"Up" mini-review (and more sketches)

I finally got around to seeing Disney/Pixar's Up in Disney Digital 3D and enjoyed it thoroughly. I didn't think it was necessarily their best work-- I thought a few others such as The Incredibles and Wall-E were better, and Toy Story 2 still tops my list-- but still a must-see. I was pleased to see that the 3D effect, which was almost painful to watch in the previews, was more subtle and convincing in Pixar's short and the feature. Unlike some naysayers, I believe that whatever is lost in 3D viewing is more than made up for by the sheer "cool" factor, and I don't feel that being in 3D distracted at all from the story. The brilliance of the colors does suffer with the glasses, and during fast movement the image still flickers a lot while your eyes and brain adjust. The story was good; very moving and touching, but still just "good". It's ironic that their most successful characters to date (in my opinion) have been the most unlike their primary audience, namely a robot (Wall-E) and a grumpy old man (Carl).

"Partly Cloudy", the short preceding the movie, was a solid B- for effort. A little too saccharine for my tastes; it lacks the bite of Geri's Game, still in my opinion their best short to date. With a short film format, they have such an opportunity to push the boundaries, but they keep making "safe" little cutesies like this. Still, it had a slightly unexpected ending-- always a plus in my book-- and the cloud effects were pretty amazing from a technical and visual standpoint.

On further thought, only the first half of Wall-E was better than Up. The second half was pretty lame and cliche.

Moar skeches! The first three are from the DFW Sketch Group today at Border's in Lewisville.



Kinda reminds me of Radical Edward. Didn't turn out too bad considering I didn't have a model to draw from. Do you know how hard it is to find a good sketchbook with toned paper? This is not one, by the way. This is kraft paper, which is basically what they make grocery bags out of. It tends to crumble and fall apart when worked or erased too much.



Some sort of cowboy demon hunter fellar. I guess I had some old manga/anime in my head when I was thinking of him.




More half-hearted concept work for my graphic novel idea. I really need to just sit down for a few days and pound these out instead of piecemeal here and there.



Tribal-inspired woman, did this at the Drink & Draw this past Wednesday. The storm chased everyone away, it was just me and Jose R., and then Jose E. showed up a little while later.



More heads while watching TV from earlier in the day before Drink & Draw... I really like the one on the top left.