Stuck on You

New Popeye Studies

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FIRST POPEYE STUDIES

Kaspar The Unfriendly Bear Studies

My feeling is that both of these are too conservative, especially the one at the top. The line of action is wrong, and the pose itself is too lax. Also, the one at the bottom.... for some reason I gave his left big meaty paws a dainty little British finger. Don't know where that came from, I like chicks.

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!

New scanner!

I've been without a working scanner for too long. I don't have time to post all of the drawings I've done in the last five months ( anymore than you have time to look at all of them ), so here's a small smattering.

The first two drawings are for my Dad's birthday which was back in April. There's some problems with them ( as Vincent Waller was kind enough to point out ), especially Manx's right hand.... eeesh!

If I can find them, and if it's okay with Vince, I'll post his notes. Valuable stuff, for sure. I can find them, but boy... I need to learn the value of labeling things properly. Thanks to Lili for cleaning up these drawings in Photoshop.... a lot of un-erasable pencil mess.

Speaking of Vince, he told me about the brush pens he uses on those awesome doodles he posts at his blog. When I bought them, I immediately drew Mike Peters' Grimmy. I grew up having Mike around, and he kind of is the reason I love thick lines so much.

Alright... now the construction studies.... ::: sigh :::

The first sketch is from two fan art Tinkerbell drawings. Here are the drawings I'm copying..

I started doing the construction for both at lunch on one sheet, and when I got home I couldn't find the same drawings again so I had to do finish the drawing from memory.

I completely got the line of action wrong on both of them... which I should have noticed from the onset.... of course, this drawing is three months old. Hopefully, I got better when I got to this one...

Here's mine.



And here's the comparison.



Finally, here's one I did two weeks ago. I wanted to practice construction, but also wanted to fill a page and see how many studies I could fit on it. I don't know why.


I'll post the original drawings for this a bit later.... but it's late.

Also? This is for Katie. I tried drawing Neil Patrick Harris once.... here it is.

COMING UP: THE SCRIBNER FACE

Animatic for Theme Song

So, we've been away for a while here at the Blooog, but a lot's been happening for us in the real world.

I had a birthday ( 31 ) and we successfully cast the role of Twinklebelly. Also, I have finished the first pass on the animatic for the theme song ( "Technocolored Ballad of the Rocketship Rangers" ), and while I will be making several more edits to get the timing right, I thought I'd share with you, flawed as it is, the first animatic.

Please leave thoughts and criticisms in the comment section.

ALSO, I KNOW THE SYNC IS OFF ON ONE OF THE DIALOGUE TRACKS. THIS WILL BE FIXED IN THE SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT VERSIONS OF THE ANIMATIC. FEAR NOT.

Here are some of the drawings used in it. Please let us know what you think, good or bad.

I made the mistake of trying to board this with thumbnail sketches first. I think it was a mistake because I was still getting the ideas out. The more finished drawings are re-do's of very very quick notebook sketches.

These thumbnail storyboard sketches show I spent too much time with them. I should've just stuck with the very quick notebook sketches for getting the ideas out and then jumped straight into "layout".








COMING UP NEXT: THE SCRIBNER FACE

Another Peek Behind The Curtain...

Developmental Death 2: Electric Boogaloo

by Trevor Thompson

So, a long time ago when I still had time to post somewhat interesting things on this blooog, I did a theory post about developmental sketches. It's theoretical because I myself have never worked professionally in the industry, so my opinion isn't really valid. Think of this as just me thinking aloud.

If you really want to read it for reference purposes, then click here.

The post basically pontificates about why it is that in most cases, aesthetically speaking, the 'developmental sketches' are usually some of the best work to come out of any given project. I used two otherwise bland shows as my example: the long-running Aqua Teen Hunger Force...




and the cancelled-after-two-episodes Clerks.

Anyway, the best drawings from that post were all done for Aqua Teen by Clay Croker, who in addition to doing animation and design work for a lot of early [adult swim] programs also voiced several of the characters. Zorak, Moltar, Steve, Dr. Weird and a bunch of one shot characters for The Brak Show and Perfect Hair Forever all owe Clay's tonsils a debt.



So, here's what Clay has to say about the development artwork he did for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I apologize if one or two of these aren't yours, Clay. I'm going based on guesses and signatures. :)

FROM CLAY CROKER:

Thanks for the comments, Trevor - I tell ya why the funnier drawings...



Part of it, as was suggested, is we knew the characters would never ultimately come off as cool as we could draw them up front with the budget we had to work with - but we wanted to see how far we could push it anyway...



The other part is that there's always the chance that if you can provide something that the client "can't live without" then you might be able to push the project down a cooler path than had been originally envisioned.



(That route has worked for me time and again by the way)



A lot of the drawings I did were done over a 3 or 4 hour period when I met show creators Dave and Matt over at the Highland Tap one rainy Sunday afternoon in April 1999.



We drank pitcher after pitcher - they told me what they wanted and I drew about 10-12 pages of designs while we talked.



(Some of those drawings were actually incorrectly referred to as Wild Hare Studios art in this article -- But they ain't.)



So alcohol no doubt enhanced the overall "carefree" drawing approach to some of those.



But I ask ya - doesn't every animator wanna work on a show that's fun to draw? (and closer to their own style?)

I guess this answers the question about what you need to make a good looking cartoon: a bit of beer and a bit of budget.

Thanks Clay for taking the time to tell us about these fun sketches! Go visit Clay at his blog:

http://arglebarglin.blogspot.com/

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