ART | Luis' Illustrated Blog

Link to an interview with my current SIMPSONS director. Struggling to find clear, well drawn poses. Cool animated short.

October 28, 2010 in ART, THE SIMPSONS NEWS, VIDEOS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

First week of working on show 13. I was assigned act 1 and 4.

This show’s writer’s were freelancers. According to my director Mark Kirkland, the writer’s union requires the show to bring in at least one outside script every season. Turns out, this script, is pretty darn good and very funny.

Speaking of Mark Kirkland, I was listening to the TOON IN! podcast last week and I heard an interview with him on the podcast.

I found it fascinating and I highly recommend you give it a listen.

To listen to it: CLICK HERE

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.)

Alright, so it’s time to start adding poses for my “motion test”. I’m limiting the poses to five total (including the last pose, which I’ve already finished and colored). If I think I need to add an anticipation pose (antic) or an overshoot (ovs) I’ll put them in later. For now I’ll just want to draw clear, well drawn “key” poses.

Easier said than done.

For the first time since I started writing my process, I didn’t want to post up my drawings. I’m having sooo much trouble with these drawings. I’m not happy with them at all. Still, it’s part of the process. I need to show them even when I think I’ve failed or when my skills aren’t up to par.

Generally, when I begin posing out a scene, I draw the gestures of all the poses I’m going to use. I do this so I can check if my poses are going to work how I want them to, without having to go into the labor of making pretty drawings. This is what they looked like:

Looking at hot dog….

About to take a bite…

and sees something...

reaction shot from pull out (as will be seen further down below)…

Once I’m satisfied that I’ve got the poses that I want, I then begin to flesh out the drawings.

Okay, so I’m used to drawing bug eyed yellow people for a living. The style of the show is such, that I don’t really need to give them really naturalistic poses. When I’m confronted with characters that DO need to give natural poses to, it suddenly becomes really difficult. I can’t rely on the bad habits that I’ve picked up in my last 17 years.

So here’s me, trying really hard to make Rob look like he’s holding a hot dog very naturally:

As I drew the drawing above, I realized I hadn’t really worked out Rob’s model as much as I thought I had. Especially the hair from this point of view. Also, I wasn’t too sure about the nose, mouth and chin relationships. I drew the drawing below over the drawing above:

I still didn’t like the drawing, though I thought it was getting better. I took some time solve the hair problem and I drew the drawing below:

Better hair shape but I STILL didn’t like the drawing. It felt staged. He just didn’t look natural. Who holds a hot dog and admires it like that? It looked a bit weird. I thought perhaps it was just a matter of turning the head and shoulders:

But it was even worse when I did that. I didn’t even bother drawing a nice version, I could tell it wasn’t going to work right away.

I went online and Googled people holding hot dogs. I must admit, in the back of my mind, there was this thought that perhaps I should change the hot dog to a hamburger or a pizza, because the idea of a pretty boy in a tight shirt admiring a hot dog seemed to hint at something I didn’t intend. In the end I convinced myself not to. Mostly, because I personally love eating hot dogs and I just wanted it to be a hot dog. I also looked at it as a challenge to myself.

One of the things I looked for, were photos where guys held hot dogs without it being an ad.

I found that the ones that looked most natural to me, were the ones where guys held something else in their other hand, like a drink. Another thing was that they didn’t really hold the hot dog up high, but kept it at chest level. So I gave Rob a drink and lowered the hot dog:

It was better. So I cleaned it up a bit so I can see it better:

…and RUINED IT, by giving him a crazed expression. I’m going to need to go back to the drawing above and figure out a better expression than the one I gave him.

I got frustrated and decided I should just keep going with the other poses and come back to the first pose later. Here’s pose two:

As you can see from all my drawings here, I don’t have a light touch. I scribble a lot until I find what I need. I explore until I can visualize where I want to go and then do another pass to clarify the scribbles:

Once again, fail. I don’t think this reads the way I want. It’s too stiff. It needs to be redrawn in a different way.

I moved on to the next panel anyway:

Not sure about this one either. I’ll need to see what I do with the panel before it, in order to decide whether or not I should keep it. I cheated drawing it because all I did was cut and move the face and arms around from the pose before, instead of redrawing the pose.

I kept going and drew the last pose:

Not sure how it’s working so far. It seems off. Especially because of the slanted background. I may need to slant Rob a bit. Also, I think I need to move the camera down so Rob’s feet aren’t on the edge of the frame.

Overall, I’m just frustrated with the work. I need to work through it though. I know at some point, I’ll hit something I think is working and I’ll come out learning something.

VIDEO

This is an amazing animated short. Very inspiring. It’s a very interesting marriage of Japanese and western animation influences:

FAMILY

Big things are happening here with our family. At least big when it comes to milestones for two of our kids.

The first one is that Dante (2 1/2 years old) went pee pee in the pottie for the first time. This is big for us since it means less diapers to buy when he finally get pottie trained. He’s been doing good so far and we’re very proud of him.

The second is that baby Ambrose can now scoot himself around the house. We love it. He looks so funny doing it and he’s that much closer to being able to crawl. The best part about it is that now we can set him on the carpet and relax while he entertains himself playing with toys and chasing after his big brother and sister.

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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Color style test. My review of THE SECRET OF KELLS.

October 21, 2010 in ART, MOVIES, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Not much to write about THIS week. I managed to finish up Act 1 of show 12 last Friday and this week I’ve been working on Act 3.

The big news for me was that my old board revisions partner has decided to go freelance and is no longer doing board revisions. This meant that another person took his place. A SIMPSONS veteran from a while back. Last week was his first week and he’s playing catch up on how everything works the same way I did when I first started. Wish him the best.

ART

I’ve been really trying to get the coloring of the drawing done. It’s pretty much there. I’ll need to add and clean up a few things but this is pretty much the way it will look:

Once I do the slight adjustments, I’m going to begin experimenting on the movement. I painted it all using Storyboard Pro. I’m not sure how much all the line work is going to slow down the program. I hope it’s not much, otherwise, this was all for nothing, or at the very least, will take me longer to do if I need to use another program. I hope I can do what I need to do.

What I did above was, take my old value study:

and used it as a guide for my colors. It helped a TON and I’m going to do it again with just about everything I do with color from now on. It took a lot of the guess work out of what I needed to do next and how I need to approach coloring it.

MOVIES

A lot has been said about how 2D, hand drawn animation, is dead. It is now obvious to me that the people who say that, haven’t watched THE SECRET OF KELLS.

THE SECRET OF KELLS is a movie the glorifies and thrives on it’s hand drawn, nature. Taking it’s art direction from illuminated manuscripts from the middle ages (specifically, The Book of Kells) THE SECRET OF KELLS bombards you with moving art like no movie has ever done.

I watched the movie awestruck at how beautiful it all was. I couldn’t believe it. I would have wept if it wasn’t for the fact that the story kept me my attention well enough so that it stopped me from doing so.

That brings me to the other thing that blew me away. The story wasn’t based on a fairytale (though it has a fairy in it) and wasn’t a musical. It wasn’t what most western animated mainstream movies tend to be about. Heck, it wasn’t even what most Anime tend to be about. This movie was about the very odd subject of monks writing an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels historically called, The Book of Kells. It’s also the story about an abbot who’s lost touch with what’s truly important, while he tries desperately to defend his community from the coming of the viking marauders. The main character of the story is a boy who’s caught in between the love and obedience he has for his uncle the abbot and his love for illuminating manuscripts.

I loved it. Especially since I love the middle ages. It’s the only non Catholic animated movie I’ve ever seen that treats religious life as a normal way of life and makes no judgments upon it.

I can’t say enough good things about this movie. If you haven’t watched this movie, you owe it to yourself to do so.

THE SECRET OF KELLS proves that 2D hand drawn animation isn’t dead. Why? Well, even though CG can do many wonderful things, there is no way that a CG film could capture the 2 dimensional artistry that THE SECRET OF KELLS has produced.

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.

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

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My experience working on the Banksy Couch Gag. Just a little bit of coloring.

October 14, 2010 in ART, Banksy, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Wow. As of the time of this writing the Couch Gag written by artist Banksy, has just aired. It seemed to have made quite a stir. I thought I’d write about my experience working on that Couch Gag.

the_simpsons_banksy_slice_01

In July, I was put to work on show 6. The show was directed by veteran Director Bob Anderson (at the time, I cryptically wrote a little bit about it HERE and HERE under THE SIMPSONS NEWS. When I refer to the “guest writer” I’m talking about Banksy). Show 6 had gone through the Story Reel stage, which basically means that the writers and producers had seen a rough story reel version of the show and had made changes to the script. My job as a storyboard revisionist is to take those notes and make the changes necessary to the current storyboard to reflect said notes. This is what I expected to do when I went into Bob’s office that Monday. Instead, he told me he wasn’t giving me an Act to fix but rather, he was going to put me on the Couch Gag.

I raised my eye brows,

“Oh, okay.”

He smiled and gestured to a chair,

“Here, have a seat. You get to do something special.” I sat. “Do you know who Banksy is?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He blinked, “He’s this famous artist tagger guy. They made a documentary about him.” Bob proceeded to enlighten me on what he knew about Banksy and what he thought. I listened,

“Yeah I’ve heard there was a special Couch Gag they had gotten from a special artist.”

“Oh yeah? Who told you?”

“I don’t remember actually. Just came up in conversation.”

“Well, this is it. You get to storyboard it.”

“Okay”.

He took out sketches papers and notes, “These are yours. I’ve already made the notes so I’m going to go through them with you. These are the notes from Al, and this is the ‘script’. Which really isn’t a script but you’ll see.”

He handed me a bunch of papers and explained what they were. One group of papers where Banksy‘s “storyboards”. Which were actually drawings drawn on letter paper with little squares on the left with a drawing and a description on the right describing what the drawing on the left meant. This was “the script”. The other group of sheets were the same little squares but put into storyboard format. Only, they really weren’t working since the drawings where more story sketches than storyboards. Bob explained that it was my job to take Banksy‘s story sketches and make a functioning storyboard out of them. He had drawn in red Sharpy all over the rough “board” indicating what he thought the camera ought to be doing and making adjustments to the drawings. He explained to me what he wanted done, what shots where the same shots, where the cuts were, what details needed to be on them,…etc. He recomposed shots and gave me suggestions on what I needed to do to make some shots work.

He then showed me the “character designs” of the “Koreans” Banksy wanted. There was a note, from the producers, on one of the sheets that read, “Make sure Korean animators are not ethnically offensive. No Buck teeth, etc.” Ironically they all looked Chinese (straw hats and all).

During this meeting I turned to Bob confused,

“Okay, so this is a commentary about how messed up we treat Koreans but he makes them all look Chinese? How does that make sense? Is that part of the joke?”

“I don’t know, but that’s what they want.” Keep in mind that Bob is married to a Korean woman and he seemed a bit annoyed. Ironically, there was a description of a Mexican worker stuffing the Bart dolls; which I later drew as a Sombrero waring, big mustache toting, poncho using guy (I’m Hispanic and I though it was funny). The note from Fox was that it was too racist and they had me change him into a Korean. It made no sense to me because I drew a Mexican stereotype to represent a Mexican, but Banksy had drawn a Chinese stereotype to represent a Korean.

In the final version, the one that aired, all the Koreans looked Korean. I guess they had enough time to think about it and change their minds.

And then there was this conversation:

“So is the decapitated dolphin head dispensing tape, or is it licking the boxes shut like an envelope?”

“I think it should just come across the top of the box as if it had tape on it.”

“Does the tongue have tape?”

“Not sure yet. You can try making it lick the box as if it was an envelope and we’ll see what they say.”

“Okay.”

In the end, they didn’t like it. They had me change it.

And then this conversation happened:

“Yeah this scene where the kid’s arms melts in the toxic waste tank is out. It slows things down.” Bob stares a the sketch, “Why is he dipping cells in the toxic waste anyway? Is it bonding the paint to the cells?”

“I don’t think it matters, does it?”

After the two hours it took to explain what need to be done, I took the work to my office and stared blankly at my computer screen.

“Wow, this going to be a lot of work.” I rolled up my sleeves, read all the notes again. Looked at Banksy‘s story sketches and began trying to make it all make sense.

For two weeks I worked on the Couch Gag. I had to find ways to keep the spirit of Banksy‘s sketches while reinventing the shots. I looked at INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM for some inspiration. I added shadows and atmosphere to the boards in order to try to “sell” the final look of the thing. At one point, I had to reapply the shadows because the grays I had originally used where too dark to be reproduced in the copy machine. This set me back a bit.

Sometime during the process, my old office mate came in and asked me what I was doing. I told him and showed him the boards and sketches. He stared at them and stared at me and was just wide eyed,

“Are you serious?! They’re doing this?! No way,” staring at the sheets, “These are HIS drawings?”

“Yeah, and check these out,” I handed him Banksy’s designs of the Koreans,

“Wow, this is so messed up. Wow. Crazy. Can’t believe they’re doing this.”

I had fun drawing the panda getting beaten, and the unicorn I drew was pretty much used verbatim when they did its final design. Bob’s comment when he saw my unicorn was,

“That’s one sad looking unicorn.”

We sent the board to the head director of the studio who had notes I had to integrate. I was also pressured to hurry up so they could get the board sent to Banksy and Al Jean for their notes, which I also had to revise the board for. There were last minute notes and late nights just trying to get it done. I ended up doing two version of the final board. One for Fox and the other for the studio. The Fox one had less drawings in it so that the producers didn’t think the final version was going to be too slow. The longer version was so that it could be more easily shot and turned into a story reel, since it had more poses per panel.

At one point, I started this conversation with Bob,

“Man, they’re really making a big deal out of this Couch Gag. I mean, It’s just a Couch Gag right?”

“It’s important to them.”

“Yeah but, it’s not like anyone is going to pay attention to it. How will they know it was Banksy that wrote it. I mean people are just gonna look at it and think, ‘That was a weird Couch Gag,’ forget about it and just keep watching the show.”

Boy was I wrong.

There was a LOT of pressure on me those two weeks because I new the producers would be scrutinizing what I did. When it was finally done, I was relieved and proud.

A week or so later, someone coming near my office, asked me if I’d done the Banksy boards. I said I had. She then turned to the coworker behind her and told her I had done the boards. It seems the person that asked, was asking in the other person behalf. That coworker nodded and walked away without looking at me. At first I thought that coworker had wanted to know because they were cool. I took it as a compliment, but then I realized, she was Korean, and I had probably insulted her because I had drawn the Koreans looking Chinese.

I wish I could put up my boards and Banksy‘s drawings here on my site but I’m afraid of getting in trouble so I’ll play it safe. I’ll just link to the Couch Gag:

ART

Started to “model out” the drawings this week. I only got to work on the drawing on Sunday so I didn’t get much done. I only got two out the three Sorcerers started. I still have a bit more to do on them but it’s a start:

I think this is actually what I want. I like the way it look and I’m enjoying myself. I’ll see how much time it takes. If it isn’t too bad, I’ll color the whole cartoon this way. It’s not like I’m going to animate it so I can get away with a more rendered out look.

I’m using my tonal study as a guide and I’m very glad I have it. It’s taking away the guess work so I can concentrate on getting the look and the brushes right. Hopefully next week I’ll have more to write and show.

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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Dante comes to work with me. Another epic couch gag. Style tests and trying to understand color.

October 7, 2010 in ART, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Monday we managed to finish revising show 11 and I was asked to board show 10’s Couch Gag. Once again, I’ve got a another crazy epic Couch Gag to do. It might as well be it’s own short film, it’s so long. This season is full of very long Couch Gags. Not sure why.

Tuesday I brought Dante to work with me. Our daycare was closed that day. Alesha took Elizabeth to work with her and baby Ambrose was taken care of by my brother-in-law.

Dante was a good boy overall. I had originally planed on dropping Dante off with my wife at noon, mostly because I thought he might be a handful. He behaved so well that I kept him and actually got work done too. I was very proud of him.

ART

Now that I have the drawing up on the computer, vectorized and inked, I started trying out style tests.

My first test was an attempt at a thick outline around the art. I only got as far as the Sorcerers before I made up my mind that it was too much work and it didn’t look the way I wanted it too:

My next test was to add a black shadow to the drawing. To be honest, I think I did a lousy job inking the drawing. I put all the blacks in all the wrong spots. I should have blacked out the background instead of the characters. Still. As lousy as it turned out, I found it very difficult to get the same effects I usually get with an actual brush. I didn’t like the process much, so I decided I didn’t want to go in that direction anyway:

The test after that, was just to keep the lines I had and color the drawing.

At first, I was thinking I would use a self ink line, but then I didn’t want to re-ink the drawing all over again. I also realized that it would have been far more work than I really wanted to do.

I have very little experience with color and I had no idea where to begin. I started coloring the drawing like I would have normally done it, namely, color everything the color it is. The more I though about that though, the more I thought I needed to really think more holistic about it. I thought, instead of using all the colors I could, I should limit my pallet and think about how the drawing should feel rather than the what color the sky is normally and what color apes are normally.

I decided to make the dominant color green. Green was going to be the color of the Sorcerers. Why? Well it worked on Disney’s SLEEPING BEAUTY.

I thought green would work for a “strange magick” feel.

I’m planning to make red Rob’s “I’m angry. It’s time for payback” color and blues and yellow where going to be the calm normal colors. Since this particular drawing was dominated by the Sorcerers, I thought it should be green.

I started laying down the colors but I’m not done yet. This is what I have so far:

What do you think?

By the way, all this work was done using Storyboard Pro.

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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Working overtime again. Designing tonal drawings. Paul Felix’s unofficial website.

September 23, 2010 in ART, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Didn’t really get off too easy with the work load these last two weeks. The episode I got put on a had a huge rewrite. The entire 4th act was completely rewritten. My friend Eric was put in charge of revising that act but it meant that I had to revise acts 1 through 3. The revisions weren’t easy and now I have to work overtime in order to get the work done on time.

That’s two shows in a row. I hope I don’t burn myself out.

ART

Alright, I finished adding tones to my drawing. I didn’t follow the thumbnail sketch I was originally going to use. Originally I was going to make the background the darkest part of the drawing and have everything else be lighter.

When I did that, in the finished drawing, it had the exact opposite effect that I wanted, namely, it obscured everything in the drawing rather that let my characters pop out. I decided to go a different way:

I decided the lightest light of the drawing was going to be the background. The mid tone was going to be the mid ground and the darkest part was going to be the foreground. The only exception to this rule was that I colored Rob’s hair and pants darker than anything else in the picture, that way, he stood out the most.

This had an unfortunate effect. Because I didn’t want to upstage Rob’s hair and pants, I couldn’t darken the foreground elements as much as I would have liked. This meant that the darkest part of the mid ground almost matched the dark tones of the foreground elements. In the end, I ended up having to live with it.

I added the tone directly over the line art I had drawn on the tracing paper. I found adding tone to a drawing incredibly easy on the tracing paper. It also erased like magic. No matter how dark I drew, I could erase it completely. The one thing I found annoying was that it picked up pencil a little too well. It was difficult not to make something look dark even using an H pencil. I found it could match the darkness I got from using a 4B pencil. The tracing paper made it difficult to control the darkness of a pencil stroke. It also smudged like crazy.

I was glad that the line work was done with Prisma Color pencils since, when I needed to erase any of my tones, it wouldn’t erase the lines as well. I’m generally happy with the way it turned out. There are some things I could do better and I’ll fix them in the next step. The next step being, digitally inking and coloring it using STORYBOARD PRO. In general, I think I’ve succeeded in making a decent tonal study that I can use as a guide when I go to add color to this drawing.

ART

A word about using tone.

I wasn’t taught how to use tone properly until much later in my career. I went to a lot of figure drawing classes where we were taught many things. Yet, for some strange reason, when it came to using tone, it was never really broken down. I think it was assumed that you just kinda knew what to do, that you would figure it out on your own or that it just wasn’t important. My one teacher that was masterful at using it (Master artist, Steve Huston), never bothered to tell us how. Meanwhile all the other teachers I had, didn’t know how to do it very well. This usually caused everyone’s drawing to be well drafted but poorly shaded. The student’s tonal studies always looked amateurish and the edges just looked like a bunch of smudges on the page.

Then I went to another school of figure drawing that had a very painterly style of drawing. It used what was called the Reilly Method. THERE I learned how to use edges correctly. They went out of their way to break it down so that it could be done well.

Ever since then, I get annoyed when I see the smudge style tonal studies without the slightest idea that different edges exist. Especially when I see it used by animators who think they know and yet have never been taught.

So here’s what I learned in a nutshell. You might already know this but if you don’t, it will be very helpful:

As lines can be broken down into three types (straights, “C” curves, and “S” curves), tones can be broken down and simplified into four values and four edges.

I’m going to emphasize edges but I’ll quickly sum up the four simplified values:

White, light grey.
Dark grey, Black.

Light areas in a tonal study consist of White and Light grey. The darkest dark of a light area shouldn’t be darker than light grey. Shadow in a tonal study consist of Dark grey and Black. The lightest a light area should get in shadow is dark grey. As in all art, it’s not an absolute but it’s a really good rule of thumb if you want your drawings not to get muddy or poorly unified.

Okay, now about the four edges:

In same way as drawing straight lines and curve lines together creates good shape contrast, having contrasting edges creates a much more pleasing tonal design. The different edges are:

Hard,
Firm,
Soft and
Lost.

I asked my friend, teacher and coworker Paul Wee, if I could post a handout he once gave out in one of his figure drawing classes. It sums up just about everything I wanted to say in one easy to read page:

The offending edge that tend to pop up in many artist’s work who haven’t been exposed to these edges, is the soft edge. Soft edges tend to be used for EVERYTHING. I see it a lot in Photoshop drawings where only the airbrush tool is used to shade with. It makes for a very muddy looking drawing. Not everything you’re adding tone to is soft and round. Sometimes it’s a little firmer and sometimes shapes meet and come to abrupt ends which cause the edges to become very hard.

In my drawing above, I was trying really hard to make sure I was changing up my edges where appropriate. The figure drawing classes that I’ve taken and applied these edges in, helped me a lot in making those decisions.

Keep an eye out for the different edges and where they fall when drawing from life. It will give your tonal drawings a more designed look.

WEBSITE

If you want to see great tonal drawings, Paul Felix is one of the best examples. He was one of my teachers and I didn’t realize that someone had put an unofficial website with his work.

CLICK HERE to see his amazing work.

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 Working overtime again. Designing tonal drawings. Paul Felix’s unofficial website.

Working overtime. A little bit on cheating perspective. 3 Animation Podcasts.

September 16, 2010 in ART, PODCASTS, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Last Friday was very hectic. I had to work overtime in order to get all the work I had done. Turns out, my board revision partner was out sick for a few days and wasn’t going to get his assignment done. I finished my assignment a day and a half early so I took on the last part of his. Namely, all of act 4. I didn’t realize I was going to have to do it all myself. I was hoping he would finish the first part of his assignment and we would be able share the workload but it didn’t turn out that way. He was still sick and it was really messing him up.

In the end he managed to finish what he had and took about four shots off my hands but I still had the rest to do myself. It was brutal but we managed to get the work done.

Meanwhile, starting this Monday, I got a new office mate. He’s one of the veteran board artists on the show whose been out working on other projects for a year or so. He’s going to be here for a month and then he’s going back into the wild. It’s fun to actually have someone to talk to on occasion.

ART

After all that time, I FINALLY finished the final lines on the drawing I was working on. This was drawn with, black Prismacolor pencil on tracing paper. It’s great because if I messed up, I was able to erase the Prismacolor:

If you compare the rough with the final, you will see that the “bad guys” are actually farther apart from Rob than in the rough. He definitely needed more breathing room. I finalized the background as well. I didn’t really go out of my way to measure every little thing like, placing the windows in the perfect places. The things are a little off but I just didn’t think they were important enough to spend the time on. The characters is where your eyes go anyway. I also cheated the perspective in a big way. If you pay very close attention to the bad guys on the right in the foreground, you will notice that the background lines are vertical to the way they’re standing, which is parallel to the picture frame. YET, it’s a dutch angle, in other words the drawing is tilted. Shouldn’t the vertical lines be slightly angled like they are in the center part of the background? The answer, is yes but I cheated the characters in the foreground, so in order to make the background look right, I cheated it. You probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t pointed it out. Often with perspective in backgrounds, it’s more important for it to look right, than to make it accurate. That said, it helps immensely to learn to do it the “right way” before you begin to cheat.

The next step is to add tone.

What do you think?

PODCASTS

I’ve discovered a few animation podcasts this week. It started with a Tweet from fellow artist Jose Gonzalez (a.k.a. Gonzalexx on Twitter). He pointed me to the:

Speaking of Animation podcast – A podcast that interviews some “mainstream” animation professionals working in the industry. It’s very cool.

I then went to iTunes, in order to subscribe to the podcast and discovered MORE animation podcast. The ones I discovered though, have unfortunately, podfaded. Still, the interviews they have are very good and very informative to listen too. The podcasts are:

The Animation Podcast – an interview podcast with MORE mainstream professional animator working in the industry. Last podcasts came out in 2008. and…
Toon In! – an interview podcast that interviews less mainstream animators. They work in the industry as well but not in the high profile stuff. Some TV guys, and European animators. Some do indie stuff. Things like that. It’s really interesting to hear this stuff. The anecdotes some of these guys tell, are awesome. This podcast also podfaded around 2008.

I highly recommend these show for anyone interested in animation

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Making up hours again. Taking critique. Fun animation videos. Random free money.

September 9, 2010 in ART, MY WEEK, THE SIMPSONS NEWS, VIDEOS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Had the day off Monday for Memorial Day, and came into work on Tuesday. Stayed late to make up the time since I was going to stay home and take care of my kids Wednesday. Today I’m back at work. I plan to finish what I got assigned and I’m probably going to get more work. Staying late again today.

I’m very tired.

ART

Because of Memorial day, and because I had to spend Wednesday taking care of my kids, I didn’t really get much done on my drawing this week either. I DID get a little bit done though.

One of the “bigger” things I changed was the pose for the flying ape. I like this pose much more than the one I originally had. I then photocopied my drawing and shrunk it. The reason for this was so that I could have a smaller copy of the ape faces. The winged apes were “off model” their faces where too big. I erased the faces I had put on them and then re-drew their faces off of the shrunk copy I had made. I think they look much better. I also changed the “texture” of the viper’s body.

I took a long hard look at the drawing so far and began nitpicking the things I didn’t like. I wrote it all down on a sticky note as a “to do list” and pasted it on the drawing. I added the things I needed to finish to the list as well. Crossed out the ones I finished doing as I went:

The drawing was on my table at work and a co-worker came in to talk to me. He took a look at my drawing and began to make suggestions, unasked. It kinda took me aback a bit, but I listened. He said two things and asked me one question. First he told me that the viper fangs I had drawn were inaccurate, and it dawned on me that he was very right. It’s one of those things I just mindlessly overlooked. He made a note of it on a sticky note and put it on my drawing. He then suggested that I put the tail of the viper in the left corner of the drawing so that there wasn’t empty space there. It was a good suggestion. He made another note of it on a sticky note and put it on the drawing.

I made the adjustments he had suggested soon after. I’m not happy with the viper tail the way I drew it so I’m going to adjust it. Other than that I’m happier with how the drawing is turning out.

Taking critique is difficult, especially when you don’t ask for it. It’s beneficial if you learn to block that prideful side of you that immediately get’s insulted. It’s a skill that takes practice. In this job, your stuff is always getting critiqued. Sometimes it’s done well, and sometimes it’s done lousy. Whichever way you get it, you need to be able to leave your ego out of it and listen to what is being said objectively. In the case of my co-worker’s critique, I’m glad I listened. He offered suggestions and pointed out a blunder, I didn’t know I’d made. I think the drawing is better off for it.

As I said before, he also asked a question, namely, why I hadn’t drawn the running Winged Ape from 3/4 back view. I told him I’d intentionally did that in order to have more of his face show.

He kinda apologized for saying anything but I told him I was glad he did. Especially in this stage of the drawing when I can still make fixes.

Getting critiqued is a huge part of my job now. As a board artist it’s rare when I show my work to a director and it’s accepted as is. Sometime there are a few changes, sometimes half of what I do is changed and sometimes it’s completely thrown out an I have to change it all. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me when everything gets thrown out. Usually, the director comes up with better ideas which make so much more sense, that I end up not minding at all. I learn more putting my ego aside and I end up happier for it. It’s a skill I haven’t mastered yet. I think the more I do it, the better I’ll get. It’s part of my job now more than ever.

VIDEOS

I loved this little shorts. They’re fantastically animated, they’re simple ideas and they’re darn funny. They make me want to animate:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bOMu027oW0&feature

MY WEEK

On Wednesday, when I stayed home to take care of the kids, I discovered to my dismay, I had to go to the supermarket. The baby didn’t have any baby food. I don’t like going to the store with all the kids. It’s a pain.

It didn’t help that it was cold and it seemed like it was about to rain. It took almost an hour just to get the kids ready to go. We made it to the store, bought what I needed to and made it back to the car, with some help of a supermarket employee. She took pity of my situation. I was a bit overwhelmed with the kids and the groceries.

After getting all the kids in, I sat down and started the car. On my windshield I saw a folded piece of paper with writing on it. It read:

“FOR YOU! GOD BLESS.”

The exclamation mark “dot” was shaped like a heart. I thought it was an ad but I took it off my windshield and put it in the car anyway. I looked around at the other cars but I noticed that no other cars had a piece of paper on their windshields. I shrugged and drove away.

As I drove back home, I thought about the piece of paper, “Maybe it’s a note from someone I’d helped out in that parking lot before. Maybe they recognized me and wanted to just say thank you.”

I got curious and when I came to a stoplight, I opened the paper. In it I found money. I was really surprised. I took it out and found that it was eight dollars. Very odd amount. It must have been something spontaneous. Whoever it was, must just grabbed what was in their pocket and put it there on my car. I wonder why? In any case, it was a very nice gesture. Thank you whoever you are. It’s appreciated. I could buy a lot of things at the dollar store for my family with this much money. Every little bit helps.

I pray God blesses her.

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Watched Cheech and Chong movie as “research” at work. Didn’t get much work done on my drawing. Reading Brother’s Grimm fairytales. An interview with Jim Lujan and Matt Groening.

September 2, 2010 in ART, FAMILY, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Our Day Care decided to go on vacation Monday and Tuesday. This Monday, my wife started work. We had no one else to look after the kids for those days so I ended up having to stay home and take care of them. This meant that I had to make up 16 hours of work. My job only gives me two weeks to get done with the assignments I’ve been given, this means that I can’t really afford to lose any hours. I need to work every hour I can, in order to get my work done.

The show I’m working on now is the one where Cheech and Chong guest star. Some of us on the show had never seen a Cheech and Chong movie, so for the sake of “research”, the crew took a lunch hour and watched their first movie. It was called a “mandatory” meeting. We got free food and watched the movie along with the director.

ART

Do to the circumstances I wrote about in THE SIMPSONS NEWS above, I didn’t get a much of a chance to work on my things this week. Since I had to take care of my kids Monday and Tuesday, it was very difficult to get any time to draw. I was planning to have the drawing done by this point but it seems it will take a little longer than I planned. This is what I got done:

I roughed out the Winged Apes on a separate piece of tracing paper and once I was satisfied, I transferred them to the main drawing. The roughs of the Apes where too big, so I had to shrink them in order to have them fit:

Lots of things I don’t like so far. The face of the flying one was off. He wasn’t actually looking at Rob so I erased it in order to draw a better one (haven’t gotten to it yet). I’m also unhappy with the way the pose came out overall and I’m going to change it so that it’s a little bit more like my original thumbnail. The claws on the apes need work and I still don’t like how tight everyone is round Rob. I still think Rob’s arms need to be worked out better as well. Some of these problems I will solve once I scan the drawing in for the final pass.

One of the things I changed was the height of the buildings in the background. Since I had increased Rob’s size, he was much taller than the buildings, which meant that, if the building were going to be the darkest dark, I need them to “cover” a bit more of him.

What do you think?

FAMILY

I’ve been sending the kids early to bed lately, that way I don’t keep them up late when I read them a fairytale. I own a copy of THE ANNOTATED BROTHERS GRIMM. It has the Brothers Grimm fairytales I grew up with. In other words, they aren’t watered down and sanitized the way modern re-telling are.

What I’ve discovered is that my kids LOVE them. Just as it gets really scary things turn out alright. They’re great. You should have seen the reaction I got when I read that Little Red Riding Hood got eaten by the wolf. They screamed in delighted tension. “What will happen NOW?!” Then everything turned out alright and they wanted me to read another story.

I think HANSEL AND GRETEL left a big impression on Munchkin. Even though she has a hard time saying “Hansel”. She was amazed at the story. The witch really freaked her out. With the description of her keen sense of smell and red eyes but lousy eyesight. Then when Gretel tricks her, kicks her in the oven and burns her up, Munchkin was amazed and the empowerment of the act. She sat there with her big eyes wide. She loved the story.

My son had a very odd reaction to another part of that story. After I read about how the witch died, the story tells how the kids went back inside the Ginger Bread house and found the witches treasure. Well, when I read the part where the kids went back inside, by son (whose 2 1/2) asked me if the kids were now going to become witches. Wow, he thought they were going to take the witch’s place. What an odd thought for a 2 year old.

I love reading them the stories. They have a bigger vocabulary than anything they get exposed to. I sometimes have a feeling that they don’t understand most of what I’m reading. I figure, the more I read, the more they’ll understand what it means as I use it in context. It’s also just fun for me to try to get “into the parts” to make the stories come to life for them.

We all have a good time.

VIDEO

Jim Lujan has done it again. This time he’s animated an interview with himself. It’s fantastic and great fun. Take a look:

VIDEO

I found this mini documentary of Matt Groening interesting and I thought I’d share:

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

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Matt Groening’s thank you gift. A little bit on perspective and finishing a drawing. John Cleese on creativity. Why e-books?

August 26, 2010 in ART, THE SIMPSONS NEWS, VIDEOS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

For the second time in a row, we’ve receive, as a gift, the latest DvD box set of the newly released Simpson’s season. I like this quite a bit. Especially since I haven’t been able to afford buying some of the past ones. The nicest thing about the gift though, was not that it was given to us by the studio, Fox or even Gracie Films, but in fact, it was given to us by Matt Groening himself. Each box set came with a thank you note signed by him. That was REALLY nice of him. Especially since he didn’t HAVE to do anything of the kind.

Thank you Matt Groening!

ART

This is taking more time than I thought. The one hour a day I get, in order to draw my stuff, is not enough time to work on this drawing.

I blew up my thumbnail about 200% on a 11×17 sheet of paper. I took a sheet of tracing paper and began cleaning up the drawing, as well as adjusting the poses. I adjusted the position of the Sorcerers by moving them over a bit to the right. I also changed the pose of one of the Sorcerers to make him a little more dynamic.

I’d drawn Rob first and after I drew the Sorcerers in, I discovered their feet and Robs feet where not quite in the right place. Rob’s feet were in front of the Sorcerer’s feet, so I had to erase Rob and redraw him higher up. I also ended up redrawing him three more times because I didn’t like his proportions at first and then I tried a different angle for his head, but it didn’t look right.

Rob is also bigger in this final drawing than he is in the thumbnail. I wanted to be able to see him more.

The winged apes are not even in the drawing yet because I was having trouble finding good poses for them. Poses that look threatening and at the same time, place their wings in such a way, that they didn’t cover each other up. In order to figure out exactly what poses I was going to put them in, I need to do some sketches.

Even looking at the drawing as it is now, I kinda want to move the Sorcerers over a bit more to give Rob a little bit of “breathing room”:

Drawing a finished piece is far trickier than a sketch. Mainly because you actually want your drawing to be well drafted. With a sketch, you can live with things being a bit off.

Usually, once I’ve done a thumbnail or a general sketch as to where the characters are going to be placed in a drawing, I find the horizon line. When doing so, the most important thing, is to make sure that characters have the horizon line cross them in the same part of their body a it would, if they were standing side by side. In the drawing above, the horizon line (which is drawn in red) crosses everyone mid-foot. The exception being the closest Sorcerer, whose feet go slightly below the Horizon Line to give the ground a bit of a curving feel. Once I have the Horizon Line in place, I draw a perspective grid all over the page. That way, I see the 3 dimensional space the characters are suppose to inhabit at a glance. I’ve only drawn one perceptive point so far, only because I don’t absolutely need the other point just yet, I will draw it in in once I start with the details of the background.

I then start adding a bit more construction and form on the drawings of the characters. I also try to improve everyone’s poses and gestures. In the case above, I’m still not completely satisfied with Rob’s pose and drawing, so it still needs a bit of work.

I need to make sure I get the drawing above right for a couple of reasons. 1) I plan to do different finished versions of the drawing using different styles, in order to figure out what I want the final look of the cartoon to look like. 2) I plan to animate it. It will become the experimental piece that I will use to figure out how I’m going to approach the animation in the cartoon. I’m thinking of a few programs I can use, and I might want to see which ones works the best.

What do you think so far?

MY WEEK

Met my friend Paul in the hallway at work and asked him how he was. This lead to a looong talk about art, drawing, pushing one’s self, discovering new ways to work, and many other things. I ended up showing him some of what I was working on, and Paul showed me what he was working on.

What the was working on blew me away. He’d been doing some concept art on a project for a mutual friend of ours. The art was done using Storyboard Pro and I couldn’t believe it was done using that program. He’d managed to make Storyboard Pro do things, I didn’t know it could. It was very inspiring and it’s go me thinking very hard about the potential of the program.

VIDEOS

I saw this video of John Cleese talking about the creative process, and I found it to be very infotaining:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGt3-fxOvug&feature=youtu.be

VIDEOS

Paul Nowak of Eternal Revolution, enlightens us on the rising importance of e-books:

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

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My thinking process as I add values to my thumbnail sketch. Interview with an Exorcist.

August 19, 2010 in ART, CATHOLICISM, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Wednesday was very exciting. I was asked to join a story meeting with my director, the head director of the show and the two writers who co-wrote the current script of the show we’re working on. It was really amazing. I was asked to join in when they were discussing ACT 4 of the show, which is what I was assigned.

I found it very interesting as the writers went over the script picking out bit of the script that they had specific visions for. They also told us reasons why they put certain things in, so that we could understand their intentions better. It was also great to ask them what they meant in sections we were unclear about.

It was almost like a listening to a DVD commentary, only, we got to construct the show based on the commentary. I hope I get to do it again.

ART

I settled on a final look for the snake monster this week:

On the page above, I drew the top right drawing first and made my way down the page. I thought the first drawing was too “handsome”. A bit generic. Looked a bit like Martian Manhunter. Also, the features were too evenly spaced out and it didn’t look snake like enough.

The second drawing down was better but the face was too big and I wanted it to be more bunched up in the front of the head. It thought perhaps the size of the eyes were contributing to all the “real estate” the face was taking up. So I tried again.

The third drawing, I liked a lot and I even thought I’d finally found what I was looking for. So much so that I drew a few more versions of it on the left hand side of the page. As I did this, I realized he was still too “handsome”. Too human. I still wanted more of a snake look. So I tried one more time.

I drew the final face at the bottom of the page. I made the eyes even smaller and spread them far apart, like a snake. It was exactly what I wanted. It’s not pretty, just weird.

Having finally nailed down what I wanted everything to look like, I decided to start thumbnailing the composition I wanted for my style guide/test. But before I write directly about what I did, I will point out that I’ve decided to take away one of the monsters I had originally written. In the story outline, I had written in a Stone Elemental. It was a place holder monster I’d put in so I could have one monster for each Sorcerer. I had been planning to replace that monster with a more “Lovecraftian” monster. Something with a lot of tentacles. I decided to not go with that idea for two reasons.

I’m lazy and I just didn’t want to spend anymore time designing monsters.
I liked the Winged Apes so much, I thought I could use two of them instead of just one.

So there are still three monsters, they just aren’t the original ones that I wrote in the outline. Okay, so here’s the page I drew my thumbnails on:

Remember what I said two weeks ago about what I was going for with the composition? I was trying to make Rob small against something big in order to make him look vulnerable and at the same time I wanted to make the Sorcerers look menacing too? Well, I came up with some shape placements I thought might do the trick. If you notice on the page above, the first drawing on the top of the page is basically just shapes. This was an idea I had gotten in the middle of the work day. In order to remember it, I quickly put the shapes down on paper. This was really all I needed to do to see if it was going to work.

The second sketch was drawn later as a slight variation of the shot above but I didn’t continue with it because I wasn’t happy at all with what it looked like.

The final sketch at the bottom of the page I drew by taking the shape masses from the first sketch and refining them into actual characters. The monsters are a unit and the Sorcerers are treated as a unit too. I also tried to tell an individual story with every character. Some of the poses need a little work and there still needs to be some adjusting with the space relationships, but it’s pretty much what I’m going to go with.

The next thing I wanted to do was to figure out the tonal values within the drawing. To achieve this, I took some tracing paper and a black Prismacolor pencil, and began to add tone. I decided not to be too precious about drawing perfectly within the lines, so it’s a bit messy and rough.

(PRO TIP: Prismacolor pencil is erasable on tracing paper. Many development guys in the industry draw their development tonal drawings on tracing paper and then color copy the final on regular paper.)

The idea is to add a different value to the foreground, middle ground and background elements. The values I was using would be restricted to, dark, mid tone and light. Only using those three colors helps simply the process and allows you to see the tones as a whole. It really doesn’t matter which values go to which “ground”. You can just as easily choose the background to be the darkest value as the lightest. As long as it makes the picture clear and gets across the feel you want the drawing to have.

My first thought was to let the foreground have the mid tone. I decided to make the background the darkest and the middle ground the lightest so that the main character popped out more. At the time, I didn’t really like it all that much:

Part of the problem was that the sky and the buildings are kinda TWO backgrounds and they were throwing me off. I also didn’t like the idea of making all the buildings so dark.

I tried again. This time I decided to make the foreground the darkest and the background sky the mid tone, while keeping the background buildings and middle ground characters the lightest. This didn’t look good to me at all. I added a little bit of shadows on the monsters to attempt to balance it all, but it just looked odd. (possibly because I was so sloppy with it):

I was getting frustrated. Decided to refocus and try to keep in mind two basic things:

My center of interest had to be the place of highest contrast. In this case, the place where the darkest dark and the lightest light would meet.
Try adding a definite light source.

Okay, so I obviously my center of interest was Rob. He either had to be the darkest dark surrounded by the lightest light or the lightest light surrounded the darkest dark (as I had in the first sketch)…or both. I decided to try a combination of both. He would have both black and white in different areas of his body:

My thinking was, just because a ground plane is dominated by a tone, it doesn’t mean that other lighter or darker tones don’t have a place within it as long those values don’t dominate that ground plane. SO, I chose to make Robs pants the darkest dark, and I also darkened his upper body as the cast shadows of the monsters fell on him. The rest of Rob would therefore be in light creating and interesting play of contrasting black and white tones. This meant that the light source would come from the upper left corner of the drawing.

Since Rob was the darkest dark, the background behind him needed to be the lightest light to make him pop out. Now I had the middle ground dominated by the darkest dark of the drawing and the background would be dominated by the lightest. Still, there would be SOME light on Rob himself to make him pop out a bit more. The foreground ended up with the mid tone. This seemed to work.

To add to visual interest, and to lead the eye around the drawing a bit more, I also decided that the flying winged ape would be darker than the other. This will make you “read” him but I’ll make sure he’s not placed against too light a background. Also, I decided that the farthest Sorcerer on the right with his arms crossed would be darker than the other two. That way, you will read him. I’ll just make sure that his darker parts aren’t as dark as Rob’s. This will make a triangular composition of dark areas. Hopefully, doing this will make your eyes travel around the picture.

Another thing I needed to make sure I did was to chose ONE tone out of the three to be dominant. That ONE tone needs to cover 50% or more of the drawing. Then I had to pick another tone to be the second most dominant. Doing this adds visual interest.

I seemed to have accidentally made the dark tone the most dominant followed closely by the lightest tone. Still, I think the light and dark tones are almost too balanced in my thumbnail. Also, I don’t think I did a good enough job differentiating the values. The darks almost look like the same value as the mid tones. This kinda messes up the point of doing a tonal pass. I shouldn’t have been so sloppy. That’s what I get for being impatient.

Seeing all the thumbnails here on the blog has allowed me to take a good look at them all and now I think I had it right the first time with the FIRST tonal pass. As dynamic as the lighting is on the last one, it covers Rob and the monsters too much in darkness. I kinda want them to be a little more visible. Perhaps having the buildings be dark wouldn’t be so bad after all.

What do you think?

CATHOLICISM

It’s not secret I’m Catholic and love my faith. One of the more sensational aspects of Catholicism comes in the guise of exorcisms. The subject seems to fascinate people quite a bit and has been the theme of many passed and future movies. Because they’ve been so sensationalized in movies, exorcisms seem like fantasy. Yet, for Catholic exorcists, they are a very serious business.

Below, you will find an audio interview with an Exorcist. I found the interview fascinating and thought I’d share it. But first, a little bit of what Wikipedia says about the priest you will be listening to:

Malachi Brendan Martin Ph.D. (July 23, 1921 – July 27, 1999) was a Catholic priest, theologian, writer on the Catholic Church, and professor at the Vatican’s Pontifical Biblical Institute. He held three doctorates^[1]^[2] and was the sole author of sixteen books covering religious and geopolitical topics, which were published in eight languages. He wrote additional books under pen names and in collaboration with others. He was a controversial commentator on the Vatican and other matters involving the Church.^[3] Martin spoke at least ten languages^[4]^[5] including Irish, English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Hebrew and Modern Arabic, and also knew classical languages like Latin, Classical Greek, Aramaic and Classical Arabic. He lived in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, France, and the United States and traveled extensively throughout Europe, Asia and the Middle East.^[1]

Fr. Malachi seems to be a very controversial figure within the Church AND without (after all, he’s an Exorcist). Never the less, I found the interview interesting. The interview begins with Fr. Malachi talking about the Devil, Hell, Evil, then turns to Satanism and the nature of sin, which leads him to the topic of Exorcism.

In this interview, when speaking about the movie THE EXORCIST, Fr. Malachi basically says the movie version was laughable, the real thing is far worse. Enjoy:

For the rest of the interview 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.

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

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Luis' Illustrated Blog

You are browsing the Blog for ART

Link to an interview with my current SIMPSONS director. Struggling to find clear, well drawn poses. Cool animated short.

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Color style test. My review of THE SECRET OF KELLS.

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My experience working on the Banksy Couch Gag. Just a little bit of coloring.

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Dante comes to work with me. Another epic couch gag. Style tests and trying to understand color.

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Working overtime again. Designing tonal drawings. Paul Felix’s unofficial website.

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Working overtime. A little bit on cheating perspective. 3 Animation Podcasts.

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Making up hours again. Taking critique. Fun animation videos. Random free money.

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Watched Cheech and Chong movie as “research” at work. Didn’t get much work done on my drawing. Reading Brother’s Grimm fairytales. An interview with Jim Lujan and Matt Groening.

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Matt Groening’s thank you gift. A little bit on perspective and finishing a drawing. John Cleese on creativity. Why e-books?

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My thinking process as I add values to my thumbnail sketch. Interview with an Exorcist.

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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