Bill Wray is trying to make the transition fine art but is known as a cartoonist, a background painter/ Art director and sometimes animation director. This will be the place he post his ocasional animation and cartooning work and also be a place to bitch or wax sentimentally about cartoons in general. It’s been a love and hate relationship for many years and the long journey may not be quite over.
Scott and me sort of.
posted by william wray @ 9:13 PM
Bill Wray is trying to make the transition fine art but is known as a cartoonist, a background painter/ Art director and sometimes animation director. This will be the place he post his ocasional animation and cartooning work and also be a place to bitch or wax sentimentally about cartoons in general. It’s been a love and hate relationship for many years and the long journey may not be quite over.
After traveling his entire childhood as an Army brat Bill Wray began working in the animation business as a teen-ager. Being mostly self-taught and shunning California’s conceptual oriented art schools, he eventually enrolled in The Art Students League located in New York to reinforce his spotty art foundation. Bill went on to work in writing and drawing comic books, animation and illustration. He is mostly known for his painting style on the Ren and Stimpy Show, his work in Mad Magazine and his collaborations with Mike Mignola on Hellboy Jr. Bill is currently concentrating on fine art oil painting.
63 Comments:
You just made my day! Please tell me you have more of these beauties!
Dear sir,
Why do your friggin paintings rock so darn much?
A living Legend my friend, beautiful work...
Big inspiration!
These rock my face. The robot gangster episode in the last season was my all time favorite, especially with your bgs.
Gorgeous. Your new stuff for the B has been amazing so far-- looking forward to seeing more.
Goddamn those are all great!
Fantastic! You and Scott Wills are incredible. The backgrounds were such an important part of that show.
most beautiful and most interesting
Thanks All !yes Scott it so good, a true inovator. I'll be posting more if you demand it. I pray we get to work together one more time before I go full time into fine art.
AMAZING!! The Colors are simply Delicious! You guys are both HUGE inspirations!!!
Yes, please! More of these would be fantastic! You and Scott are such a huge inspiration to everybody. Frankly, the very best in the biz. I hope that you never fully move to fine art (maybe just 90%) and keep creating both your oils and this tighter style too (be it for cartoons or comic covers, etc). People can't live without it. :)
Btw, where did those other Scott Wills bgs go that you posted before? They seem to have been overwritten by the current ones.
And my apologies for posting so often (like a stalker). I'm just really excited about this stuff.
Thanks for sharing it!
Yes they changed. Scott wanted what he considered his best examples up. I like everything he does, but I happily deferred to his choices.
Gorgeous!
It's a real privilege to see these backgrounds, Bill. I sincerely hope Scott changes his mind and wants to share as many as possible (and you too!). If not, I feel bad for the late-comers who missed out!
This stuff is too incredible.
awesome! SOOOO inspiring!
Here are some more for you. thanks all.
....ggggghhhh...
Too damn good for witty comment.
Love the Scott Willis stuff and yours kick all kinds of ass...!!!!
Tremendous colors
These are so great, man I miss that show, I think it was the most fun I ever had in animation.
You guys set the level beyond high.
Bill, I've been anxiously awaiting the next batch of backgrounds, and man did you deliver!
I really can't put into words how incredible they are. I'm geeking out over the smeary strokes (like on the 06 title bg), the masterful use of wet-on-wet, drybrushing, masking, sponging, subtle gradients, etc. What I wouldn't have given to see some of these being painted in person to see the actual methods used to achieve the different textures and layers!
A couple questions for you.
Are these all cel-vinyl exclusively, or are they a mix of acrylic, watercolor, cel-vinyl, etc., where needed?
It looks like these are very well planned in order to give the proper depth in conjunction with the various masking, sponging and other techniques. How much experimenting was done on these backgrounds? Was there even time to experiment, or did you have to know exactly the technique and look you were shooting for and execute it with precision?
And lastly, when will these be assembled into one of the greatest books of all time? :)
Anyway, thanks very much for posting these! Hope you're willing to post more if you have them!
wowi! so happy to find this on the web! you seem to work for all the most exciting projects... don't hope losing you to fine art means we will have less interesting not fine art stuff in the furture..!
good luck!
WOW! Hope there's more to be posted. They're all gorgeous.
yes, more porn
nicely spotted darks all around - speckle - point
holy slo-mo multi pass flash spiral pullout money shots much?
thanks
It's absolutely incredible that stuff of this quality was able to make it onto TV. I hope they bring you guys back for the Samurai Jack movie.
This are really radical!!
i am stunned, these are just too beautiful.
"before I go full time into fine art."
no!! you are too fucking good a cartoon painter to only do fine art. plus you would be depriving folks of wonderful and magnificent artwork such as these. i (and thousands of others) love your fine art and your cartoon art.
please.. always do both!
DAMN! My fucking eyes just fell out of my head! Great job!
Mike
These are ALL great (of course)... ;)
Will you ever stop amazing us with your guys Fantastic Pieces of Inspiration???
I think Not!!!
holy smokes
I can't find it my heart to forgive you guys for being so talented.
I can't find it my heart to forgive you guys for being so talented.
Oops! I STILL can't find it my heart to forgive you.
Dept of Redundancy Dept.
the only shit in these posts, is now sitting warmly in my pants.
thanks bill.
What more can be said? Thanks for posting these, truly inspirational stuff for curmudgeonly non-digital types like me.
Any chance of some Hellboy Jnr stuff on this blog?
You're a scholar and a gentleman, sir!
SOOOO inspiring! Thanks for posting. MORE!
"I pray we get to work together one more time before I go full time into fine art."
Any chance that you guys will be teaming up on the feature if all goes well with Frederator?
Please say yes!?
Amazing work but the both of you!!
...i
Speechless. I almost fell out of my chair these are so incredible.
I've seen some of your more recent paintings at a gallery in San Luis Obispo (forgot the name). They are fantastic as well. Your range of your work; from cartoon to fine art is very inspriring. Love it
Absolutely great, thank you for sharing, I was looking for some samples for a while, that's x-mas.
Congrats !
This work is begging to be collected in a book. Simply brilliant.
Absolutely AMAZING!! Please tell me you this is coming out in some form of publication soon. It's truly awesome!
Hey Bill, Great stuff - really beautiful
I'm Speechless.
WOW!
WOW! thanks for show this beautiful stuff. I've always loved "Samurai Jack" backgrounds but it's hard to find good quality pictures of the BGs and the designs.
That's great!
Fantastic artwork! Truly inspiring stuff. I'm a huge fan of the background art of the series, so this was a real find for me!
Thanks, Rune
beautiful artwork, bill. it's interesting to recognize all the different stylistic influences. very well done, unique. usually I do not watch tv-series, except this one. I like the character design and the animation as well.
Really gorgeous work, Bill and Scott.
Good of you to show us this stuff, and you are right to be proud of it.
Cheers!
I love samurai jack and it's fun trying to pick out what backgrounds were in what episode.
I fucking LOVE this show, and I fucking love you and Scott's backgrounds!
just wow. THANKS FOR POSTING! wow.
thank you so much for posting these! you can see the techniek dripping of these pannels!
Truly ticketyboo. I'd love to see them reproduced even bigger. How big is the original size for these?
Is it possible Scott's paintings are digitally finished?
Good question, Mouldey. Are they originally 12 field size like the R & S from the previous post?
Also, I know you're swamped Bill, but will you be posting your main titles bgs 01, 04 and 05 please? They are some of my favorites.
EXCELENT!!!!!! :D
Very very very nice!!
WOW!!! You guys did an AMAZING job with these Bill!! I have to go and buy that DVD just to apprishiate the background art alone!
amaizing..just love the samurai..
excelent cartoon..and intriguing layouts...scenes..places and characters..just genious..
Man these are beautiful...
Hey have you heard about Adult Swim's plans to start airing Samurai Jack?
Amazing drawings! Thanks!
And check out my blog!
http://lunchtime-sketches.blogspot.com/
amazing layouts just got the season 4 dvd great show
im sure you get this a lot, but these are amazing. huge inspiration
Sweet jebus! Amazing amazing!
tyson
I first came to your oil paintings blog, which I really love, and then discovered this one few days ago. I'm a great fan of Samurai Jack because it's art, specially its backgrounds whom have really inspired me even though I work in a different style.
Brilliant and inspirational.
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