Merry Christmas!

I was going to leave this post until closer to Christmas Day but I was so pleased with my drawings that I wanted to put them on here! Yesterday I thought I would try to put what I have learned from a few days worth of character studies into practice with my own characters. I decided that I'd do this in a festive way, so I drew Santa.
One thing I have learned over the past few days is how expressive the tongue can be. Have a look at my character called Clive on this post. He has a very generic tongue - basically two overlapping semicircles. Until now, all my characters have had tongues like this as I simply never thought to change it. I only came to realise this when drawing the character Grizzlikof from Darkwing Duck on Friday. In the drawing of him with his tongue on show, it has a very concave appearance, making it feel like he is pulling his tongue downwards. This of course cannot be achieved with a simple pair of semicircles. You may notice a similar tongue on one of my Santas (he's supposed to be singing).

So after being pleased with myself for three decent drawings in a row, I thought I would ink them. I have been meaning to practice my inking recently to try to get the hang of varying my line thickness. The idea is that you use thicker lines for larger forms and thinner ones for smaller forms. My previous attempts at inking have not had this variation and have thus looked a little uninteresting. This time I managed to get some variation in.
I think they look a lot more professional than anything I have produced before. They feel more like rounded objects, even before things like shadows or highlights have been added. This was all done with an artist's fountain pen by the way.

So finally I just needed a lick of paint. Originally I decided to try to paint them by hand on an animation cel. So I photocopied the inked drawing onto a cel and began to use the animation paint I bought months and months ago but have only just got round to opening! I didn't finish painting them this way though. I decided I wanted to be able to put shadows and highlights on them, which is difficult to do the traditional way as you have to paint on the reverse of the cel. So I opted to finish them off in Photoshop.
So as the picture says, merry Christmas to everyone who has visited my blog, and particularly those who decided to return!

Simplicity Personified...?

Some more character studies today. I started out with Aladdin, but little did I realise how bloody difficult it is to draw him! I have already discovered how hard it is to draw Mickey Mouse, and now I have a theory that the simpler the character, the harder it is to draw it properly. Aladdin is, in principle, very simple. He was designed to be simple. However this seems to mean that if the cheek is slightly too high, or an eye is slightly too circular, it ends up not looking like Aladdin.
The Aracuan bird on the other hand is a more complex character. He has distracting details like tufts of feathers and bulbous cheeks. I think he can be distorted more whilst still being recognisable. Can you guess who the character to his right was meant to be? It's another simple/difficult one....Ariel! Alright Ariel's hair isn't really simple, but her face is and that makes her hard to draw. Her nose is not a nose. More of a hint of a nose.

My next batch of studies shows more attempts at her. As you can tell, I gave up on her. I really shouldn't have. I need to keep at it until I get it right. Anyway, Bambi was next.
This little fella turned out ok, but the follow-up drawing to the right did not. I'm not going to blame this on his simplicity though as I don't think he's that simple. I just blame my own misjudgement. Next up is Bernard from The Rescuers. I was really pleased with him, except for the fact that I made his eyes too close together, making him appear more youthful than he should. Mickey is sort of ok I guess.
However his head isn't quite large enough and is too far forward from his body. Finally, I attempted Genie. I have tried to draw him before, but the very fact that he has never appeared on my blog will tell you that I was not pleased with what I produced! Thankfully this time is different.
If I may say so myself, I think he turned out pretty well. Overall I think studying these characters is helping. I feel like I am learning how cartoon characters are built. The real test will be to put what I'm learning into my own characters. Maybe a little more study is needed first though.

Grizzly Drawings

Tonight I have been studying these drawings of Grizzlikof from Darkwing Duck:
I quite enjoyed drawing this guy. Here are my attempts:

Judging a Blog by its Cover

I have been trying to think of ways to present the artwork on my blog in a more interesting way. Unless the artwork on a site is absolutely stunning, it can start to look a little dull.

And my work isn't stunning.

I did a quick drawing of Mickey Mouse yesterday. I drew him from memory and wasn't really concerning myself too much with getting his proportions right. I was more into trying to make a neat drawing. My efforts to clean up drawings usually end up looking fairly rough still and I was struck by the cleanness of the lines in the Disney drawings in my last post, so I thought I would try to pay more attention to it.
I think I still need more practice. I haven't yet tried to vary my line thickness for different details.

In the spirit of trying to make my blog more visually appealing, I fiddled with the drawing in Photoshop to make this:
On a separate note, I have been inspired by Andrew Glazebrook to try using a piece of software called Vue, which is a 3D program for modelling and rendering landscapes. You can see my first attempt below. As much as I would like to use it for animation, I don't think I will be able to considering the render time of over an hour for this one frame! My poor little laptop!
Oh well, at least I could try combining it with my photography.

Ye Olde Art

I am always on the lookout for original production drawings and model sheets from animation's golden age for use as learning references. As I mentioned in a previous post, there used to be a great source for such artwork from the Disney studio that recently disappeared, so finding good examples isn't quite so easy these days.

However there are some good sources still around, one of which I came across a few days ago. I really liked some of the stuff on there and so I thought I would mention it. As with the popular Van Eaton galleries site, Choice Collectibles is essentially a shop where you can buy the original pieces of art on show for stupendous amounts of money.
There are a number of sites like this around, but many have poor quality scans of the images. Choice Collectibles has good quality images, with some pretty large in size too. There are also plenty of non-Disney stuff if that is more what you are looking for. They should make great study aids for learners like me.

Pop Art's Back

Continuing on the theme of drawing from models, I have made another attempt at drawing Popeye, this time from the back. You can see my attempt from the front here.
Not much else to show I'm afraid! My animation job interview was supposed to take place today. However since some of the interviewers were off sick, it has been rescheduled for Wednesday morning. I'll have to stay nervous for another couple of days!

Handy with Cartoons

I have finally managed to get some drawing done! I was up early this morning as I couldn't sleep, so I ended up deciding to draw. It seems that my ability to produce something decent is much greater in the morning than in the evening. I began with drawing from the Bluto figurine we got last week:
I followed this with a study of our Mickey Mouse figurine:
Ok well it's far from perfect! Mickey is stupidly hard to draw! A change of subject followed these. I had the TV on and started to draw quick thumbnail sketches of people from it:
I was most pleased, however, with a creation of my own, who I called Clive:
He actually turned out to have pretty much the pose I was aiming for, which was a kind of camp excitedness. I'm particularly pleased with the hands.
Hands are something that I have always had trouble with. Well cartoon ones are anyway. I seem to be able to draw realistic ones without too much trouble, but simplifying them to the cartoon variety always ended with disaster. So it's very pleasing to produce a pair that don't look too bad!

Whose Line is it Anyway?

I remember looking at John K's blog a while ago and seeing a post about inking. He was saying something along the lines of what makes good outlines on animated characters. I recall him being rather critical of the approach taken by Disney in the old days.

Disney, as well as others, did not always ink their drawings. To save time they simply photocopied the original drawings onto cels, which were then painted. John K argued that this looks scratchy and unpolished. I quite like the effect though. It means we actually get to see the animators' original drawings, rather than an inking artist's interpretation of them.

It's no secret that I desperately want the new 40th anniversary edition of The Jungle Book on DVD. I was out Christmas shopping with my girlfriend Sian yesterday and we noticed that the film was showing on a screen in a music shop. We stopped briefly to watch and were struck by the fact that on some frames you can still see the artists' original construction lines! I guess the Xerox machine didn't do a perfect job of not seeing the coloured pencil rough drawing beneath the cleaned up one. The last time I watched the film was many years ago and I wouldn't have noticed the lines back then due to watching it on visually inferior VHS rather than DVD, as well as not being animation minded enough to even know of their existence.
While some people may find these lines a distraction, I personally really like them. They add a certain charm. I'm not sure if this happens a lot in other Disney movies, as I have only spotted it on this one occasion. By the way, don't look for them in the image above as I'm pretty sure they can't be seen in this example. A quick Google images search didn't give me any better examples. Maybe once I finally get the film, I will hunt for a specific frame to post!

Anyway, next time you are watching an old Disney movie, watch closely!

Folio Follies

Well I have no artwork to show today, but I thought I'd show you my progress with rebuilding my portfolio website. I had been dissatisfied with the long loading times for some of the original pages on the site, caused by the fact that I had used the png image format for all of my images intead of something more internet friendly like jpegs. The reason for this was I wanted to be able to have partial transparency on many of the graphics.

So I decided to start to learn Flash from a web developer's point of view, as well as an animator's. What I discovered was that by using Flash, I could have the transparency that I needed, whilst dramatically reducing loading times, as well as allowing some fancy animations too.
I rebuilt the homepage in this way some time ago but have taken a long time to get round to doing the rest of the site. Over the past few days I have done a few more pages though. If you go to my site, you will find that the "artwork" page has been redone, as well as the "gesture drawings" subsection. They aren't quite as fancy as the homepage, but I just wanted to get them on there.

I have also begun remaking the "animations" section of the site. This is probably the most ambitious section of the site and has called on every bit of Flash knowledge I have acquired. At present, the old html section is still there, but I have uploaded a test version of it, which you can find here if you are interested. It's not the finished version, but will give you a flavour of what I'm trying to achieve.

Incidentally, since the purpose of the site is to find me work, I should mention that I have a job interview on Monday for a company called Phaebus. There is one thing that is particularly exciting about it though - although I didn't realise it when I first applied, should I get it, my job would actually be as an ANIMATOR!!

I'm trying not to get my hopes up though. It would be a huge disappointment not to get it.

Feeling Sheepish

I have been spending a bit of time over the past few days getting to grips with Flash. I have used it simply as a drawing tool to produce tradition hand drawn animation, but I have never really used it for cut-out stuff. I'm not that fussed on cut-out, I just need to learn it since so many entry level jobs require it. So without further ado, here is my first Flash vector animation, using a character invented by my girlfriend Sian. Oh, and it has sound so turn your speakers up!

Kevin and his other farmyard friends are available on all sorts of clothing items and other things in Sian's CafePress shop.

Ranting Enchanting

Well I'm exhausted after my first day of churning out job applications. I hope something turns up.

Right, back to animation. My timetable has been put on the backburner over the last few days due to a combination of looking for jobs, going to the weekly pub quiz (and winning for once!) and painting a rather large canvas for someone's Christmas present. I was about to post a photo of it here when I suddenly realised that the recipient may well end up seeing it. I'll post it after Santa has delivered it.

Today is my least favourite day on the schedule: figure drawing. I will hopefully attempt some tonight. I don't hate figure drawing, I just suck at it lately. With a bit of luck, I'll improve once I get back into the swing of things.

Finally, I noticed that the Disney movie "Enchanted" is being released in the UK next week. I have been waiting to see it for quite some time due to the fact that it contains the first hand-drawn Disney feature animation we have seen since they closed down production in 2004 after the public became obsessed with 3D. From what I gather it is doing rather well across the pond in the US, which pleases me since it may show that audiences are ready to embrace 2D movies again. "The Princess and the Frog" is due out in 2009 and I really think it's important for the art of western traditional animation for it to do well.
So when Enchanted comes out next week, if you're a fan of animation, go and see it and support the art!

Dumped

If I was Popeye, this is what I'd be doing right now:
I recently found out that the media company I work for has gone into liquidation, meaning I am out of a job.

It's really not an easy situation to deal with when you suddenly learn that you have no job, without any previous warning. I don't even know what will happen to the money I have earned but haven't been paid yet. I have to wait for some mysterious letter to present itself through my letterbox that will apparently explain all.

So now I'm frantically looking for work, hammering CVs into every company I can find. What worries me is that I have to get any job I can just to keep money coming it, but that may well mean taking a step backward into something like office work. While this should hopefully only be a temporary measure, I know from experience how difficult it is to get out of. Before I worked as a video editor, I was just doing temp work for agencies. The jobs were as dull as you can imagine, leaving me mentally numb at the end of every day, making it extremely difficult to hunt for a job I wanted. I don't want to be in that position again.

So if anyone....anyone at all....knows of any work going that might interest me, preferably in or around Manchester in the UK, please, PLEASE let me know.

What a crappy situation to be in so near to Christmas!

Pop Art

Seeing as my Saturday was taken up by watching Paul Merton, I didn't really get much chance to do some quick sketching as per my timetable. I figured I'd do it today instead though as we went Christmas shopping. However I forgot my sketchbook so that was the end of that idea!

So here is an attempt at drawing the Popeye figurine we bought yesterday:
I was quite pleased with it. I will be attempting other angles too soon.

The Sound of Silence

Today Sian and I went to see Paul Merton's Silent Clowns show at the Lowry Theatre in Salford.
"Join Paul Merton as he screens extracts from the very best silent comedians in some of their funniest films. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy and many others are highlighted by Paul, whose infectious enthusiasm and knowledge of these films means a splendid time is guaranteed for all. In the second half Harold Lloyd’s feature-length comedy Safety Last is shown in its breathtaking entirety. A comic masterpiece, its compelling mixture of thrills and laughter is as potent today as it was in 1923. There are no special effects, Harold really is up that high. See the best of the silent comics on the big screen with fantastic live accompaniment by world renowned pianist Neil Brand."
Although I have seen clips from silent films before, I have never really been too interested in watching and entire silent movie before as I have always thought they would be quite dull for me, someone who has grown up with all the excitement of modern day films. However when I heard about the show in a radio interview with Paul, I decided it might be good for me to go to for two reasons.

As a general film fan I thought it would be a great experience to watch my first silent film in the atmosphere in which it was meant to be seen, with an audience, a big screen and a live accompaniment.

As a budding animator, I though it would be extremely beneficial for me to get to know the area of cinematic history from which animated cartoons were borne.

What surprised me most was how well the films drew me in. I watched them with as much interest as with a movie that had just been released. I found myself laughing out loud (although not quite as much as the hysterical woman sitting behind me) and often in awe of the comic performances of the actors. I honestly can't remember the last time I went to the cinema and ended up laughing out loud. And frequently at that.

As I considered the birth of cartoons from these old films, I happened to notice a picture of Mickey Mouse and friends on my computer.
I suddenly noticed that many cartoon characters wear gloves. Why is this? I wondered if it was something to do with mimes. While animation from the 30s and 40s is more akin to the silent comics, I guess one could think of silent performers themselves as a development of the humble mime.
I mean look at him. Put two big ears on him and he would bear at least some resemblance to a certain mouse. Well maybe if you squint a bit.

On a separate note, near the Lowry Theatre there is a cartoon shop. They sell lots of figurines, animation cels, canvases and whatnot. We ended up buying three figurines which I plan to use as drawing references on my next cartooning night. Firstly we have Popeye and Bluto:
We also got Ariel:
and Mickey: