Wreck-It Ralph Trailer Debuts on Web

The Wreck-It Ralph official trailer is finally up on the web. Look for the animated version of the title treatment I designed (just below) at the end of the trailer. For more on my design process for this logo see my previous Wreck-It Ralph posting.

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Oversized Album Cover Prints Available on Official KISS Website

2/1/13 NOTE: Due to “human error” these prints are currently unavailable for purchase from the Live Nation website. However they will be back—please check back here again soon!

These two signed (signed by me [Michael Doret] and the members of the group), limited edition, large scale fine art prints (not lithos) are still available through the official KISS Online Store. RaRO is signed by myself, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Sonic Boom is also signed by the two newer members of the band. These prints made from my original artwork of Rock and Roll Over and Sonic Boom are the best incarnations you will ever see of my art for these two iconic KISS releases (please ignore the fact that it says “Pre Order” on Sonic Boom – that’s a typo).

I have digitally redone my orignal art for Rock and Roll Over (after 30+ years the original original art is long gone), and so now it’s cleaner and crisper than ever before. The art for Sonic Boom was digitally created to begin with, and so enlarges to the 20″ size perfectly. To give an idea of the print quality and clarity of these giclées, here’s a detail of Sonic Boom showing the watercolor paper texture:

The print images are 20″ square printed on 25″ square “Museo Textured Rag” digital Watercolor paper. These are archival prints and will show no visible signs of fading for 100+ years under reasonable lighting situations.

Printed by Art Works Fine Art Publishing in Los Angeles, these editions are limited to 250 prints each, and each print will come with a certificate of authenticity signed by me.

As the creator of these two pieces I am very critical of print quality, but suffice it to say that when I saw the final proofs of these two pieces I was blown away by the color intensity and the quality.

To see my other blog posts on Kiss…here are the links—earliest first:

1) For All You ‘KISS’ Fans Out There…

2) The Return of . . . KISS (#1)

3) The Return of . . . KISS (#2)

4) The Return of . . . KISS (#3)

5) WXRX/Live Radio Chat

6) Podcast Interview on PodKISSt

7) Signed Prints Available on Illogator

Title Treatment for “Wreck-It Ralph”. —— Client: Walt Disney Animation Studios

It’s been a while since I’d been called to do a title treatment for a major motion picture, so it was with great pleasure that I went in to see Disney Executive VP John Sabel to discuss working with them on developing a logo for a new animated feature slated for release this November 2nd. Wreck-It Ralph tells the story of Ralph, an arcade video game “bad guy” (John C. Reilly)—a one-man wrecking crew who is determined to prove he can be a good guy. Starting out as a classic arcade 8-bit character, Ralph travels through several arcade worlds, ending up in fully articulated 24-bit form. Here’s the final logo we ended up with: The process of developing this title treatment extended over several months. It’d be impossible to detail here all the stages we went through, but I’d like to just show here first some of my development pencil sketches: Some of the letterforms I used were reminiscent of the shapes in the character. I tried to provide as many attitudes and alternatives as I felt worked for the subject matter. It was felt that a suggestion of the main character and his 8-bit nature might be a good way to go. In all cases I wanted the treatment to be playful and reminiscent of some of the classic arcade logos of the ‘70s. When I came up with the idea of an 8-bit logo surrounding an 8-bit face, I knew we had hit paydirt. So from that point on I took that approach and developed  the logo in digital form. It went through many, many different stages, culminating in the title treatment you see at the top of this post. It was decided that the face I came up with for Ralph was a little too “angry” looking . . . so I took it down a notch. Also the “Disney” logo needed to somehow be incorporated. We tried it both inside and and outside and above the treatment. I tried creating a border, making a self contained “badge” treatment with the Disney logo inside: We then simplified the “badge” a bit: We eliminated the “badge” completely, again opting for more simplicity: We changed Ralph’s face again, making him a little bit meaner looking, and edited the shapes of the letterforms. In the end we eliminated the “brick” texture that filled the letterforms, opting again for a simpler look. Here’s that final title treatment again: