A common drawing exercise is to make silhouettes and then try to form objects out of the shapes. Tonight I’ve been delving into abstraction. I’m not too comfortable with it, I think because I feel guilty when my drawings don’t resemble something, like enjoying making marks is self-indulgent. Then again there are plenty of artists who draw and then say, “You tell me what it means!”
Today I was going to try animating a little pin up character and I realized I should probably try designing one first. Here’s the sketch layer.
I experimented with different brushes until I settled on a sable. It’s interesting how a design can evolve as you draw it over and over. The head was going to be round and Betty Boop-ish but turned more heart or almond-shaped.
I really like this little character. I should keep drawing her and see what she turns into.
Awhile back I was going to draw a comic about gremlins. I figured they’d be a good thing to doodle and play with. I made myself a little list of ideas like elemental gremlins, animal gremlins, etc. and this is what I came up with tonight. Kinda got stumped as to how to make the animals into something unique. Should have taken a more abstracted approach of just scribbling shapes into something and then made them fit the theme.
Hey everybody, no video this week as I’m working on illustrations rather than animation. (I shot some video of me talking but I won’t subject you guys to that.)
I’ve been thumbnailing/laying out pages for awhile to get the writing out of the way. I’ve retooled the last story and I’m still not happy with it. It feels like I’m scripting a scifi story instead of a scifi horror. Right around the middle story I went from using little to no dialogue to having lots of dialogue. I’m concerned about trying to force the writing but I’m not sure how it’d fair if I tried winging it while I was drawing. Most of the other stories fit into 10 pages fairly neatly and I’m trying to do that here. Think I’ll try penciling pages and see if I can resolve issues before I move onto inking.
I was going to try painting a closely cropped face using an underpainting so I could focus on values and colors separately. I was still distorting the drawing to fit the digital canvas so I figured it’d be a good idea to practice drawing faces off the internet. Some are more portrait-y and some are more caricature. The thing about doing a likeness is you can focus too much on reproducing something in a face that doesn’t translate into an interesting drawing. Then there’s times you get so into creating something with a drawing it doesn’t look like the subject anymore.
So I decided to try illustrating Betty Brosmer. I think my first mistake was deciding to jump into painting without finishing the drawing. I was eager to push color around and experiment with my Frenden brushes in Manga Studio. It’s only then you realize all the little things you should have fixed in the drawing. Perhaps I’ll do a smaller study to practice my rendering next time. I was also trying to eyeball colors instead of picking them from the photo. All in all it’s a bit too much to do for a daily doodle as it’d still require lots of time correcting/refining to finish and this exercise is supposed to be about sharing faster works.
Today I’d like to roll out something new I’m doing. Art is an activity like anything else. There’s exercises and warm-ups one should do before anything strenuous. I really want to be drawing every day but either life gets in the way or I’m in the middle of a project and it’s not drawing-related. So I’m starting a routine where I doodle something new every day. It can be an animation, a caricature, a portrait, a study, anything I want as long as I share one a day. Here’s the first one.
I drew this from a series of photos (11-26) in Scott Eaton’s Bodies in Motion, part 1. I’m fairly pleased with the result.
Welcome to a new feature on the site, Work in Progress Wednesday, where I’m going to be showing stuff I’m currently working on. I tend to have a couple projects going at a time and I think sharing my progress is going to be a good motivator on getting them done. It’s a good way to take stock of where things stand at the moment. I’ve done art posts before but I’d like to make this ongoing. Just remember all this stuff is in development and may change completely next time you see it. So lets get this party started.
Billy Badass
This is a webcomic idea I’ve been working on about an internet reviewer and his obsessive nostalgia for the 80s/90s of his childhood. I’ve been trying to design the main cast at various ages and make family members look related. Also trying to add more detail to the style than I normally do.
Playing with the logo for the main character’s review show. I really like the Magic 3D Photoshop Action, I just need to get better at placing things in perspective. Also debating adding some explosions or something to this.
7 Deadly Sins
I’ve been wanting to do a collection of scary stories for Halloween so I came up with some ideas based on the 7 deadly sins. I’ve been playing with some of Ray Frenden’s Manga Studio brushes and a few others here trying to step out of my comfort zone a little with digital painting.
Crafting Mines
I’ve wanted to start a Minecraft Lets Play series for awhile. You might recognize the name from a previous podcast/audio drama I tried doing awhile back. Right now I’m tinkering with animating the pre and post-roll bits to match up with this logo.
Blues Man
Here’s my first real attempt at animating one of my cutout rigs. I’m going to do a couple videos showing how they’re set up. I built this guy about 4 times or so as I switched tools and figured out better ways to set him up. The last was when I decided to get rid of the outlines except when colors overlap. I set them to appear dynamically which got complicated but should be useful down the road.
Here’s my second rig from this short I’m working on. I got really ambitious with the deformers on this one. Each finger on his hands have curves on them and the outlines also appear dynamically as well. It’s best practice to just swap the hand drawings out, and I probably will at points with this guy, but I want him to have really weird movements.
Here’s a couple frames of a shot so far. (The banding’s a result of the gif compression.) Debating if I should have the clouds wave any as they drift. Also not sure how I want the stars to twinkle in the background yet. That’s the fun of doing big projects yourself. All these little nuances you could spend an entire day tweaking that will just look organic in the end.
When I decided to make the characters line-free I had to reconsider how I was going to render backgrounds. There’s a lot of artists doing inspiring work with texture and brush strokes I’d like to learn from. This scrolling background is sort of in between styles right now. Background painting is it’s own special skill and I intend on developing it more.
As a follow up to my previous post I thought I’d share some more stuff I’ve been working on. I wouldn’t consider any of it finished.
Dancer
I’d been meaning to do more gesture studies of figures in motion so I freeze-framed a youtube video of a ballerina and scribbled 40 frames. I also tried out some paper textures underneath to see if I could make it feel more authentic.
Fennec Fox: Gunslinger
This was a flash game I was working on for Stencyl Jam #14. The project grew too big and I didn’t finish it in time. I learned plenty from the experience, though.
His arm was handled separately to allow for switching out weapons
I liked the idea of a punching mechanic but getting it to work proved problematic
The main game was built around a run and gun template for Stencyl. I also put together a rudimentary target practice stage where you’d have alternating good/bad guys.
Good guys
Bad guys
Backgrounds
I experimented with different rendering styles for the backgrounds. First I tried drawing them in the same program as the characters but that looked too flat. Then I tried painting them with a soft airbrush. Eventually I settled on something somewhere between the two – solid shapes molded with shadow, texture, and gradients. This is also where trouble started as you can see I made the backgrounds many screens wide. I’d sketched them that big originally figuring I could just crop where needed. I think I was just afraid a smaller level would make it look like a spammy flash ad instead of a game. Click for full images.
Baddies and Other Character Animations
The funny thing is I’d originally decided to make the game a wild west shoot ’em up to scale back from my bigger idea where that was just a sub-section of the game. Anyway, Stencyl handles animations by designating milliseconds for each frame. I figured the sprites should use as few frames as possible to keep the motions snappy.
I liked the walk cycle I came up with for the monkey. I also had him holding guns with his feet
One of various characters that could shoot
A punching enemy for variety. As with the player character, getting the attack to connect proved tricky
This guy would drop TNT if you got too close. A code thing you could endlessly tweak
I wanted to populate the streets with civilians and such but I just didn’t allot myself enough time
I like the design of this little mouse Señorita
Other
Once the jam ended I’ve been focusing more on animating. I’m trying to refine a finished look I can reproduce regularly and efficiently. Here’s a couple examples of the experimenting I’ve been doing.
Some line width and coloring tests. Click for a fuller view.
Ink and color test
Hi everybody 😀 I recently finished an online art history course and I thought I’d share some of the pieces I put together for it.
Pew! Pew Pew! – Self Portrait with Alien Invasion
I cut out and propped up some of my drawings and dangled pieces of foil on strings in a bit of an homage to Ed Wood. It was fun but setting up a physical set was nerve-racking. The slightest little bump would send things into chaos.
Up, Up, and Away!
We were asked to do a piece based on time so I figured an animated gif would do nicely. I thought about how best to depict the scene and decided a static shot of a wall with a cast shadow would be interesting.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hare
The assignment was to transform one thing into another and back again. I went with a spoof of Jekyll and Hyde. Most of the posters I looked up for reference turned Hyde green so I thought I’d use that to tie the piece together.
Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez
Diego Velázquez’s original
My animated interpretation
My favorite assignment was to do a work based on Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez. I took the opportunity to recreate it in a drawn style and to animate the figures. I enjoy the little ticks in this loop, like Velázquez’s hand holding his brush or the figure who blink.