Rough Groupshot (Costumed)

Trying to see how they all look as a group. I seem to have approximated the perspective pretty well (each is a separate drawing), though edits will be made during cleanup. Alsooo...more early development bits!

Sizing chart. Looks like Zach is the "heavy" in this team.

'Jackie and the Giant'

My take on 'Jack & the Beanstalk', 'Jackie and the Giant'.

Jackie

Jackie's Mother

Mr. Giant

The Street Grifter

Some weird stuff going on in that turnaround, but eh, I was in a rush. Colored materials to follow.

Self Portrait Rough and Cleanup

The cleanup lines got a little heavy compared to my other works. As a result, this didn't finish out quite as I wanted. BTW one day this WON'T be me on any given school day. This is my goal.

Clothed Figure Drawing 2 Final

This is my final from Clothed Figure Drawing 2, where I introduced the T-Bone player's combo band. I was only supposed to draw 2 figures, but felt "adventurous". Then I felt really stupid and rushed. I'll have to tweak the tracing before any future use. The diaper fold in the back is going away, I'll say that much.

Watched my childhood fave Christmas movie last night, "Santa and the Three Bears". I totally forgot about the strange and cool graphic transitions at the beginning, and between scenes.

The Emo Kid and My "CFD-2" Midterm

So I'm stuck uploading crap from school because I intelligently disabled ALL my PC's USB drivers. ANYWAYS, here's some updates, some involving a brush pen.

Inspired by my Birthday weekend with my high school's Reunion Concert Band...

Buy "Garfield: From The Trash Bin"!

I ran into this book while looking for another textbook, at Borders. If you see it there, flip through it! It's possibly the best Garfield book I've ever bought. Old-skool cartooning. If I were revamping the "Garfield & Friends" 2D cartoon for modern audiences (with Ray Romano as Garfield and Jon Cryer as Jon Arbuckle...I've thought about this...), I would first slide this over to the art director.

Jim Davis did 2 things here: He basically laid out most of the vis dev for my hypothetical design department, and reminded this reader who the master cartoonist was. This guy does more with a sharpie in a few seconds than I could render in an hour, pushed poses and all. Though his gags may have been too "much" for the newspapers, they would be perfect for TV animation. Tame, even. Click the image for the amazon site.

Copyright 2010 PAWS, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Character Turnarounds Under Fire

Ho-kay, so these aren't perfect, but I thought I should post them. Things have been hairy in these early weeks, but what the hey. I've just gotta do my thing.


My maquette design. I'm really asking for it this time haha. Needs a proper back view...


3-4 Animal Hybrid. Bat, lynx, eagle and gerbil.
Bill Clinton design.

Bill Clinton design revisions.
In-class design from live model. 4 minutes per angle.

New Banner!

I've been working on a new banner for...well FAR too long. I really need to use Photoshop more. A lot of the lines have been "corrected" since the rough pencils. Either way, I hope you all enjoy your new welcome mat.

Pirate Kids

Pirate kids For my layout design class. Not enough time to tie them down and shade them in black. Maybe I'll do that for my final and switch them out later. Hope all is well!

Fun with Crayola Pencils

'Found my old stash of colored pencils and was surprised at how well they worked as drawing tools. That's why Crayola makes the big bucks, I guess.

Just one big pressure point...

There are actually TWO ways to make someone simultaneously explode. 1: spend your entire life studying the deadly art of Hokuto Shin-Ken. 2: Just have Trini press on the giant "Z" *rimshot*.

Yyyyyep. 'Harder than it looks to get those interesting angles. Might as well start now. Trini's right fist is far too big for the effect. And the left leg is a little muscular. Those'll change in the tracing process.

Power Roughs!

That's right...I totally whipped out a Shark Cycle.



More "Mighty Morphin' Power Roughs" to be cleaned up and photoshopped when I get a chance. I'll have to somehow make up for Billy's lukewarm pose in a later drawing. It was seriously pissing me off. BTW, see any perspective errors? --GOOD! Neither do I.

NOTE: Putties are surprisingly fun to draw...

To quote the Pope from "Family Guy"...

"Heeeeeee's a-cookin' a-somethin' up!"



Also, my summer reading materials came in from Amazon, so I'll be reading and master-copying until something better comes along.

Updates & Old Friends

Okay so I found out that Photoshop Elements does NOT have a pen tool. That sucks. But either way, Elements is a great program. I even revamped some designs from my freshman year of art school to experiment on... I guess we'll see if I can pull it off in Anime Studio.

And that's another thing! Anime Studio's controls seem to be a world and three moons apart from Flash. This is strange, considering the animation it produces is essentially Flash anyway. It'll take way longer than expected to find and "decode" all those Flash-esque controls so it can work for me.

As for the drawings, those familiar with "Roundhead and Pointy" may notice I messed with the floating eyebrows and chest letters. The thick outlines were for the vectorization attempt. If you look at them from afar, it doesn't look as much like a horrible idea...

There's always something to do in the summer!!

I put together a basic plan for the summer, as I do for all my intersessions. I'll mainly be chippin' away at it during any spare time where my pals don't come callin' with another "get-rich-quick" scheme. Goodness knows I'm up for an entertaining 22 minutes of comic hi-jinx!

Step 1: Continue Netflixing and studying the recommended films from "The Visual Story"

Step 2: Aquire a copy of "Cartoon Animation", and do some master copies so I can channel the likes of Mark Christiansen and John K. in my own junk.

Step 3: Aquire a copy of "Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know", and read that bad boy up.

Step 4: Experiment with Anime Studio Pro, and see if I can do any substantial filmmaking with the software

Step 5: Experiment with this photoshop technique

Step 6: Drink beer and play Mario Kart DS all day

Step 7: Disregard steps 1 through 5

Manhattan

Just finished the movie Manhattan, a few minutes ago. I was trying to pay attention to Gordon Willis' use of surface divisions, but Allen was just too funny to ignore ;o). Netflix is workin' out for me!

Also I finally put together a new pic for my other profiles. I may have to do another one. I got frustrated with my failed attempts to caricature myself and this...thing sort of happened.

Penguin's Christmas: one of my favorite shorts...

It occurred to me to share this well after Christmas, but I think the trip will be well worth it. I found this on a web search and thought it was amazing. "Penguin's Christmas" was produced by a studio in the Netherlands called Animation Works. The short is beyond simple in it's execution. However, it sucked me in with it's basic color choices and music, and delivered with it's story and animation quality. I hope you like it.

Penguin's Christmas

Happy Holidays from The Dumpster!

Yes, through all the shopping, working, and chillin' with friends from far away, I managed to slap something together at the last minute. Whatever religion or tradition, Happy Holidays to you and yours.

(p.s. - Roundhead's supposed to read as Jewish, but since I'm allergic to beat-downs I tried to be tasteful with the costume)

Character Study: Annie Oakley

I got a compliment for these at the library by some female Fashion majors. The one PLEASANT moment in the creation of this study. There's a massive caffeine-crash in my future...

Batman: The Brave and the Bold

AMAZING pilot. Now, I'll add that I've accepted that the original Batman: TAS was a fluke. A combination of hard work and a ton of luck. And I'll always admire Bruce Timm's crew for riding that fluke and changing the entire action cartooning game. Unfortunately, the days of a 50 piece orchestra accompanying your cartoon are pretty much over (unless your name is Seth McFarlane...).

In one short first sequence, the show quickly explained what producer James Tucker had so much trouble explaining without losing fans. This new Batman was less dark and funnier, but kept all the important elements to make it work.

In the pilot, "Rise of the Blue Beetle", Jamie Reyes (one of my new favorite DC characters), finds himself on an unplanned adventure with the worlds greatest crime fighter. By the end of the episode, Jamie learns the superhero business from the master himself, while Batman watches an inexperienced kid become a legendary hero.

The show had about 2 or 3 laugh-out-loud moments, with plenty more cool action sequences and interesting cinematic staging (familiar ground with WB Animation). What's really interesting about this new Bat-entry is the "brush pen" look. The clean-up drawings are given line-weight for the first time in recent memory, to further simulate that "old-skool" Dick Sprang look.

In a sentence, I dug it. Maybe you will too. Check it out on the CN.