Beyond the Veil

Halfway done! This is the fourth entry in my series of posters for the Harry Potter films and it's for the fifth film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Directed by David Yates, who went on to direct the rest of the films in the series, this film is the beginning of the build toward the battle for the wizarding world. Voldemort is back and once again building his army of followers.
For the scene at the top of this poster, I wanted to feature the spectacularly staged duel between Voldemort and the only wizard that rivals him, Dumbledore.




This also gave me an excuse to show the magma-esque "priori incantatem" - the phenomenon that happens when spells meet in duels in the HP universe.

Detail - Voldemort

Looming over Voldemort and Dumbledore is the mysterious veil from the Death Chamber in the Department of Mysteries. I felt this would be a foreboding presence in the image since it is where Harry loses the closest thing he has to family in the climax.
That's four down and four to go. Next up is Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince!

--CKL--

Flesh, Blood, and Bone

Another Harry Potter poster! This time it's for the fourth film in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire directed by Mike Newell.
Because this is the film that marks the first real appearance of Lord Voldemort (played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes) I wanted the scene at the top of the poster to be where he returns - the Little Hangleton graveyard. In the upper right corner of the poster, you can the Riddle House overlooking the graveyard.
In the center stands the Triwizard Cup that transports Harry to the graveyard at the end of the Triwizard Tournament. The cup sits at the base of the very sinister "angel of death" tombstone on the Riddle grave and is flanked by Voldemort's Death Eaters - thankfully, the later films would redesign the Death Eaters' costumes to be much less reminiscent of a certain evil organization. I'm fairly certain that the "Death Eaters" name alone already sells that they're bad.

Death Eaters - Detail

Well that's 3 films down, 5 to go. Next up is the fifth, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which will be out in one week!

--CKL--

Outsourcing Education

Here's a new spot for this week's Village Voice. The article by Neil deMause (which you can read here) is about how most colleges' instructors are only part-time adjuncts rather than full-time professors. This leaves them with significantly lower wages, virtually no job security or benefits, and can impact the students.

Sketches

The wonderful Jesus Diaz at the Village Voice wanted a piece that emphasized the instability of the adjuncts' jobs and how they're being exploited by the colleges.

Detail

While I would've been more than happy doing any one of the sketches, the third, where the adjunct is dropped through a trap door in the classroom floor in the middle of a lesson, was chosen.

Thanks again to Jesus for a fun gig!

--CKL--

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--