Blue Collar Acanthostegids

 

Some random character design and digital painting pages. (Yup, plural.) Not much to say other than I really need to figure out why I keep adding tetrapods in average everyday settings in my drawings. 

Animation Hellhole Memories Part 4.2

 [Close up of a naive overworked kid at the studio. Larger and colored 2 panel version below.]

I don't remember what the intent was with these. But if this was going to be one of those notebook drawings with narration, the top panel probably would've been: 

"Thinking about the future, he probably had no idea that that very moment, lost in thought inside the confines of that hidden college courtyard, would be the time he'd look back on nostalgically while stuck in a cubicle, pulling OT with little to no air conditioning." 

(Which would've been at a studio called... Phlegm Romain. I laughed when I came across a news article from back then playing up all the great new shows Phlegm was looking to do, with an anonymous comment at the end; "What a joke, that place is a sweatshop." In hindsight, I can't really argue with that. Maybe that's why they up and moved down to Mexico, deep respect that Corporate Animation Management has for the domestic workforce and the Animation Guild.)

 

[I realized after the last post that most nighttime settings use cooler colors for anything either outdoors or not under direct light. So, I played with the color levels to reflect that while trying to keep it from being too dark. I've done this sort of scenario before, so you'd think I'd have remembered the process.]

 

[Last minute addition: Here's a recent redux of an old piece I did back when I was at said studio. Sort of an anniversary present to all the time spent there. As you can see, a happy worker with the proper motivation. The original piece is still somewhere on here I think, but I'm not one to show off old underwear if I don't have to. Good luck finding it.]  

Animation Hellhole Memories Part 4

Part of a sketchpage that I started a few months ago but got around to finishing up recently, playing with the lighting and colors a little bit. Memories of the animation department over at Allan Hancock College, in the wee days before "official" art college and even more Official industry jobs. See below for more panels.

[Night version panel. Most of my memories are of fall semester, so the days would get dark at around 5 or 6 pm, by which point one half of the class would bail. The half that stayed behind were the ones near the animation test station (the janitor's closet in the background that Julio's stepping into). Drawing, flipping paper, a group of 3 or 4 people making dumb Monty Python cutout animations on the test machine at the same time and being generally stupid. But usually the main focus revolved around deciding where to go eat afterwards.]

[Alternate take on one of the poses. Doesn't this kid know how to sit properly? In fact, he'd tend to sit like that more often than not most everywhere, as well as cross-legged. Still does. Dumb hippy.]

Random Character Design Sketch Page

 

Not much to say here, just a random sketchpage I did a few months back while listening to comic book industry talk on Youtube. It's probably what got me to drawing the characters doing typical super hero crap in the background. I know it's what definitely got me to add the Google Streetview images: The person talking mentioned his old comic book hunting grounds as a kid, in... I think it was somewhere in Ohio, some little town. I like the storm cloud atmosphere in the pics near whatever freeway, so I thought: Why not have some superhero / UFO shenanigans going on there?

 

I have no idea what I was thinking with the Bond / Get Carter-style character with the gun arm though. The foreshortening is probably correct, but it doesn't totally "feel" correct. Meaning that it isn't jammed in your face Terry-Gilliam-style enough.

Childhood Nostalgia - The Local Bowling Alley

(Did some revisioning on the original, mainly the one kid in the foreground. Shapes should flow or at least have some kind of balanced rhythm, no matter what the pose or clothing options.) 

Hazy memories of the bowling alley our sleepy little town had, off E Clark Ave if I remember right. Was torn down and replaced with an Albertson's and extended strip mall years ago, and as far as I know no pictures of it exist online. Remember it having a really nice arcade in an area leading down off the main entrance, and that me and several others spent an entire day in playing TMNT when our grade school class did an end-of-year trip there for whatever reason.

I also remember several of us stealing bowling balls out the side entrance during the high school years. Alley bowling mostly, though one of them ended its existence by being blown up with an M80 inside of a garage.

And as one of my childhood friends pointed out, endless prank phonecalls to the main desk. Half the time some of us would be hanging out there only to hear over the intercom "Ray Paguy. Mr. Ray Paguy to the front desk please."

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.
-------

~ The original full pic that started the process:

~ Panel detail of the peasant riot:

Obligatory Retro Game Post 5

The Space Harrier cyclops mammoth got cropped out for now, but since this is part of a larger illustration, no worries. He'll have his day soon. As always, this can be found over at the Instagram account.

Posted this over at the Instagram account already: Complete revision of an ancient piece back from the CalArts days, 2005 or so. If you look closely you can see the original image in the background. I think I may have even used it for my portfolio submissions that landed me one of my first studio jobs at the time.

(Yes, an actual physical portfolio. 30 to 45 page booklets, with clear insert sleeves, badly printed images courtesy of Kinko's, and a grand total of 30 seconds spent by companies flipping through them - these existed at one point in time, back when Cintiqs were seen as a novelty item in the industry.)

If I remember right, one of the roommates at the time had a high end printer which I used to knock these portfolios out with. Later on I was at the mercy of Kinko's. The first got me into the industry, the latter not so much. Which makes one wonder if it was the quality of the work or the prints that caught their eye first time around, since I was drawing sh*t at the time. But it was sh*t that was high res on 80lb satin matte paper.

But oh well. Предоставь мертвым погребать своих мертвецов.

Another Sketch and Illustration Dump

This place is becoming more the clearing house for anything I do over a several month period. In any case, enjoy these several images my tens of viewers.

Sketches before the year ends

...Because tumblr's flipping out for some reason over showing images proper. From the past few months going back to Halloween:

Beta Euthynus sketches illustrations and WIPs

Because Mr. Chris Palmer has really appealing shorthands for character faces.

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

Viking Onderzoek Redux, plus sketch studies

Alright, let's try this one more time: 

Whether weeks, months, or years have passed, this constant need to go back and redux older work, it's making me realize how important focus is, that it's not enough to just plug away at something and hope that some sort of osmotic improvement will be had via the lone act of pencil to paper (or stylus to Cintiq, for all you hardcore industry folks out there); but rather making a concerted effort to note mistakes and weaknesses, to learn and practice correct understructure, understanding in real time the principles of dynamics, clarity and balance... Just generally being aware of not only what you're doing, but what you're going for.

Most importantly, to have a set of technical drawing principles to abide by, a checklist of "Alright, hit that first; now onto this." I know I do, it's just a matter of formalizing it and "doing it to such a degree... that you're eventually not even aware of it." (The Book of Five Animation Discs.)

(The drawing of the sculpture's been floating around since November. Added the girl over the weekend.)

Am thinking one of the overarching first principles is: Sit on your work. Come back and look at it with fresh eyes.

And not to demotivate the Inktober crowd, but: Never ink or commit to your first pass. At least, not until you've practiced the former. The old sketchbooks are a testimony to this.

Anyhow, I think stepping away from the main piece and doing studies helped, whether in the margins or on a completely separate file. Given that Photoshop allows dragging and dropping between files, why stick yourself to one cramped canvas to figure something out:

(Still a bit too literal.)

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)

Scum and Villainy

...Rounding out the Boba Fett Youth post from a few weeks ago. Plus, work's been an interest place this past month.

And, a preview for the next set of illustrations:

Acheulean Wide Shot plus Works In Progress

Newer drawings of an old idea, from an old book, on even older subject material.

...Yes, that made perfect sense.

Dug up an old story idea after having gotten a couple of books illustrated by Zdeněk Burian. Fun stuff to look at if you're into the magic of primal stories and wildlife.

(Simplified color version, minus the filtered light in the background.)

And a couple of WIPs based off the same theme: