Sketchbook Pages Fresh Off The Press

Well, not off the presses. More like fresh off the Cintiq. Recent series of digital sketches below, like literally from the past few days. Plenty of storybook vignettes and random character pieces.
(*Note 08 / '23: Redid some of these pieces back around 2022. So instead of the original dirty underwear that was here, you get slightly laundered boxers a few years later.)

(*Okay, now back to the proper timeline for my drawings.)

...And here's a redux of an older piece from... 2018 I think? 8-bit characters hanging out at the old Chinese takeout place we'd hit after class at the local JC:

I guess at the time I thought the shapes were pushed enough on the first version (small inset picture on the left). But in all likelyhood I just wanted to get the color and lighting done, and didn't take enough steps back to see if I actually liked the overall feel of the poses or the drawing itself. And as usually the case from back then, I didn't really push the concept or character interactions either, so... here you have it. More characters, a little more activity, including burping. Hopefully some color soon.

Chimera Girl Run Poses

Several pages of me playing animator once again and trying to figure out how a quadruped gallop would work in human form. Not necessarily key frames or inbetweens either, just playing with shape silhouette dynamics while thinking in terms of of the next frame or pose if it were hand animated.

Don't remember where chronologically these drawings were made, but below is a letterbox beat board that got closest to a clean pose.

Post Halloween Environment Design

This got a higher-than-average number of likes over on Instagram for some reason. Played around with having a larger drawing as if it were shot through a long lens to see if I could cut in closer to the characters and get decent or interesting compositions without having to rely on a) action poses and b) wide angle perspective tricks. Individual close-ups below:

(Cheated this one with a blur filter to give it some atmosphere.)

Animation Hellhole Memories Part 2

Colored versions of the Allan Hancock Animation Hellhole crew playing Worms: Armageddon at my old place, and the Calarts Cube 5 crew playing Halo at the ever leaky Woodglen Venture apartments.

Below are more WIPs / beatboards of the Allan Hancock College days. Some liberties were taken with the cast of characters, in case anyone was wondering if I went to school with a salamander, capybara, Samus, or a witch. Which is still uncertain with at least a few of those, truth be told.

But again, the whole exercise was to try to recreate the Fine Arts Department from memory alone, especially the courtyard outside of Buildings E and F, since there's next to no reference for this other than Google Maps and my own hazy recollections.

There are more images and details posted over at my Wordpress page.

Animation Hellhole and CalArts Memories, WIPs

Series of recent unfinished sketches revolving around memories of both the pre-internet days of the Animation Hellhole at Allan Hancock College (panel 1), and the later post-internet days at Apartment 131 across the street from CalArts (panel 2).

As you can see, a majority of the time in both situations revolved around carefully researching the emerging world of interactive software.

(The second set of panels below are mostly based on the Hellhole days:)

The actual animation hellhole was literally a renovated janitor's closet inside the Arts Department at Hancock. It still had a working sink and some leftover mops, but it was also stuffed with state of the art second hand animation gear, both digital (two pieced together PCs, security cameras, a VCR) and traditional (an animation disc with several 80W bulbs cooking overhead and underneath).

One notable exception to the historical accuracy of these pics is the super model time traveler featured in the last frame, but otherwise I tried to keep it faithful to the crew, situations, and atmosphere of the time: Endless days of drawing, shooting animation or the sh*t, running off to Chopstix for cheap Chinese food (a miracle for the Santa Maria/Orcutt area in the early 2000's), digging around Gamestop or Blockbuster for Playstation games, endless nights playing Worms: Armageddon or Puzzle Fighter, planning our next trip to San Luis to either get art supplies at Law's Hobby or whatever art books and comics they had at Captain Nemo's.

Again, keep in mind that for most of us it was pre-internet, pre-Amazon, pre-smart or even cell phone. You got by with what you could find and took it all in with the company of friends.

Acheulean Beatboard

Piece from almost a year ago. Posted on the Instagram account back then; did a couple slight revisions the meanwhile, mostly having to do with just balancing the faces and head shapes surprisingly enough. (I can see why most artists avoid doing the downward-angled head at a slight turn from center. I think though that this was drawn before I had a more solid undersketch system down, or of establishing the feature distances on a character's face.)

Character Design Sketch Pages

Roughly 3 sketch pages, formatted together vertical-wise, moreso for Pinterest than anything else. Good luck ever seeing it there though. As always, some of these can be found on the Instagram account.

Am sure my tens of viewers could care less about whatever progress I may or may not make on this front, but I need to be able to gauge for myself where I'm at in terms of simplifying shape choices, or just having a better shape and line rhythm that isn't sacrificed for the sake of belting out story ideas, and vice versa. Is a fine line between actual productivity and spinning one's wheels in order to feel productive. If the animation industry's taught me anything...  Well, there's a whole tier of management dedicated to extracting the latter. Which I think explains more than a few end results, in things far beyond our own profession.

And then we see it in the wheels,
the wheels!
Which never like to rest,
the wheels! . . .
How heavy are the stones themselves,
the millstones!
They dance in merry ranks . . .
The millstones!

Espionage

Tone study, but also a reminder to myself that a scene needs an environment and atmosphere.

WIP

Like I said, plenty more where the previous came from.

Beta Euthynus 3, plus sketches

Next installment. This suffered a few retakes, namely the girl's face and the gorgonopsid's general line of action in the chair. Redid the latter as a reverse S shape, which made it a little more pleasing to... well, my eye.

Some sketch pages from several months ago:

Literally the last page in the sketchbook.

Beta Euthynus 1

Part of a series of cleaned and toned vignettes during the Halloween season. More to come. (The backlog of illustrations needing color is adding up.)

Older sketch, revision

(Just to benchmark my own progress; newer illustration based on the older sketches below. Characters in background seem to be running circular laps around the main character. Maybe she's just caught one of them to ask what in the hell they're doing.)

She's supposed to be in the middle of swinging the character from left to right. Her lower torso, hips and legs should probably be positioned a bit more mid-stride as opposed to a cold-start pose, in order to give the whole thing more energy. As is, the hair, tail and the character being thrown seem to be carrying most of the intended weight of the pic, the main character's pose being a bit too static for what I was going for. Goes to show that marriage to an exploratory sketch or sketches can hinder later possibilities.

 ~ Fight Sequence Vignettes ~

Sequential beatboarding. If there is such a thing:

Not much to it, but I'm pretty spent from the last gig I was on. I need to read more and formulate some short stories that are manageable graphic novel projects. The above helps, but more with the technical end of things (anatomy, pacing, moments) rather than coming up with real inspirational story kernels to run with as of late.

Read something the other day asking "Where are the [Clint] Eastwoods of animation?" Someone followed up with the astute observation that the American animation industry's decisively said "no" to wanting that possibility come to pass.

I'm tempted to say: "Let me see what I can come up with next post"; but it only underlies the whole point - as redundant as it will sound - that most anything apart from the "recoup-franchise-investment" studio system is more than likely going to be happening outside of the usual 9-to-eternity animation workplace. Whether any of it will be to the level of eclectic Eastwood cinema is left to be seen. And it will probably need more than naked chimeric ladies to meet that bar.

~ Ex Post Facto... ~

...Since anything I post has to necessarily come well after I've drawn it. One of the many great mysteries of the time/space continuum.

 

Another mystery is why I'm having such a difficult time hitting female facial proportions and placement on the first pass.  

Actually, no mystery. Besides forcing myself to draw larger more often, I think a good part of it would be to simply not worry about constructing the individual features, the rendering therein, and just simplifying the shapes, drawing everything with a quick, decisive line; any construction lines, feature placement, or expressions especially. Should probably be the same approach as to doing mech design: Quick outer frame sketch first to establish dynamic shapes, then going in with whatever detail afterwards. Otherwise, it'll more than likely look too contained and indecisive once one starts fussing with rendering out where specific features go rather than how balanced the overall thing looks from a quick glance.

Pencil gives the leeway to not have to be married to the first line - which is its grace as well as its curse. Cintiq's much the same way with the Ctrl+Z undo and eraser being literally one click away (with the added disadvantage of feeling like a blunt China Marker on ice). Colerase have done a good job breaking me out of the habit of erasing, although I haven't completely kicked the jones to do so.

I think Shiyoon, Gennady, and Claire Wendling have the right idea:  Forget erasing, just restart. Redraw the hell out of it, over and over, until you've not only loosened up with your drawing in general, but also are able to hone in on what shapes, perspective, and composition looks best after having hashed the same thing out several dozen times over. This helps with technical proficiency, as well as breaking one out of their shape/design/posing comfort zone.

~ Semi-mega sketch dump... ~

Some screw-around pages that turned into a sequential of sorts, along with some random sketches below.

More to come, possibly before the new year, depending on if my internet craps out.