Enemies of the Heir Beware

Hey! It's another Harry Potter poster! This time it's for the second installment Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. After doing the poster for Prisoner of Azkaban, the idea of doing a whole series of posters for the films began to take root in the back of my mind and gnaw away until I finally dove in and started on another.

Basilisk-Detail

For this one, I really wanted to depict the Chamber of Secrets itself, as I thought it was pretty wonderfully done in the film, with the carving of Salazar Slytherin. I also wanted to communicate the pretty dark nature of the story and the serious danger that the Basilisk poses to Harry and all of Hogwarts.
I'm not sure if I'll be going in any particular order as I move through the rest of the series, but if anyone has any ideas for key elements or scenes from the other films, please leave them in the comments below!

--CKL--

Always

Always from The Least of Creatures on Vimeo.

Here's my new animation "Always" for my music and animation project The Least of Creatures.
With this video, which is my first in nearly a year and a half, I wanted to shift away from the simpler, more graphic videos I've done before (to see the other videos, visit vimeo.com/leastofcreatures) and make it a much more cinematic experience. While I had done mostly visuals paired with some sort of kinetic type, I wanted it to be a straightforward narrative that could very well stand on its own, with or without the song (though I'd prefer that it be with the song, thank you very much)
The song is essentially about meeting someone special and how you quickly you can find yourself falling head over heels. You can reexamine all the little moments that led up to it, but it still seems that the universe happened to align just right so that you could meet one another.
With the video, I wanted to tell that same story, but in an exaggerated way. I also wanted to take all that I've learned from my job as a storyboard artist and apply it to the animation. I wanted to have it read as though it were a short film I had shot. I very actively tried to replicate and reference shots from movies and TV. Here's a small cheat sheet with the frame paired with the one it references.

It's definitely by far the best and most complex thing I've done in terms of my animation (in the end, the animation was comprised of over 1200 individual drawings) While animation is still purely a hobby, I would love to keep pushing myself farther in what I can do with it.
And if you like the song, you can download it for FREE at https://soundcloud.com/theleastofcreatures/always


Hope you all enjoy it!

--CKL--

The Moviegoer

Here's a new cover for the Commercial Observer's Hollywood Issue. AD Ed Johnson wanted to link together an interview with real estate magnate/movie producer Charles Cohen along with stories about the sale of the GE Building at Rockefeller Center and real estate companies using tax incentives for filming in New York ( read the interview with Cohen here)
Between this cover piece and storyboards for three different jobs, it was a pretty crazy weekend of work. I managed to get through it just fine with the help of quality audiobooks from David Sedaris, Steve Martin, and Tina Fey.
Thanks again to Ed for a fun gig!

--CKL--

Mischief Managed

Hey, it's another poster for fun!
Over the holidays, I was given the Harry Potter Blu-Ray boxset by my girlfriend's parents (I also recently brought all of my Harry Potter books back from MI so I'll be re-reading that whole series as well) We promptly began marathon-ing through the movies. In watching them all, I realized just how significant of a leap in maturity and depth the franchise took when Alfonso Cuaron took on the third movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It's really an astounding change and I think that it nailed the darker turn the books were taking. Plus, it's just a great movie start to finish, from the performances to the production design to the cinematography and the music.
I may have done a Harry Potter illustration before (which has a ridiculous number of views for some reason) in anticipation of the Deathly Hallows Part 1, as well as just a quick drawing of the good ol' Boy Who Lived, but I think I like this one the most. Castles, dogs, and hippogriffs? Good fun.

Harry - Detail

The Grim - Detail

Buckbeak - Detail

--CKL--

Art Attack!

I was recently filmed for Art Attack, a feature on SoulPancake where they "present an artist with a spark and they create a piece of art based on it. Then, we see their process unfold in glorious time lapse!

And apparently someone hates my glasses? Or rather is definitely going to. I dunno.

--CKL--

Father vs. Son

Here's a personal piece that I began in May and set aside for months now. I finally managed to sit down and finish it this weekend.
If you know me (not even all that well) you can certainly tell that I probably know Star Wars better than I know anything else (see also the numerous drawings I did last year)
Rather than repeat myself and do straight portraits from the films, I wanted to show a different angle of one of my favorite scenes. In this image, it's the "calm before the storm" moment just before Vader springs out to attack Luke in the climax of The Empire Strikes Back.

Detail - Luke

Detail - Vader

Detail - Basic on a wall panel

And be sure to check out PJ McQuade's AWESOME Star Wars holiday cards here! Tis the season to be a nerfherder!

--CKL--

UPDATE: This piece is now available as a print as well as iPhone/iPod cases and stationery cards at my Society6 store,www.society6.com/cameronklewis

Singles vs. Baker Boys

Here's a cover I did for Seattle Weekly for a story by Mike Seely (read here) that argues that Steve Kloves' The Fabulous Baker Boys, starring Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer, is the more quintessential Seattle movie than Cameron Crowe's Singles, starring Matt Dillon and Bridget Fonda.
AD Jane Sherman (who is now over at Seattle Met) contacted me with the idea of putting Bridges and Pfeiffer in the iconic pose from the Singles poster, having apparently ousted Dillon and Fonda.

 I sketched out several variations to find the right combination of the two sets of characters.

Thanks again to Jane for such a fun gig!

--CKL--