Lions: The Legend of Tembo Character Design

Even more Tembo character design. Part of an early sequence of the movie that got cut!

Water Buffalo: The Legend of Tembo Character Design

More character designs from The Legend of Tembo. Water buffalo! These guys were also background character ideas for the beginning of the movie.

Hippos: The Legend of Tembo Character Design

More character design for The Legend of Tembo. These are some background hippos for the portion of the story in Africa.

Crabs: The Legend of Tembo Character Design

As I was unpacking my apartment in California, I found some physical print outs of some of the character design I did on The Legend of Tembo. It was really exciting because when the studio closed, I couldn't grab any of my files. I thought these were gone forever! Throughout this week, I'm going to post some of the designs I helped out with. I don't think that any of these would have made it all the way to production, but at one point my art director asked me to go through and do a quick pass on a lot of the background characters. Today, I bring you crab designs!

These were supposed to be part of a sequence where baby Tembo washes ashore in India, but that scene was cut even before the studio closed. Lots of fun with shapes on these!

Mary Leakey's 100th birthday

My first ever Google Doodle went live just a few minutes ago in the US!

Here's a little blurb I wrote, lifted from the Doodle blog.

Today we celebrate the life and work of anthropologist/archaeologist Mary Leakey. In this Doodle, I wanted to highlight Leakey's work in the most charming way possible. I began by focusing on her discovery of the fossilized Proconsul skull, but ultimately decided to depict a scene of her excavation of the Laetoli footprints. As a fun touch, I included her pet dalmatians, whom are often included in old photographs of Leakey.

When I moved forward with color, I wanted to make sure that the landscape felt hot, since she worked mostly in Africa. I also wanted to make sure that the illustration still felt fun and inviting.

This was a fun Doodle to work on! Hats off to Mary Leakey and the fabulous legacy she has left behind!

As a side note, I have been posting to my Tumblr a lot more frequently! If you use Tumblr, give me a follow over there!