"Jackery" Commercial - Storyboard

A storyboard created for the “Jackery Day 2022” commercial with ECR Productions. The Jackery is a portable battery and generator designed to let you explore, travel, and live life on your own terms.

Sneak Peak - Macaw Packaging Illustration

A closeup of a new packaging illustration I painted. I’ll post the full once it’s released.

 

“MAD” Storyboard & Animatic - Part 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Watch the full animatic HERE.

This is a storyboard animatic that I was working on in early fall of 2021, when I was first learning about storyboarding itself. I wanted to practice what I had learned so far but I was having a hard time coming up with my own story. I’m not a writer. I then realized I should just ask my friend Kelly Hopson, who’s already a great writer. Maybe she has some short stories lying around that I could practice turning into a cinematic. She then gives me this hilarious story about a girl who now has a “friend” she wishes she never met.

This is only part 1 and I’ve been wanting to go back and complete the rest of the story before I shared it publicly. But since today is Kelly’s birthday I felt it’s about time I put this out there, at least to celebrate Kelly’s amazing storytelling skills and also her fantastic voice acting. It was so much fun collaborating with her and I hope to work on part 2 later this year. The story just gets crazier from here.

Happy Birthday Kelly! And thanks for working with me on this!

Under-Drawings for 'Tony Jenzano: Astronaut Trainer' book

Tony Jenzano (1919-1997) was considered a mechanical genius. He was one of the few people on Earth who could put together and run the Zeiss projector. The Zeiss Mark II is sort of a hidden character in this book. It appears in multiple illustrations, and without it or Tony, this story may have never happened.  The following are some of the under-drawings that were done before painting the colors. 

Astronaut Map

This map shows some of the stars that the astronauts had to memorize. Our hope is that maybe one day a kid would pick up this book and memorize these stars too, thus beginning their own astronaut training!👨🏽‍🎓👩🏻‍🎓

Available on Amazon

Zeiss II

Some of my favorite illustrations from the ‘Tony Jenzano: Astronaut Trainer’ book are now up on my website. www.benlinalexander.com

This one is a closeup of the Zeiss Mark II in action inside the planetarium dome. Before we had modern projectors, planetariums used these gigantic machines to project the stars onto the dome. 

I’ve included a few historic photos of these amazing machines for more context. 

New painting for my Kerala, India series

In 2018 I had been working on a new painting for my Kerala, India series. As I was making some final edits, my iMac started corrupting my files whenever I saved and I got thrown into trying to figure out how to fix it. Luckily I had an older version of this painting to work from but I never had a chance to get back to it until recently.

I didn’t know what this piece was going to be about when I started, but I was flipping through some of the amazing photos that Marily Scaria took on one of her trips to India, and this one stood out to me. It started off as a portrait of this old man but I was intrigued by the thin stick he was carrying and how he‘s using that to train an enormous elephant. This concept resonated with me I connected it to the topic of anger, especially anger in men.

The elephant could be a symbol of a person’s inner anger, his inner beast. This man is old, experienced, has seen a lot, has been through a lot. And he has...not so much controlled his anger or subdued it...but harnessed it. Disciplined would also be another good way to describe it. What I like the most about this is that the elephant’s tusks are not cut off or sanded down. He didn’t kill his anger or tame it down from an elephant to a puppy dog. I think that kills a man’s psychology. Instead, he’s ready to call upon it at any moment and put it away quickly.

Anger is a powerful force that can do a lot of good when used in the right way, as a tool for self-motivation or to protect what you love. Like any other emotion, it can be used incorrectly and selfishly. This old man figured it out, the balance of it all.