Halloweeeeeeeeeen!

Happy Hallowe'en!!

As a general rule, we Brits don't really go in for the whole goulish October celebrations like our friends over the pond (well that's what the old-fashioned, fun-lacking, stiff-upper lipped Brits will tell you). Tonight, my girlfriend and I decided to make a couple of Jack-o-Lanterns. We had never actually made them before, but we had such a fun time doing it. It really made Halloween more interesting! Here are our attempts:
Mine is on the right and is somewhat boring compared with Sian's sinister Jack Skellington look-a-like!

Now since this is an art blog (and I can't really call my pumpkin art), here is a somewhat tenuously Halloween themed drawing - a dragon:
Well it's not really anything to do with the day, and it's about as scary as Barney the Dinosaur, but hey, it'll do!

Cheap and Cheerful

My girlfriend and I are Disney mad. Well what's new?! We were busy being bored on the internet a few weeks ago and saw some canvases on the Disney Store website that we just had to have. One was Donald Duck:
and one was Snow White:
What sucks about living in the UK is how much we have to pay for everything over here. EVERYTHING is expensive, from fuel for our cars to food for our stomachs. However, as we discovered with these canvases, it is often much cheaper to get things imported from abroad. Now for a single canvas of the size of these, a Brit like myself would have to pay in the region of £60-£80. The great thing is though, that it cost us $60 to buy two canvases from the USA and get them shipped over the Atlantic, which currently works out at about £30! Bargain!

More Bugs

Today (still at work) I decided to make another attempt at drawing the Scribner Bugs Bunny that I tried a few days ago. This was the last one I drew:
and here is the new one:
Well it's an improvement (I think) as I tried to elongate the shape of the head, enlarge the open eye and fix the direction of the neck. However, with the help of Photoshop, we can see that it is still far from perfect:
It seems my Bugs has put on a few pounds! Now, I don't expect I would ever get it to perfectly match the original drawing, which is why I would like to mention the work of a fellow learner - Amir Avni. He managed to get a perfect copy!
How he did this, I don't know, but it may have something to do with the fact that he spent 3 hours studying the drawing, compared with about 15 minutes on my part!

Wake Up!

My girlfriend emailed this video to me today and I found it so funny that I thought I'd share it here. I have no idea who made it, but it really captures the personality of a cat perfectly. Enjoy!

Wake-Up
Uploaded by andylatham82

Finding the Bugs in My Drawing

Right, I finally have something to post!

I decided to have a go at a lesson by John Kricfalusi on construction of a scene from
Tex Avery's "Heckling Hare". The original picture has lots of wrinkles on it, characteristic of the drawing style of Warner Bros animator Rob Scribner:
I always think John's lessons are a great learning resource, but I haven't spent much time following them. However this lesson was even better than usual due to the welcome inclusion of videos, which make the understanding a lot easier, so I decided to not be lazy give it a try. Anyway, here is my attempt at drawing Bugs:
I can immediately see problems with my version. The two that stick out most to me are the difference in size of the open eye and the fact that my bugs isn't screwing up his face to the same degree as Scribner's. Also, I have made a huge error on the angle of the neck. How I managed this, I have no idea. Anyway, to compare my drawing in more detail, I layered it over the original in Photoshop:
I'm still relatively pleased with it, especially since I had to sneakily draw it at work (hence why I didn't have time to draw the dog too), but I think it is probably worth another attempt.

Stalking

Okay, I haven't posted anything in what seems like ages. I feel really bad about this, especially since I haven't really drawn anything to post either. It's the usual story - too much work, not enough free time.

Anyway, while I'm trying to get something of my own to put up here, I'll let you enjoy another sequence from "Mickey and the Beanstalk". I love this clip....watch out for the great bit involving Goofy being caught by a stool. John Kricfalusi often talks about how animation these days zips from one key pose to another with as few inbetweens as possible. This little Goofy part is lovely and slow. Enjoy!

Beanstalk
Uploaded by andylatham82

Rats

I have been going through the usual struggle to find time to animate over the last few days, and I finally got some time yesterday, but found it really difficult to get motivated. It really is so important to draw regularly, otherwise it becomes harder and harder to draw at all. Today I went with my girlfriend to watch Ratatouille, hoping that it might bring me some inspiration. It did and I am now eager to get back to the drawing board. As I have mentioned on numerous occasions, I have become rather disenchanted with 3D animated films. The average quality of them is simply not good. Even the films of Pixar haven't been as brilliant as they once were. For example, in my opinion Finding Nemo was a stunning visual feast, but just wasn't particularly interesting in any other capacity. Thankfully, the studio are on form with the new rat picture. I enjoyed every minute of it (and the fantastic short that preceded it, called "Lifted").

Since I haven't got any of my own work to write about today, I thought I would share my own personal favourite piece of animation. It comes from "Mickey and the Beanstalk" and involves the hilarious character that is the giant:

Giant Sneeze
Uploaded by andylatham82

I have seen that sneeze sooooo many times over the past year or so and it never fails to make me laugh out loud! The hilarity does not end there though. The second time I saw it, I decided to freeze-frame the sequence in order to have a good look at the individual drawings. The result was fascinating:
These are literally one frame after the next. I don't know who animated this, but what baffles me is how they came to this series of drawings to represent a sneeze. I am truly in awe of these five pictures.

Pushing It

Some more feedback from my box lift animation, this time from Tao Nguyen:

Great start on your walk cycle. Also try to do a stationary walk cycle (meaning center the drawing and have the person walk as if you are going pan the background.) This way you can keep it cycled and see if it's working smoothly.

As for the box lift- it all looks good until the end part- where he lifts back and settles. There seems to be some inbetweens missing or the timing's too quick. Basically it just needs to be a little smoother when he settles.

I have also made an animation of a guy pushing a box like I planned. Again I think there are weight issues as the box doesn't feel as heavy as I wanted. Any comments on it would be greatly appreciated!

Box Push
Uploaded by andylatham82

Box Lift Feedback

I have been getting some great feedback on my last box lift animation from a really good animation forum I found a while ago. I figured it would be a good idea to post some of the comments here.

tallsmartman
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Hey, that looks awesome. A very fluid motion, you should be proud. The last few frames made it look like he was about to "sneak around" after he picked up the box. OR... Either the box is entirely too heavy for the guy and he's trying to grasp it with his head so he wouldn't drop it.

Either way, your animation has a lot of character, the only thing I see that looks a bit odd, is the weight of the box. The posture of his body makes me think it's very heavy for him, but the box doesn't "sink" as if it were very heavy. Then again, if he is about to sneak around, I think you could probably leave it how it is.

1uc
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I agree with tallsmartman. Is it supposed to be a heavy box?

But there's one more thing I also noticed though... the size of the box...on the ground it's "very" big, but when the character starts to lift it up becomes smaller and smaller. May be that's causing such strange feeling of a box weight, bcos you see on the ground looks bigger - heavier then when it's in his hands - smaller - lighter. Just a thought...

great job on the movement and anticipation though.

noble
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You are well on your way, congrats on your progress!

The implied mass of the box is light because the accelerations are too high. Volume control is a drawing thing, but implying weight in the motion could be done even with a "point mass" really. I don't think a small change in the box volume is where the issue of weight really rests in this case.

Some key poses (like a spine reversal from hunched over to arched as he strains to pull it up) can add a heavy feeling, but it has to be matched with the appropriate accelerations given how much force he can exert. It's a rigid body dynamics problem with a very qualitative solution in "drawings". Imagine the animation with only the box shown, it would need some very high forces to accelerate like that if it were really heavy, higher forces than that little guy could impart.

Try and keep in mind the c/g of each mass so the positioning of each keeps the tipping torques to a minimum when the forces are large.

I just figured you wanted a snappy toony kind of thing, but if you want him to lift something really heavy, he needs to work harder and slow down the motion. Act it out yourself with an imaginary box to get some ideas for poses, the variations are endless of course, try and keep it simple initially.

I have done a little more of the animation, but now that the mistakes in it have been pointed out to me, I'm thinking about either starting over or trying something different. I'd like to try doing someone pushing a heavy block along the ground next.