories.


an example from the pen of Dave Pimentel
And on Drawings From a Mexican there's some very good tips about drawing an uninspiring model. Dave Pimentel has been even busier than usual lately, so an update from him is always welcome.

And one more [technical] thing: although I like the "new" template that you currently see here(in particular its organizing sidebar that directs the reader to just how obsessive I am about Fred Moore and other subjects), the interface for adding links is a huge pain; they must be done one at a time, laboriously. Anyone who has a way around this, give me a tip, won't you? I cringe at losing all my links to blogs I love and want to point the reader to...but this one-by-one thing is for the birds.

Pimentel--él lo hace otra vez

I hope I got the title right. It's supposed to say "he does it again".

Dave's most recent post is an upload of the drawings he was able to dash off in yesterday's gesture drawing class at Dreamworks, which he organizes. Since he spends most of the the pose time walking around, helping people out and talking to the group at large he gets little time to draw himself, so the drawings posted aren't cherry-picked. Lots to learn by looking at them, I think...also, it's my favorite model. She's a girl who has a terrific sense of grace and action in posing, and is blessed with a form that is beautifully proportioned--perfect for animation.

Tips for story sketching...

...and all dynamic composition in a new post from Dave Pimentel.
He was reading through Bill Peet's autobiography again, and worked out a lesson plan for his students at Calarts based on Peet's incomparable design and staging. Mark Kennedy has also used Peet for such examples in his blog--and anyone interested in the art of animation storytelling would be well advised to check out both these veteran's posts on a regular basis.
Dave will be no doubt be putting up more of his ideas and handouts for his students as the semester goes on. A great opportunity to learn from these grads and teachers.


illustration courtesy of the Drawings From A Mexican blog

How to draw really well.

from David Pimentel's moleskinie notebook
What's the most surefire way to improve your drawing chops?

Drawing. All the time. No matter how good you already may be.
This guy slays me:


He draws in the car, in restaurants, at lunch, at break--you name it. Everything's an opportunity to capture something. Walt Stanchfield must be beaming somewhere.

I've worked around him for a little over two years now, and in that short time--frankly, at times week to week--I've seen leaps and bounds where I wouldn't have thought things could get any better, which along with all the other guys around here toting sketchbooks is the proof in the pudding. This is good advice I kick myself about oh, every 20 minutes or so.

So grab that sketchbook--and make sure you've got it on you at all times.

Learn by doing--and looking

I've mentioned his new site before, but here I go again--because today's post on Dave Pimentel's blog, "Drawings From a Mexican", features not his own work but that of a few of the attendees in Dave's instructed life drawing class here at Dreamworks. Most of these folks are story artists, and all are tremendously talented colleagues of mine, I'm proud to say. Most of us have been on the same project(s) lately as well...but here we get to see how they differ in style and how strong they all are as draughtsmen.

I just fed on studying this kind of "rough" drawing as a teenager, and it was pretty hard to find back then in books(Bridgeman was one, Kley another). Thank goodness for the internet now. Just looking at these quick gesture drawings is an education for all of us who love the line. And Dave, an animator who did story a favor by becoming a story artist, learned plenty from Walt Stanchfield as well as setting a standard for keeping one's eyes and ears open as an artist all the time. If his site's not on your list yet--add it!

Clickez-vous!

tags technorati : life drawing, animation, sketching, art, cartoonist

Drawings from a super artist

Very exciting blog news this morning. Right here, fresh off the desk:

Dave Pimentel


self-caricature by Dave
I love Dave's drawings. He has a wonderfully fluid line, unerring eye, does caricature like nobody's business, and also has great sensitivity toward his subjects: male, female, animal, vegetable, kid or crone. His stuff always evinces acting. I've learned a lot from him, and have been bugging him to post his own work. He also teaches life drawing at Dreamworks, passing along the Walt Stanchfield approach while incorporating his own take; earlier class notes are up on his pal Jim Hull's Seward Street, but he tells me he'll post future handouts and examples on his new blog. Watch for them!

He's a very busy man(head of story); full life, family and all the bells and whistles, but as I've pestered him, it takes less time to post than it looks, so hopefully once he's got the bit well and truly chomped on he'll share more of his work, and talk about what inspires him. He's a great animation friend to know.