Fight Fighters and Summerween

Here's a few big Ol' Background keys I did for "Fight Fighters"

Rough

Ink

  Final Paint

By the incomparable Ian Worrel

 Gravity Falls neighborhood Keys for "Summerween"

Happy October!

A series of my little roughs for "The Time Travelers Pig" episode.  I was lucky enough to design the "Mystery Fair".  Simple, cheap looking, and really quaint. We talked about trying to convey the feeling you get when you go to a crappy small town carnival held in the parking lot of the local church.

Final inked keys

This is a map of Gravity Falls I designed with the Art Director Ian Worrel way back in early development over a year and a half ago.  My intent was to make it look like an old timey map Dipper and Mabel might find in a dusty old parks and recreations book. 

These are couple of thumbnail roughs drawn pretty damn small,  I did for the town's square in Gravity Falls for the episode "Irrational Treasure"

Here's my final inked keys for "IrrationalTreasure".  The Inked drawings are always labor intensive and ultra time consuming but they do the trick to give the show an over all feeling that it's made by human hands, imperfections and all.  Our inked line style is a key element that gives Gravity Falls it's specific integrity!  Another key element is the sophisticated way these drawings are painted by our show's fantastic painters Josh Parpan and Elle Mechalka. 

Here's a cool angle of Dipper and Mabel's room in the Mystery Shack attic tossed in for good measure.  I'm rounding up my keys for the episode "Time Traveler's Pig"  which I'll put up shortly.  So come on back now, yahear!

Here's a batch of rough and inked BG designs from the "Dipper vs. Manliness"episode:

Here's a series of early thumbnails for the "Legend of the Gobblewonker" episode.

This was the very first show we worked on in the whole series!

This is my final ruff drawing of a huge pan where Dipper, Mabel, and Soos walk through Scuttlebutt Island.

Here's some tiny thumbnails where I concentrated on composing out some key shots for the "Headhunters" episode.  Here I'm pushing and pulling the compositions defined in the storyboards and beginning to design the shapes of the final layout drawing. 

Here's a few final inked drawings I was satisfied with from this episode.  "Headhunters" was the second episode we worked on in this first season and I was very much trying to zero in on the style of the show dictated by our great Art Director Ian Worrel in these drawings.  

It's quite an organic process defining a confident and consistent artistic look of a new show.  It seems that only through the constant repetition of drawing, redrawing, defining and refining the drawings over the course of a bunch of episodes does the actual show "style" finally emerge.  If we get a second season, I'm excited to see how the look of the show will continue to evolve!

Here's another couple of inked background designs for the Gravity Falls pilot episode.  This one is a huge vertical pan where Dipper descends down into a dark and mysterious gnome forest!

This here is a big horizontal pan of the gnome forest. A bunch of gnomes have Mabel tied up in the foreground just there.

These final inked drawings are super time consuming but once the background painters get ahold of them the results are often quite spiffy!  You can see the final statements on Elle Michalka's blog

Here is a series of thumbnails I drew for the pilot episode "Tourist Trapped".

Here is a series of thumbnails I drew for the pilot episode "Tourist Trapped".  I usually draw tiny little thumbnails in photoshop at about 25% in size.  Due to the bullet train speed of the production schedule I mainly have to work really small just to define the basic composition and primary shapes as fast as possible  (they still actually take a while to develop).  I will refine the design when I blow the drawing up and ink it. 

Here's another background design for "tourist Trapped" as an example of a refined inked background. When I finish a BG design, Our fabulous Art Director Ian Worrel takes a look at it and with his good taste and laser beam vision will either, approve it or give notes.  

When complete this guy goes to one of our amazing Background Painters Josh Parpan & Elle Mechalka to paint it up in COLOR!