The Great Revisioning of 2021

So it's been awhile. In the meantime, I took a bit of a break from drawing digitally and focused on just busting out the sketchbooks and Colerase. I'll upload some of those soon enough. 

For now though, I wanted to post what I did when I finally came back to the Cintiq and decided to approach some older pieces to revision. Some of these are from scratch, but most I did previously, whether a few months before or a few years, sometimes more. Stepping away from... well, not the comfort zone, but from one method of drawing... it really gave me fresh eyes to see what bad or weird habits I was getting into when drawing specific things like faces or whatever digitally.

These were from a year or more ago, so relatively recent. Besides a couple of the fuller thumbnails the rest of it got a draw over, both minor and major. (Based on the music department rehearsal space in Building E over at Allan Hancock College. Across the way from the Animation Hellhole / art department in Building F, coincidentially enough). 

Above was the file that started the whole revision process.

And the latter from scratch, hopefully with some improvement. This was the last in this music rehearsal series. There were more images I redid, but there were the better of the lot. 

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I found the above as a rough undersketch I did a few years ago that I never got around to completing. Well, til now. So partially from scratch I guess.

I posted the first versions of these on here like 3 or more years ago, so go dig for those if you want to compare. One on the left was from scratch, one on the right were drawovers on the original image. I don't know if I got the quadruped run for a biped thing, but I definitely approached silhouetting the poses differently than before. That and the facial shapes, as always.

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I went even further back and dug up some ugly ancient history from the archives.

If you can see in the inset images, the originals were done with graphite on (probably) Strathmore paper, scanned and colored in Photoshop. The newer versions are purely Cintiq.

Even though I wanted to color the one and haven't finished it yet, I didn't want to rush over the drawing part just to get to the eye candy phase. Which is what I did with the originals. 

As always, these are benchmarks to see how or where exactly I needed to improve, or where hopefully I have already. As far as color... Eh, I think I'm more efficient with my choices now and maybe more knowledgable, but the general palette still feels a bit the same. Not as heavy on the darks. Coloring's not as much the focus anymore, for good or for ill. 

Truth be told, I don't want to hide behind colors or the patented custom grainy brush doing either flowy Glen Keane / Milt Kahl chinamarker line weight, or late 2000's Pixar portfolio quadruple sketch lines that have those nice little strategic gaps. That all looks good, and there's a time and place for that. And maybe I'm just too dumb to know how to use stylistic digital cheats in the main linework to give it that extra industry edge. But apart from a quick tone wash or dot matrix texture, I want to rely on as few bells and whistles in the drawing itself as possible. I want to keep it as close to the same fundamental choices I'd make if it were just pencil and paper. (And part of that has been keeping the brush size small and at 60 - 70% opacity, rather than the larger brush pen thing I used to do at 80 - 100% opacity several years ago.)

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More random pieces that didn't escape the revisioning:

This last one was an incomplete sketch from the Circle Seven Drive days. I think I was listening to whatever song - probably either this or this - and got the idea of Phil sleeping on an animation disc with a soundwave dancing behind him. He'd be floating by a bunch of Marvel characters doing their thing, and the preproduction and storyboard staff doing theirs. A fever dream music video basically, because that's where I was back then the first few years, wanting to sleep my way through Office Space 2.0.  I like how Nate turned out the most, since he was all about that high hat sound. Sol was drunk at a party one time and kept going "One time! Open chest!," so that's how he gets remembered. I think Staggs is measuring Black Widow's design to make sure the proportions are right.

Between Classes

Random bit of character and color work I did back in September, as well as some character design sketches. Nothing too crazy.

Pretty sure I did the color with a back painting of just a random pastel palette, then worked up the core colors, highlights and shadows from there. Not the best placement of the backpack, but oh well. I had to thin out the one strap to try to keep it from being confused as the outer line for the one leg. Even looking at it now I can see other ways I could have gone about his pose to make it cleaner or more "correct," but again oh well. Character and atmosphere first, I keep telling myself. [Edit: Went back and moved the backpack out of the way of the leg's silhouette. That only took several days for me to scratch that itch. Hopefully it reads a little better now.]

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.

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.)

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!

Slumberhexe - Daydream Notebook 01

Intended more as a WIP progress page, throwing a few non-sequential panels together from separate pages. Was also an excuse to explore color options a little more.
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~ The original full pic that started the process:

~ Panel detail of the peasant riot:

Kolyma Tales

~ Through The Snow ~

"How is a road beaten down through the virgin snow? One person walks ahead, sweating, swearing, and barely moving his feet. He keeps getting stuck in the loose, deep snow. He goes far ahead, marking his path with uneven black pits. When he tires, he lies down on the snow, lights a home-made cigarette, and the tobacco smoke hangs suspended above the white, gleaming snow like a blue cloud. The man moves on, but the cloud remains hovering above the spot where he rested, for the air is motionless. Roads are always beaten down on days like these - so that the wind won't sweep away this labor of man. The man himself selects points in the snow's infinity to orient himself - a cliff, a tall tree. He steers his body through the snow in the same fashion that a helmsman steers a riverboat from one cape to another.

"Five or six persons follow shoulder-to-shoulder along the narrow, wavering track of the first man. They walk beside his path but not along it. When they reach a predetermined spot, they turn back and tramp down the clean virgin snow which has not yet felt the foot of man. The road is tramped down. It can be used by the people, sleighs, tractors. If they were to walk directly behind the first man, the second group would make a clearly defined but barely passable narrow path, and not a road. The first man has the hardest task, and when he is exhausted, another man from the group of five takes his place. Each of them - even the smallest and weakest - must beat down a section of virgin snow, and not simply follow another's footsteps. Later will come tractors and horses driven by readers, instead of authors and poets."

 ~ Varlam Shalamov

Nordic vs Hellenic

Slightly reworked color panel from the Viking Fraulein Onderzoek series some months back. More over at the Tumblr:

(Part 1)
(Part 2)
(Full color panel)

Nordic vs Hellenic

Part of a series of fight scene vignettes posted over at the Tumblr:
~ Part 1
~ Part 2

WEEEEEE...

Already posted the color version over at the Tumblr. But not the follow-up comic panels (below), reserved for you faithful tens of Bloggers.

Some alternate positions for arms & hands and whatnot, though they could be holographic extensions if she turns out to be an android or alien. And yes, that's Pen Ward and Colin Fleming in the war-driving van, beckoning our heroes to make a quick getaway. Feels like some shape refining and simplification in the foreground characters are needed.

Color Storyboards/Vignettes

Some color vignettes that never saw the light of day; originally just plain boards.

 (I like how some of these quick characters turned out, esp. the design for the girl dancing on the far right.)