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?

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.

Drawing George Liquor

So over at all kinds of stuff John K. has put the call out to artists for his new project. It stars the usual characters that he owns ( not Ren and Stimpy or The Ripping Friends ) and right now he needs storyboard and layout artists.

He wants us to practice drawing the characters ( if we're interested in the job, which I, of course, am ) and says the toughest to draw is George Liquor, so he's up first.

Below are two of the eleven pictures he put up on his blog for us to copy. Here they are:



He's also, thankfully, a stickler for accuracy, and has explained the best way to compare the drawings. He suggests putting the original drawing at an opacity on top of your version to make sure the forms are accurate. I've done that below, but first, here are my versions of the above drawings:



Now, the transparent comparisons:




So, I clearly need to work a lot harder. But, I think I captured the 'essence' of Liquor. In fact, if I draw any more tonight, I just might vote for McCain.

I'm going to put up more later on over the weekend, but I'm exhausted. I really tried hard for those crappy drawings and I really want the job, so I'll overcompensate because I want to impress Mr. K.

Yes, that's why I overcompensate. Surely it has nothing do with my nipple dick.

UPDATE:

John has put my transparent comparisons up on his blog, but hasn't commented on them, either here or in his blog's comments.

You know what that means? Back to the grind stone. Unfortunately, I have to go to work now for eight hours, but I'm going to try a few doodles of George whilst there for storyboard purposes and I'll put those up later, too.

- trevor.

John K. Teaches Us About Negative Space Using Rocky and Bullwinkle

Over at his blog, all kinds of stuff, John Kricfalusi recently broke down the construction of two well-known characters, that of Rocky and Bullwinkle. He talks about how their simplicity is deceptive, and shows how construction is used even with UPA's simple style, but he also points out how negative space has an effect on the staging of a drawing.


When he put this drawing up, it was cited as an example of mushy construction. This is what John said about it specifically:

"Here is a picture made by someone not conscious of the usefulness and appeal of negative shapes."

I saw what he was talking about, but wondered what it would have looked like if the drawing had been drawn more, as John puts it, 'consciously'. Since I am trying very hard to learn from this man, I did what I believe he wants us all to do: try to evaluate the drawing yourself.

I immediately thought that, what I would call 'the staging', was jumbly and unnatural and I noticed that if Natasha was positioned slightly further back from the light and Boris were in the lower right, it would read better, plus there would be more negative shapes.



I very quickly sketched the basic shapes of the drawing ( and didn't get the proportions of the table right, ) though I don't know what John would say, but I felt it read better. Am I wrong?



Again, these are just my theories based on what John's been teaching. Sometimes stuff being 'too even' can get boring, but I felt that the original drawing was too jarring, so I went the opposite way. Tell me what you think, friends.

- trevor.