Men with little mustaches and the tea kettles that resemble them

It's only a matter of time before Target starts selling the Charlie Chaplin.

Luke and Yoda

Another entry in "The Empire Strikes Back" Star Wars Uncut project. I always liked this first interaction with Yoda. He has an childlike, impish quality here that you never really see any other time. Richard Harris's performance as Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films captures that same quality, where a great thinker and teacher has a curious child right beneath the surface. My animation can also be viewed in higher resolution on Vimeo, here.

The Empire Strikes Back strikes back

Three years ago I animated three scenes based on fifteen-second-long clips of Star Wars for a site called Star Wars Uncut. Hundreds of fans recreated scenes from Star Wars Episode IV and many were compiled into a new version of the movie, which can be seen here if you have two hours. My clips can be seen on my Vimeo channel.

Now the same folks are creating a fan-made version of The Empire Strikes Back. I have completed a clip, using a similar brush-nd-ink, cut paper animation technique as before. It can be seen on my Vimeo channel in the required "create your own soundtrack" version as well as the one you see here, using the real audio. Click on the video to see it on Vimeo widescreen.
Luke, An AT-AT foot, and Wandering Han from Gregory Nemec on Vimeo.

Harrowing Tales from Catholic School

I started to write about my high school Latin teacher as a grad school exercise and it led to this. Click on the first image to scroll through the whole story bigger.

Drunken octopus wants to fight!

An illustrator's dream come true: getting to create a "drunken octopus wants to fight" hook.

Many layers of Shakespeare

Here's a recent assignment that may have broken my all-time record for number of layers. I realize that there are artists out there who scoff at the idea of a mere 6o layers. But they are creating epic, textured, heavily modeled artwork and I am a guy who mostly works in flat color. Shown here are part of the 60+ layers composited into a mere 16. Shakespeare's head alone is six layers.

This accompanies an article about an event where people performed every single one of Shakespeare's sonnets. It was inexplicably NOT PHOTOGRAPHED (in this day and age of everyone having cameras at all times). So they hired an illustrator. Isn't that quaint?

Star Wars Uncut: Director's Cut

Two hours of Sweded Star Wars Episode 4. My bits are scattered throughout: R2D2 and C3P0 climbing into the escape pod and getting launched, Obi Wan, the droids, Han and Chewie sneaking around the Death Star, and the death of Biggs. These three clips are featured in previous posts on this blog, they can be accessed by clicking the hyperlinks. There are many wonders to behold throughout the film, some funny, some ingenious, all sincerely made by fans. Delighted to see my friend's young son made the cut as well.