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.

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