The Book of Better

Watch the video trailer for The Book of Better, a book about managing diabetes. Animated entirely in After Effects and sound mixed in Final Cut Pro.

THIS DARK ENDEAVOUR

Check out the short trailer I animated for Kenneth Oppel's new novel.

TORONTO STAR ARTICLE

Recently the Toronto Star covered book trailers and featured a few of my videos as well as screenshots from Before I Go To Sleep, ROOM, and The Book of Negroes. Click to read the article online or view the pdf.

COMIC UPDATE

While I continue to update this site, contribute to evolutionofmoviecool and continuously try to develop my portfolio, I'm currently about 1/3 done working on my first currently untitled graphic novel!

Although I've still got quite a while to go before it's finished, I'll probably start posting a few images from the finished pages soon.

REDESIGN IN PROGRESS

Redesigning and updating this site to contain my portfolio and information about upcoming projects. Stay tuned.

Christmas Cards 2010

This is a bit late but here are all of the Christmas card designs I made this year. After inking I painted them with an inexpensive watercolour set. Original physical cards are done on white watercolour paper but I passed each through Photoshop to give them some more colour and texture.

Update

Haven't written anything here for a while so here's an update of a few things.

First off, the trailer for ROOM has been pretty successful, getting around 20,000 views online since launching late August. Even more exciting was that it also aired in it's entirety on television on W Network this past holiday season! Here it is again:

Secondly, The Literates #4 was recently printed. Based on Conn Iggulden's Conqueror series of historical novels about Genghis Khan, I'm very proud of how this issue turned out. Has some (hopefully) pretty funny parts, tried some cool art and colouring stuff that worked out well, and has less text and more action. Click the image to read the whole thing:

We're also running a contest for this issue. Here's the details, click to enter:

Anyway, I hope to update more often in the New Year and get my site looking a little better. It's probably the only resolution I made this year, aside from resolving not to make any resolutions.

Trailer for ROOM by Emma Donoghue

Check out the trailer I created for the novel ROOM by Emma Donoghue. All of the art is by me and animated it in After Effects and Apple Motion, and edited in Final Cut



All of the text is appropriated from the novel and I strived to portray the innocence of the narrator, Jack, while at the same time hinting at the darker elements of the story. I'm really proud of how it turned out and hope it's an engaging introduction to ROOM. Learning to try to draw like a 5 year old with crayons again was really fun too.

The video has gotten some incredible media attention since it's release on Friday!

Indigo Fiction Editor Blog - http://community.indigo.ca//posts/user-300763/593813.html

GalleyCat - http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/videos/emma_donoghue_the_room_book_trailer_172032.asp?c=rss

New York Magazine's Vulture Blog - http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/08/watch_an_eerie_trailer_for_emm.html

Amy Archer

Amy Archer, originally uploaded by paul.covello.

"I'll stake my Pulitzer on it!"

This drawing of Pulitzer Prize winning star journalist Amy Archer from The Hudsucker Proxy took me FOREVER to finish. Not only do I generally have trouble drawing women, but a character as dynamic as Jennifer Jason Leigh portrays in this film was even more challenging to represent. I love her fast-talking no-nonsense Katherine Hepburn/Rosalind Russell-inspired performance, and she's probably my favourite Coen heroine, so I felt I had to do her justice.

I settled on this pose in an effort to get this finished. I'm not sure it captures how tough and animated the character is, but I tried to make her look like a classic 50's fashion illustration, as well. She wears many different costumes throughout the film and I wanted to pick one that I could recreate faithfully. It's also from my favourite of her scenes:

The Literates #3

The Literates return! This time they inadvertently find themselves stuck in Victorian London where, as you can see based on the cover, they end up fighting a giant steampunk robot.

In this story The Literates team up with characters from Arthur Slade's fantastic young reader series The Hunchback Assignments, with the newest book in the series The Dark Deeps releasing this month.

If your in the Toronto area today for Free Comic Book Day, the books should be available at The Silver Snail. You can read the issue online at TheLiterates.ca and become a fan at facebook.com/TheLiterates

Carl Showalter

Carl Showalter, originally uploaded by paul.covello.

"Blood has been shed, Jerry."

Here's Carl Showalter, the "kinda funny looking" in a "general kinda way" crook from the classic crime film, Fargo.

Steve Buscemi regularly appears in the Coens' films, but I think everyone can agree that this is his greatest performance. I love how he slowly goes crazier after every screw up, and consequently gets repeatedly tortured in a variety of ways throughout the film. I tried to show this frustrated violent side in the image, but at the same time really tried to make him look scrawny and funny too.

H.I. McDunnough

H.I. McDunnough, originally uploaded by paul.covello.

"What, are you kiddin'? We got us a family here!"

I love the Coen Brothers' films, most to the point of obsession, and they are probably my all-time favourite directors. So I've started a project where I'll try to draw every single character from their films. By that I mean not only the main cast members, but every person who appears on screen! (or maybe just those featured prominently or with speaking parts...)

Now I'm not sure how often I'll add to this collection and it's a daunting task I've set for myself, but I really hope to build my caricature, digital colouring and inking skills along the way.

First up is one of my favourite characters: H.I. McDunnough played by Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona. Part of why I love this film is because it's a bit like a live action cartoon. So to match this I tried to give H.I. a wiry, elastic quality when I was drawing him and wanted to keep his design as simple as I could. I also love Nic Cage's expressions of anxiety when he's corralling the babies in the film, so I tried to reproduce that as well.

The Literates: Issue #2

Finally here! Check out (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Latte) the second issue of The Literates right here. It took a lot of time to complete (especially the colouring which I spent way too much time fussing over) but I'm really happy with the finished printed copies.

The issue has already got some great attention, as it was blogged about by special guest star James Rollins.

For more about The Literates, check out the facebook or twitter pages.

The Book of Negroes Trailer

Haven't posted in a while because I've been really busy and here's why:



This was really the biggest video project I have been involved with. All the images are from the new illustrated edition of the novel, with some animated in Apple Motion, and a voice actress provided the narration.

Who's Who

Another very short video I did for The Curse of the Labrador Duck. It's based on the awesome Hinterland Who's Who series from the 60's and 70's that would air on the CBC, and I tried to make it as close as possible. I shot all the footage at the conservation area by my house and yes, the prize mentioned in the video is for real.

We Know What You're Thinking

Check out this video for We Know What You're Thinking"I've been working on for the past few weeks. I created it mostly with Apple Motion after drawing everything in Photoshop.



And here's some cool videos that obviously inspired me in hindsight:





The art style is inspired by the work of the great Saul Bass. Check out this awesome site for more examples of his film title works and click here for more info on Bass.



Last but not least, for the text in the video I used the fantastic font HITCHCOCK designed by Matt Terich.

And here is the first episode of the ongoing Hunchback Assignment videos.



I'm working on another very cool book video that I hope to be done soon. It kinda looks like this.

Haven't posted in a while but here's a new video I edited. Recently I went to film students reviewing advance reading copies of a new adventure novel called The Hunchback Assignments. This is a sort of trailer for a series featuring the class reactions that will be available online later this month.

Spread the Strain Commercial

A month ago I posted a picture from a short zombie sequence that I filmed with two of my friends. A more PG version of this commercial will run in the pre-show in Cineplex theatres across Canada around June/July, but you can watch the PG-13 youtube version right now!



And here is the link to the contest mentioned in the video that you can click on: http://spreadthestrain.ca/

What's your Perennial?

Cool new video I edited for the launch of harperperennial.ca where Lewis DeSoto discusses a bunch of the covers of foreign editions of his novel, A Blade of Grass. I'm pretty proud of the intro piece with the olive bomb that I made with Apple Motion. Looking at it now it reminds me of a Saul Bass title sequence or the music video for Money City Maniacs.