Monday, August 18, 2008

Fantasmagorie!

FANTASMAGORIE




Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the first ever animated film. Enjoy it!

In typical Americana fashion, they're making a CGI version of that, but me, being the snob I am, refuse to even acknowledge it beyound mentioning it in this sentence, hence no link to that.

Hmph!

Anyway, enjoy!

Monday, August 11, 2008

More Inking Practice



Well, I'll be purchasing a tablet this Friday and getting my hands on a copy of Illustrator, but for now..... courage.



This is the pen I used, and it's that most basic of office supply pens, the Paper Mate black felt tip. I know a lot of artists who use this sucker instead of the three or four dollar sable brushes and ink pens you buy at the art supply store, but I'm not really sure why.

I guess you get what you pay for.

John K. is pitching the idea of wraparounds starring the old WB characters for a new show presenting the classic 40's cartoons, and asked some of us ( not me ) to ink the drawings he'd made. I need all the inking practice I can get, so I tried the drawing I liked best.

Here it is:



The first thing you're likely to notice that's wrong is the fact that the lines on Bugs' chest and feet are not drawn. This came from me noticing as a kid that these lines were never black but grey, and the fact that it was drawn in the coloring books I had really bothered me. I WANTED TO COLOR THE LINE MYSELF!!! Bastards.



Another thing that's wrong is that I don't have a very steady hand yet. At several points the line thickness varies in unnatural ways, like on the top of Bugs' ears or the wheels on Daffy's chair for instance.

I tried to straighten the lines on the desk and monitor with a ruler, but now I think it looks TOO straight and as a result, too unnatural.

Bugs' hand holding the carrot is wrong too, because I couldn't see what John was going for and tried to fix it, but now I think it's far too evenly spaced, making it look wonky.

I'm also not happy with the way Daffy's lower beak came out, but as near as I can tell, that's what John had in mind. As near as I can tell.

Please leave comments with critiques because I see a lot wrong, and I'd like to see what you see.

Thanks, gang!

- trevor.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Ralph Bakshi says, "Just do it!




Thanks to Stephen Worth at the Animation Archive for allowing us to post this and to second Ralph's frank encouragement.



Make sure to visit Ralph's website and tell him how much you want to see his new film The Last Days of Coney Island.

Thank you very much, Ralph!


Sunday, August 3, 2008

Funny Batman!