KARL GNASS

Karl Gnass, Diane Wilson, H. R. Pufnstuf, and Vern Wilson. (20th Cent.)

Karl Gnass and The Mayor of Living Island out on the town.

KarlGnass

has been teaching drawing for over 35 years and in the early days went to work as a story and character designer for Sid and Marty Krofft. Karl started with their landmark children’s 1969 television series H. R. Pufnstuf, followed by The Bugaloos (1970), Lidsville, (1971), and Sigmund and the Sea Monster (1973).

Karl has storyboarded for Coca Cola, Saban and Fox Entertainment's Peter Pan and the Pirates. He worked on story development at Disney Television Animation and storyboarded for Gargoyles, Aladdin, Darkwing Duck and The Little Mermaid, as well as some storyboarding freelance for Direct To Video (DTV) for Disney. He later developed character expressions with anatomical breakdowns for Stuart in the feature Stuart Little. Other Sony Imageworks projects include Hollow Man and Harry Potter. Recently he consulted with Sony’s CG staff and Producer Dan Kane on creature anatomy for the Sci-fi Thriller I Am Legend starring Will Smith.

Steve Houston, Karl Gnass, Glenn Vilppu, Vern Wilson and August Hauboush.

Over the last fifteen years Karl has been teaching classical life drawing, animal drawing and storyboarding in many of the major studios in So. California: Disney Television Animation, Disney Feature Animation, Sony Imageworks, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon and Warner Brothers. In 2004, at the suggestion of Glen Keane, Disney animator and director of upcoming Rapunzel, Karl developed a Dynamic Figure For Maya class to help computer artists understand and arrive at authentic movement with the new technology.

In 2005 Karl published the first of three books on drawing. Entitled Spirit Of The Pose, it is 9 1/2 "x11", and is 178 pages of sketches done in the classroom environment. It has 500 drawings from Karl along with some pertinent drawing advice given to his classroom students. The second book, a complete tutorial in the spirit of his work with students will be published in late 2008.

Tequila Sunrise.

Annually, Annie Awards trophies are awarded as the highest honor for excellence in animation and Karl has been an active participant as an Annie Awards judge for both feature and television storyboarding for the past eight years.

Also, check out his public drawing seminars with Sony at Siggraph for the past years. You'll find it on the Home page.

From 3DMagazine:

"We tried to do the facial muscular set of a mouse, but we quickly found there was no way to get the kind of facial expressions we needed. Unlike humans, mice don't do much facial communication...We worked with Karl Gnass, our life-drawing instructor at Sony, who has a tremendous knowledge of anatomy along with a strong artistic sense."

-Kevin Hudson, 3D sculptor and lead animator for Stuart Little