On You Huskies!

In the midst of showreel-editing misery, this brought up some fond memories:

[quicktime]http://sydneypadua.com/sleddogscropped.mov[/quicktime]
“The Golden Compass”, copyright New Line Cinema

Yes, I know they look exactly like real dogs. Thank you! Yes, we could possibly could have just used real dogs. Next question…

Inspiration was provided by hours and hours of old “Challenge of the Yukon” radio shows….

….which in combination with lengthy rendering times might have made me go a little nutty. I gave all the dogs names. They were.. let’s see.. I think Nanuk was the left-hand dog, Snowball the right-hand one, and of course Yukon Prince in the lead. In my daily dailies drawings I had him starring in an action-packed series of adventure novels circa 1933 (I have a thing for period book covers.. title fonts are some of the great freebies on Blambot):


Yukon Prince!

It’s a good thing I work in the animation industry otherwise people might think drawing imaginary covers for imaginary books was a really strange thing to do.

Bess of the North

I also was working on a heron for a while, but his series (more around the mid-1910s I’d say) was less successful:

Percy the courageous heron

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  • Awe.
    I’m from the Yukon!

    I just happen to stubble on your site when I typed in “underground drawing” in google. I got some blue sketches.

    ANYWAYS, i didn’t get the chance to look around so i dunno if you’re still continuing on with this site. (in five minutes i’ll find out your last update was in 2003)

    =P
    Cheers!
    I feel wicked being from the Yukon right now.
    Yay -25 degrees C weather!

  • That last cover Is fantastic! For some reason, I love titles of the form “[random name] The [random adjective] [random noun]”. I would definitely read about Percy’s adventures, based on the cover alone!

  • I first saw these when you originally posted them, and had quite forgotten. When you reposted them I was very puzzled, because I had developed a deep conviction that I Read These Books In My Childhood ™.

    Well, maybe not the heron one.

  • For what movie (or not) were you working on a heron? I cannot think of a better way to do dailies than vintage novel covers.

  • There was heron in Golden Compass, but it was deemed too charismatic… it kept stealing every shot!

  • Followed over here from 2d Goggles. Love the book cover sketches, but I gotta say, being from Nebraska, I don’t think Podunk (pop. 47) supports a publishing industry! Grain elevator, gas station and greasy spoon (with enormous pancakes!) is about it. 🙂

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