New Popeye Studies

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FIRST POPEYE STUDIES

Popeye Turnaround Studies #1

Over at John K.'s blog, there are some new photos of an old Popeye toy. John suggests drawing these from different angles to learn construction and solid drawing techniques for your cartoons.

Below are the two pics I copied, and further down are my first two attempts complete with my notes.

Please leave critiques in the comments. Any criticism, good or bad, is welcome and encouraged. Thanks for looking in!

Slab N Ernie Construction Lessons

I did this today at work during lunch very quickly, but it gave me a chance to break the drawing down.




I'm doing a few more now that I'm home, and I'll post the best one later on.

STAY TUNED!!!

UPDATE!!!

I haven't gotten a chance to hook the scanner up since the move, so wait. I'll have to upload the finished drawing which is much better.... but I'll get to it later. I have green screen testing to do. Sue me.

I suck at construction

UPDATES BELOW!!!
JohnK says:

So far none of your drawings show that you use construction to draw with.




I'm not going to argue this point that John made yesterday. I know that I draw circles and lines before attempting details, but that doesn't mean I'm doing construction right. As John says, there's only one way to tell if it's right or not. But what am I doing wrong?

I looked at some older copies I did and the one recurring issue is that when I put the transparency over the original drawing ( I'm using PhotoStudio, not Photoshop ) one part will be more or less correct, and then everything else is off, but mathematically by about the same amount and in a different direction.

CLICK HERE TO SEE TREVOR'S COPIES
I figure this means that I'm not getting the distances from one form to another right. And if there's one mistake made, there are several because they all bloom out of the original.

So I decided I would start a drawing and not finish it until I KNOW the forms are in the right place. As you can see below, I've started breaking down the Porky comic cover, and once again, one character has roughly the right forms, but the others are off.

Counting the space with my pencil only seems to work when I'm making the drawing physically the same size, but the ones copied from the DVD player or these sized down comic pages....




The above drawing is ridiculously huge in file size compared to the comic cover. Scaling it down, this is how it compares:




I'm going to dedicate a few hours every night this week to getting this right, and then I'll move on to adding the larger forms. As you can clearly see, I need work and comments.

Maybe I'll join that Cartoon Critique blog.

UPDATES AS OF 01/09/09:
So, I took the drawing above and studied the transparency and made my changes in red. This is what I came up with:



And here's how it looks when resized over the original comic.



I had to resize this differently because the first scan of the drawing ( and first crack at it, pictured above ) had the paper favoring the top of the bed, the second the latter. I'm worried I may not have actually gotten the shapes right, but I'm going to start fresh rather than improve the same drawing. Hopefully, I've learned something. Be back tomorrow with more drawings!

Check back!

UPDATES AS OF 01/12/09:

New changes in blue.



Here's how it looks over the comic:



And now I'm going to do the remaining levels of construction. Hopefully, my theory that if I get the first level right then others will follow will soon be proved, right or wrong.

Please come back.

UPDATES AS OF 01/15/09:

Final changes in blue.



Black outline.



And the final check:



What do you think?

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.

Storyboard

Okay, the following is the begining of a storyboard I created for George. I would put up the rest, but my scanner's acting funky.
I also stole old Spumco storyboard sheets to do it.







Also, here's a few tries at getting George right. Some drawings I made up, others I copied. For example, Rex Hackleberg's awesome storyboard sketches at the bottom.








- trevor.

Inking!

So, I'm still trying desperately to get hired by John Kricfalusi for his new project starring George Liquor.


But, he's said that the only position he can hire for that doesn't require you have some experience ( which I don't ) is inking.


So below are my inking attempts, done with PMOP ink pens.


The left side is John's original sketch, and the right is my ink.


I'm clearly not very good at this, so any and all advice is welcomed.

Thanks!

BY THE WAY, IF ANYONE KNOWS WHERE I CAN FIND A FREE COPY OF ILLUSTRATOR FOR MY MAC G-5, PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS, AND I WOULD GREATLY APPRECIATE IT!!

- trevor.

Drawing George Liquor II

Click here to read part one of "Drawing George Liquor"

So, I sketch at work if I have the time and the powers that be aren't paying attention. It's usually on the back of one of our yellow order sheets. I used this time at work to keep practicing drawing George Liquor.




So then, I went home and spent a good two hours sketching George from other drawings and some originals. Here's a smattering of the least embarrasing.





Then, when I felt a little more confident with the character, I took a stab at boarding him. Since John K. only has us learning George now, I didn't have any stories of him alone, so I wrote my own.

It's about how George is frying bacon one Sunday, and is out of lard.


Fortunately, Manx and Itchy come to his defense, selling CAN O' LARD door to door.

So, here's the first four pages of the storyboard for it. It's called FAT CHANCE.






My overall plan is to finish this storyboard and then do as much character layouts as possible. Then, since I can do George's voice, I'm going to cut it into an animatic with finished voices, sound FX, timing and temp. music.

DEADLINE: SUNDAY, JUNE 15th!

I'm an overachiever. And an American!




- trevor.