Luis’ Illustrated Blog

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Well, this week has been interesting. I was put on, what turned out to be, a very high profile Couch Gag.  Yeah, it’s very odd. The gag has a special guest writer and it seems to be very important to the Big Guys, so I had to do the best work I’d done so far. Especially since it was going to be looked at under a microscope by all the Big Guys and the guest writer.

Ouch! What’s that squishing me from above? Oh yeah, PRESSURE.

FAMILY

It was my dad’s birthday this week and my father-in-laws birthday last Saturday. Happy Birthday DADS!

ART

(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)

Pasadena rocks. It’s my favorite town in LA. That’s one of the reasons I lived there for two years or so.  It’s great, and I love visiting it.  One of the things I like about Pasadena is that it has some of the prettiest places hidden away in it. When I decided to take photos to use as reference for the background of my cartoon, Pasadena was, almost, the only place on my list to go to.

So I decided to go and take photos of places I remembered, that I thought would help me flesh out my backgrounds.  The first was a place on Lake Ave. near the Borders book store.  I thought I might be able to use the architecture here as well as get an idea of what an enclosed space might look like.  At this point I was planning to make the fight happen in a place similar to this, only without the ceiling and a bit less narrow. I took a few pictures but I’m only putting up one:

On the way to the destination above, I caught a glimpse of a place I might have wanted to take a look at next on Green St. I stopped by there and took a look around.  It fit the idea I was going for a bit better even though it was still a bit too small an area.  It also had a fountain and I thought was a nice touch I might want to put in. Below is one of the many pictures I took.

As I was looking for parking to take photos of the the place above, another place caught my eye. A place I had never seen before, even though I’ve driven by it tons of times. This was also on Lake Ave. near Green St. I decided to investigate.

Low and behold, I found the place my story was going to take place in.  It was perfect. With a few modifications (like cobble stone floors and no buildings behind the main buildings) it would be exactly what I wanted.  It was a small plaza with enough space for a fight but with enough obstacles to make it entertaining and fun to destroy. I didn’t even know that place was there.

Once I had my photos, I began my sketching. This is some of what I did using the photos as reference:

One of the changes I’m making to the reference material is putting in the fountain from the other photo.  You can see it in the floor plan view above.

After doing those sketches, I decided to continue making up some thumbnail roughs for a more finished picture. Ironically the placement of the figures are such that you don’t even see the background all that much. Still, it makes me feel more comfortable knowing there is a rough design of the background.

I’m still not sure if I’m going to use any of these shots.  I kinda want some full figures as well as some background showing. Now that I have a better idea of what everyone and everything roughly looks like, I really need to finalize the look of the cartoon.

GHETTOMATION

Jim Lujan has released  a new cartoon called PALEFACE and it’s great. Jim’s a very important guy to me. He’s the guy whose inspired me to work on my OWN animated cartoons:

For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

I’ve been moved into an office now.  I share it with a long time veteran board artist.  I have the office to myself most of the time though, since he works mostly from home and comes into work maybe one or twice a week.

The one thing I’m most happy about is that there is a TV in the office and it gets cable. This means that next Month I’ll be able to watch the World Cup games.

ART

I hadn’t really been in the mood to work on my project. I thought perhaps I wasn’t making it fun enough for myself. It also felt I had a lot to do. I needed to design all the characters and the look of the cartoon, as well as start breaking up the story into “beats”. This just seemed like such a chore.  I had to find a way to NOT make it a chore. I mean, I’m doing this for fun right? This shouldn’t feel like work.

The other day I watched an animated movie called DRAGON HUNTERS.

It’s a CG movie with fantastic designs and a great looking world. It annoyed me that it was CG, mostly because I kinda wanted 2D inspiration.  Well, in the credits, there are some drawings of a character that was spoken about in the movie.  I really liked them so I screen captured the images.

It almost has a stain glass yet art deco look.  I became curious of what that would look like in a contemporary setting.  I’ll have to experiment with the look to see if I want it (or can even pull it off).

Below is the beginning of my thought process to get to that point. I began to redesigning my characters using the shapes I thought where reflected in the screen captures. I don’t know why I decided to use a ballpoint pen.  I guess it was just mood.

The one thing I hadn’t done yet with my designs is work out the contrasting shapes of my character’s silhouettes. Because of this, it made the feel of my characters fairly generic and dull. So in the lower three drawings of the page above, I did it a little bit. Later this week I’m going to do more. Part of the problem I’m having, I think, is that I haven’t done something that basic.

I was hoping that by really pushing the design it would become more fun to draw.  So far it’s working.

I did have fun drawing these.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around what I want the Sorcerers to look like.  I know that I want two guys and one gal. I’ve been looking at some photos of  character types for inspiration.  For the protagonist Rob, I was used Tom Welling as a jumping off point for his type.

I’m still trying to decide who I will use for the Sorcerers. I also kinda want them to look like rejects from The Matrix. I’m not married to that idea though. It depends whether it’s fun or not. I’m also considering making that Sorcerers look like a grown up version of Harry, Ron, and Hermoine if they were trying real hard to look cool. Another thought for the Sorcerers I had was that, if they weren’t Sorcerers they would just be nerds. The thing about all these ideas which makes me unsure is that, it might not be fun drawing weak looking enemies.  I kinda want to make them to look challenging and intimidating.

Any suggestions on actors or models that might fit the “types” would be appreciated.  Also, if you think you have good suggestions for interesting clothes that might look magical yet contemporary, cool but not out of The Matrix, I’m willing to take a look. At this point, things are still up in the air.

 GHETTOMATION

And speaking of cartoons, if you haven’t seen Jim Lujan’s newest cartoon, NEW WAVE DENTIST, you’re missing out:

BLOGS

Also, over at the MAN VS. ART blog, Raul Aguirre’s latest podcast episode on the history of animation is just darn right awesome. Check it out by CLICKING HERE.

For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS

My first week back on layout was a bit rocky.  It took me a while to get used to doing it again.  By Friday I was really grooving though. I was going through scenes at the speed I’m meant to go.  I’ve been able to continue holding up that pace so far.  I glad.

ART

I’ve been showing off a bit of my extra curricular Simpsons work for the last couple of weeks.  This will be the last of it for now.

This is some work I did for a Lisa Simpson Book.  Similar to the Krusty one I wrote about last week.  One of the running gags of the book was a Lisa comic done in the style of the Rex Morgan M.D. comic strip. It featured Lisa and Milhouse all grown up solving medical problems.  It was fun to do because it was so melodramatic.  I had worked on the show “Lisa’s Wedding” which takes place in the future and Lisa is grown up through most of the show.  I remembered what Lisa looked like in that show and I drew her in the same way, with slightly stylized wavy hair:

It’s funny to note, now that I see all strips together, that almost all the strips end with a close up of a character or a dramatic up shot. Sometimes, even the exact SAME dramatic upshot as a different strip. 

You will also note that, in the roughs I posted, I didn’t really put in any perspective grids like I usually do. Looking through the roughs I DIDN’T post, I see that they are missing in those as well. I “eye balled” the perspective on all of these strips. Granted, I didn’t really put in all that many backgrounds either. These strips allowed me to experiment with doing “short hand” backgrounds.

Above is a rough that I didn’t post the clean up for…for some reason.

Above here’s the rough of the strip below.

It was fun to have Milhouse totally start crying just for the melodrama of it all. I don’t think that was in the script.

Above is the rough of the strip below.  The note from the art director was not to have Milhouse come in running on panel 3.

I didn’t post all the strips. Just a few.

Yet again, I didn’t receive a copy of this book so I don’t know what the final version of these strips look like.  I’ll need to track this books down so I can check it out:

What do you think?

MY WEEK

I turned 35 last Saturday. The kids, Alesha took me out to eat sushi. Something I really enjoy doing. We then went back home and my parents came over to visit later in the evening.  The best part of the day, (besides spending time with my family) was getting time to work on my comic.

Sunday we were invited to my in-law’s house.  My mother in law  made enchiladas for lunch.  It was yummy.  Later we drove to my parent’s house were my mother there was a steak dinner waiting for me along with my brother, Deborah his wife, my cousin and her family.  We got there late, which was embarrassing since they were there for me.  Still, it I had a good time.

It’s odd, even on my birthday, if I’m not playing a board game, I still feel awkward about being around a lot of people. I think it’s gotten worse since I started working my projects.

MY WEB COMIC

Speaking of projects…I’m very close to finishing the inking process of my web comic.  I’m very surprised at how much fun I’m having working on this thing.   It also has me very frustrated.  Mostly because I’m not as happy about the way it’s turning out as I’d like to be.  The reason for this, is my fault.  I wanted to draw the comic without making it to be too much work.  Usually, as you’ve seen from my comic book making process post, I draw one page three times before it’s finalized.  If I was to ink the page, it would be four times.  Well, in order to speed things up, I decided that I was only going to draw each page twice. I was going to draw the final penciled page and then ink it.  No rough plot, no tighter rough, no clean up page. I was going straight to a tight rough and then to ink.  This has actually caused a lot of problems because my abilities are NOT such that I can just get everything right the first time.  I really needed to take one more step before I got to the inking.  Still, I’m learning, so I’ll know what I’ll do different next time.

I’ve also rediscovered that I have lousy lettering, so  I’m going to have digital lettering through out the comic and I think even the sound effects I’ve put into the pages will need to be reworked digitally.  It’s okay though, practice makes perfect.  The comic is still perfectly readable and I’m still planning on finishing it.  It’s going to be in color and since I’ve never colored a comic before, I don’t know how long that’s going to take me.  Hopefully, not very much time.

And while I’m on the subject of projects…

GHETTOMATION

I’m slowly making headway into the writing and creating of my next Pulp serial ghettomated project.  I think I’ve finally nailed down what it’s all going to be about, who the main characters are and what their motivation is. Now, I just have to come up with a quick story to put them in so I can really begin.  That, and the fact that I have to work out the look and style of the cartoon.

I’ll write about the process when it really starts getting into gear.

VIDEO

And now some Axe Cop ghettomation:

BLOG

This is fantastic blog if you’re into drawing at all:

The Art Center Blog

CLICK HERE to buy an Uncle Chestnut T-shirt with my art on it.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.