July, 2010 | Luis' Illustrated Blog

Still on the Couch Gag. Thumbnailing more shots. Someone erased my name of my animated gif. Drawing in public.

July 29, 2010 in ART, THE SIMPSONS NEWS, VIDEOS, WEBSITES

Still working on that crazy Couch Gag this week. I’m very surprised at how much work is being put into it. I doubt anyone will say anything more than, “Wow, that was a weird Couch Gag,” and then forget about it and watch the show. Oh well, it’s not like it isn’t fun to work on, so I don’t really mind. It’s just interesting to note.

I’ve also been working on revising Act 2. This show has the least revisions of any show so far this season. It’s a darn funny show. Can’t wait to see the final version.

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.)

It feels now like I’m just drawing for the sake of drawing and I’m not getting anywhere with my project. I just want to get on with finishing it at this point. It feels to me, as if I’ve solved everything and I’m ready to start with the “good stuff”. I know this is just me being impatient though. The last time I worked on a personal project, jumped right in and started working without solving everything, I got myself in trouble. Halfway through my project, I realized there were some art issues I hadn’t resolved and it ended up causing problems. Had I taken the time to work them out earlier, it would have been a smoother process.

For my own sake, I might as well write down what I still need to do.

Decide on a final look for the cartoon by drawing a clean concept piece.
Design monsters.
Tighten up the story a bit more in order to know what monsters to design.
Come up with a color scheme for the cartoon and characters (see 1.).
Finalize all the Sorcerer designs.
Once the final look is decided, do an animation test.

(Sigh) It kinda sounds like a lot to do before I can even begin storyboarding.

I’ve been trying to complete task No. 1. It’s tricky because I want to draw a finished piece that incorporates some of the “fun” things I want to draw in the cartoon. I decided that the thumbnail sketches I had been drawing depicted a scene that didn’t have much action in it. I’ve decided to see if I could, maybe, draw a picture with something exciting going on. This is what I’ve got so far:

I’m still going to need do a few more thumbnails though. I think I want to, at least, show the Sorcerers more. I want the drawing to say, “Danger and excitement” all in one drawing while allowing me to work on the color and style of the cartoon.

WEBSITES

So I followed the source of a link that lead to my blog out of curiosity. I found one of my animated GIF files that I did years ago, being talked about on a Spanish speaking forum. To my surprise, a couple of posts later, I found that one of the forum users had translated it into SPANISH. I thought it was great that the person did that and I was really flattered. Then I looked closer at the translated version and saw the translator had decided to take my name off it. Why?!

I was planning to put the translated version up here on my blog. I was going to but my name back on it but I found out, to my dismay, that I couldn’t. I don’t know how the guy managed to edit my GIF but I wasn’t able to edit his. So I’ve decided NOT to put the translated version here even though I thought it was neat.

Perhaps I should do a translated version myself instead. Maybe next week, if I have time. Meanwhile, here’s the original version of the GIF if you haven’t seen it yet:

I just finished rereading the original blog article this drawing was posted with. It seems I was going a little insane at the time. It also answers the question as to why the drawing is signed “Frog 08”.

VIDEO

I liked this cartoon below. It’s sad but true. When an artist goes out and draws in public, this sometimes happens:

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.

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Couch Gag pressure. Double dad birthday. Good reference for backgrounds in Pasadena. PALEFACE, a new Jim Lujan cartoon.

July 22, 2010 in ART, GHETTOMATION, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

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

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D27gVbNkw4&feature=youtu.be

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.

Comments Off on Couch Gag pressure. Double dad birthday. Good reference for backgrounds in Pasadena. PALEFACE, a new Jim Lujan cartoon.

Color, art direction, Mucha and anime hair.

July 15, 2010 in ART, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Ooh, job pressure is rising. Turns out Act 3 had more changes than Act 1. I started working on it and got pulled off it in order to work on a couch gag. That meant I had even less time to revise Act 3. Now I’ve got to really crank it out so I can be done by tomorrow since it’s my last day before I move on to another show.

In other studio news, I made my way by the ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN animated show area of the studio earlier this week and saw all the development art on the walls. It’s sooo cool. I love the visual ideas that are coming out for the show. I’m curious what they’re going to ultimately stick with.

ART

Color color color. Color is sooo important, and yet I’m so new at working with it. It’s going to be one of those learning moments for me.

I’ve gotten to the point in this process where things are overlapping. On the one hand I need to finalize the designs of the characters. The thing is, I need to also decide what style I want to finally go with. Which in turn informs the colors that I will use in the final product. Should I start with the colors first? I mean, the characters have to wear colors that will make them stand out from the background right? I still haven’t designed the backgrounds though. This means I need to work on them, but how should I approach them? Should I paint shapes or sketch them like I did the characters? In the end, whatever I draw will be informed by the style I choose to go with. You see how they all tie together?

In the end I think I’m going to need to play around in sketches to see what style I want as a final look. As I do this I’m going to be designing the backgrounds and finalizing the characters. In doing so, I hope that all of it combined will end with a final look that I might like. Personally, think introducing any color will be the most difficult part for me.

Now to change the subject.

A bit down below is my second attempt at finding a skin color for Rob that I like. I’ve also reworked his hair design. Once again, I don’t think I’ve succeeded in the color department. The hair, on the other hand, I like. I really didn’t like what his hair looked like before. The Man vs. Art, Raul Aguirre Jr. suggested I should look at some anime characters for hair ideas. I thought I WAS, since I’m so heavily influenced by that style. But being influenced and actually studying a thing, are two different things. So I thought to myself, what anime hair do I want to be influence by? Well, I kinda wanted Rob to have big late 70s early 80s anime hair, so after thinking about it I looked at the character of Rick Hunter/Hikaru Ichijyo from ROBOTECH/MACROSS.

He wasn’t my only influence but I wanted big poofy hair like that. So I looked back at my reference picture of Tom Welling:

and tried to design it to look a bit more anime-ish:

Since I was also thinking about the final look of the cartoon, I went back and looked at the pictures that influence me to begin with:

The thing about the artwork was that it was cool and cartoony, but the end result, also reminded me of Alphonse Mucha‘s art:

So I thought that, I’d look at Mucha’s work and try to do my version of it, but without all the super detailed curves and things (for the sake of my sanity). I just wanted the general impression of his work.

I didn’t have time to color it, which makes a pretty big difference. In the end, I don’t think I succeeded and what I ended up with, kinda looks a bit more like a page out of a kid’s coloring book than Mucha. At some point I’ll add some color and maybe add all the curves and decorations in Photoshop using Paths.

What I DO like about the drawing, is that I can see a final version of the character now. The hammer still needs work. Especially the hilt. It kinda looks awful, but I definitely think I’m going with this design as the final look for Rob

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.

Comments Off on Color, art direction, Mucha and anime hair.

Backgrounds, colors and White Ravens. Alesha writes about taking care of your hair.

July 8, 2010 in Alesha's Business, ART, BUTTERFLY BEAUTE, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSON NEWS

It’s a four day work week this week. As much as like getting a day off, I hate having less days to do my job. The schedule doesn’t change because of any days off we have. It just means we have less time to do our work. I’m starting on a new show this week and I’ve had to hit the ground running. Hope I can finish what I need to finish.

ART

I decided to start thumbnailing a more finished drawing with all the characters, only to discover that I hadn’t designed the raven. Well, I began sketching right away. But, how do you design a “heroic” raven?

I came up with a design fairly quickly. In earlier sketches of the raven, I think I had hit a design I kinda liked. All I had to do was push it a bit more. I also chose to give him a “hairdo”. He now has a bit of slicked back “hair”. I thought it gave him a bit of “greaser” vibe.

An interesting thing happened as I looked for reference online for the raven. As I looked up photos and typed out “raven”, google suggested “white raven”. White raven? So I clicked on that. BAM! I got a ton of photos of white ravens! I didn’t know there were such things. Wow, I’d never heard of anyone using a white raven in a story before, so I decided there and then that the raven in my story, was going to be WHITE. This is the reason the drawing in the bottom left of the page above is NOT darkened like the others.

Last week, Maria Johnson (of the CATHOLIC WEEKEND podcast, among other things) left a comment that gave me a good jumping off point for my background designs. She thought, maybe I could use a Schnitzel stand in Germany, like they have in Bamberg. I haven’t been to Bamberg so I had no visual reference. I decided to try to google some reference. I was not surprised to find that I couldn’t find anything. I DID manage to find ONE photo that, even though it’s probably not what Maria was talking about, gave me an idea of what I wanted to do in the end.

This is the photo:

I love the size of the stand and how open it is. I love the space too. It seems enclosed yet open enough. Cobble stone floor? I’m so using that. How awesome it that castle on the hill?

Below are some thumbnails for pictures I might develop into finished pieces. I also drew a top down view of what I might want the location to look like. I’ve recently taken some pictures that will help me develop it even more:

After that I decided that I might want to start figuring out the colors for my characters. I took out some Prismacolor Markers, My Pentel brush pen, a colored pencil and began to sketch. I was originally trying to just solve Rob’s hair (which is a pain in the butt to figure out). I thought that, while I was at it, I might as well ink it and do color experiments.

It was a disaster. The colors I used were just the wrong ones. They looked all muddy. I hadn’t planned the coloring well enough. When I scanned the drawing to put it up here on the blog, the scanner had managed to improve the colors a bit from the original. I used Photoshop to try to fix them a bit more but nothing I did helped. The best I could do was what you see below:

Trust me, the original is worse. Rob is suppose to be dark skinned not pink. The color I originally used was “Mocha Light” but it looked awful.

I guess I really should just use Photoshop to color my drawings. It would be much easier…but…I just feel like using my markers, darn it!

The drawing on the right, drawn on the Post It, was a doodle I did one day, just for the heck of it. It’s not quite right but there are things about it that I want to keep for Robs final design.

I got more drawn then usual. There were only two days of World Cup games last week.

BUTTERFLY BEAUTE

Alesha has started writing some articles on a site concerning natural beauty products that help you stay healthy. This comes as no surprise since she make natural beauty products through her Butterfly Beaute company.

Her first article is called:

The Big Deal About Natural and Organic Hair Care

It’s about all the bad stuff you ought to be aware of, that’s contained in many mainstream conditioners. If this concerns you, click on the link above and read it.

If you want to check out some of Alesha’s natural beauty products, CLICK 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.

1 Comment »

Articles about understanding introverts. Long lunch break. More sketches. CTN Videos

July 1, 2010 in ART, THE SIMPSONS NEWS, VIDEOS

THE SIMPSON NEWS

I managed to finish my ACT 2 assignment on Monday. I would have finished it last week, only I took a longer lunch break than usual last Friday. I went to a local sports bar, with co-workers, to watch the Spain vs. Chile game. It was a lot of fun, but it meant I had to make up the hours this week.

I’m now working on ACT 4, which has less to do than ACT 2. I’m hoping to be done sometime today.

ART

Okay, so this page of drawings was just drawn to have something to post up. I did some adjusting on the Sorceress’ face so that it was a bit more stylized. I also drew out her face so I could, at least, see what she looked like. I straighten out her skirt so it wasn’t so girly, and I worked out a bit of the arm detail of the long haired Sorcerer’s arm:

On Monday, my wife got invited to a get together with some friends from her work and the whole family went. At one point during the evening I did my typical anti-social thing and began drawing in a corner. I decided that I was going to try to draw Steve Buscemi from a photo. I pulled a picture up on my phone and began to draw it. The reason I did this was, since I was using him as inspiration, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to just try to capture his likeness “for real” in case I could apply what I learned from doing so to my design. So this is what I drew:

Red color pencil under drawing, inked with a Pentel brush pen. I used 2 Copic neutral grey markers and a black one for tone with a Whiteout pen for highlights. It came out okay but I think if I drew a few more I would eventually “be right on”. I think, had you not known it was him, you would find that it looks familiar but you couldn’t put you’re finger on who he was suppose to be. At least it was fun to do and it’s WAY better than my other attempts.

So did I learn anything for having drawn the above drawing? I have no idea.

I definitely want to start on the backgrounds now. I’m going to see if I can find some time this weekend to go out and “location scout”. It’s possible I won’t be able to though, since I have a wedding to go to this Saturday two hours away.

I’m still not sure where exactly my story should take place. At first I thought it should take place outside a Wienerschnitzel type place. Then I was thinking that it might be better if it’s takes place in front of a portable hot dog stand. If that’s the case, the story can take place, just about anywhere. Thing is, I want Rob (the protagonist) to sit down on a bench to eat. Then again, he could sit on a wall or…well just about anywhere. So where should this take place? A park? A street corner? I want obstacles and things to destroy so that at the end we just see the smoldering ruin of the area they just fought in. Also, it would be nice to have some “natural” obstacles so that it’s more difficult for Rob to get away. Any ideas?

If I don’t manage to get any photo reference, I’ll try doing a “style test” with all the characters. Basically I’ll just do a finished drawing with all of them in a picture, possibly in color.

VIDEOS/ART

I’ve known about this for a while but I kept forgetting to post about it.

It’s a video of Pixar storyboard artists at a panel from the CTN Animation Expo last year. They talk about their job, their influences and their approaches. One of the speakers, Ted Mathot, is a ex-Simpsons layout artist. It’s a must watch if you want good tips on Storyboarding and visual storytelling. Click the link below to watch:

PIXAR IN THE HOUSE: STORY STORY STORY

This next video, is a talk on how to get into the animation industry by Dreamworks director Steve Hickner. I really enjoyed this one as well:

HOW TO BREAK INTO ANIMATION

BLOG

It’s tough being an introvert in a world of extroverts. There’s a lot of misunderstanding that comes along with being one. I know, since I AM one.

Two years ago, at the end of a post on this blog, I linked to an article called:

Caring for Your Introvert.

I’m not sure how many people caught that link since it came at the end of a long random bit of writing. I found the article refreshing and enlightening. I thought it was important enough to call attention to it since it helps people understand introverts a lot more.

Recently I’ve become aware of yet another article on introverts. It’s a good compliment to the article above so I thought I’d post a link to it too. Read both these article if you want to learn more about the introvert in your life:

Field guide to the loner: The real insiders

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.

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Luis' Illustrated Blog

Monthly Archives: July 2010

Still on the Couch Gag. Thumbnailing more shots. Someone erased my name of my animated gif. Drawing in public.

Like this:

Couch Gag pressure. Double dad birthday. Good reference for backgrounds in Pasadena. PALEFACE, a new Jim Lujan cartoon.

Like this:

Color, art direction, Mucha and anime hair.

Like this:

Backgrounds, colors and White Ravens. Alesha writes about taking care of your hair.

Like this:

Articles about understanding introverts. Long lunch break. More sketches. CTN Videos

Like this:

Hi, Welcome!

Both my books are now on Amazon. Pick up your own print copy today!

Buy My Art

Most Read Posts

Featured Post

Archives

Blogroll

Luis' Illustrated Blog

Still on the Couch Gag. Thumbnailing more shots. Someone erased my name of my animated gif. Drawing in public.

Share this:

Like this:

Couch Gag pressure. Double dad birthday. Good reference for backgrounds in Pasadena. PALEFACE, a new Jim Lujan cartoon.

Share this:

Like this:

Color, art direction, Mucha and anime hair.

Share this:

Like this:

Backgrounds, colors and White Ravens. Alesha writes about taking care of your hair.

Share this:

Like this:

Articles about understanding introverts. Long lunch break. More sketches. CTN Videos

Share this:

Like this:

Hi, Welcome!

Both my books are now on Amazon. Pick up your own print copy today!

Buy My Art

Most Read Posts

Featured Post

Archives

Blogroll