What Dead Week (Finals) has taught me about my creative process

At least I’m not writing papers or something similarly pointless.

Governor, you may want to reconsider your statement.

Heavens, it doesn’t look like Big Bird’s bought into the Governor’s rhetoric!

But seriously. Leave it to a Republican to point out a program that’s like 0.00014% of the budget as a priority in cuts.

Well HEY again.

The TROUBLES. of Mr. Bradley Manning

Regards to Mr. William Hogarth and his kickass engravings.

Seriously, who was surprised when the presidential administration had a fit about losing the legal authority to kidnap whoever they wanted? In the end though, it doesn’t have to be legal if nobody knows about it, so…

…Mexico, anyone?

Found this gem and I couldn’t resist.

The race has narrowed down.

And I don’t see much difference between three of the contenders.

Here are two.

December 25th: Merry Christmas!

I need to work on my digital-mediums skills. Well, with Toon Boom Animate, that is. It’s kind of tough to get tablet drawing, but hey, you get there.

This software is tough to get used to! I’m sure it will be worth soon enough. This was supposed to be a quick-sketch from the “Rock the House” video, but I worked on it for a little longer and it turned into what’s either a crappy drawing or an all-right quick sketch.

Onward!

and Merry Christmas ta’e ye all.

December 21st: Venom

I know, I know, I’ve been a bad blogger these past few days. I am trying to juggle two project cars and a renovation of my personal wardrobe (pictures will come upon success), though.

I decided to deviate from what I’ve always gotten such a kick out of drawing (guess what that is…), and recreate a panel from a “Venom” comic book I dug out from ages ago. I still think it’s kickass that they actually made a comic about Venom’s character from the Spider-Man comics. I didn’t take the time to look up who the penciler was for this particular issue, but here it is:

Yay for charcoal! I’m seriously a fan of the range of values you can get from it. Oh and those things that kind of look like fingerprints on the right were supposed to be bubbles, since he was smiling–maniacally–underwater.

December 17th: Russel

After a few futile attempts to create new characters I decided I need to work on my character design and understanding. So I drew a couple takeoffs of some more Gorillaz stuff, more specifically, Russel.

I think what I need to learn is to keep the design simple… i.e. anatomy and proportions… then add details. For instance–two circles for eyes? Not too simple to be bad, it seems.

Man, I wish I could take college classes on this stuff.

Speaking of Jamie Hewlett, I need to read/watch Tank Girl! Apparently it’s really good.

December 16th: LIP SYNC TEST

Man! Here, I post the result of my first hand at tra-digitally animated lip syncing. It took a few days, which is why I haven’t been posting, but it paid off. It took about 80-90 different drawings to put the whole thing together. So I’m really starting to develop an appreciation for what old-school traditional animators have done. But I’ve never done anything like this before in my life! And it’s all because I got to open a Christmas present early. (Thanks mom!)

Toon Boom Animate was the Christmast gift from my mom, and it is one powerful animation program. I’ve only scratched the surface, but the user interface is surprisingly intuitive. Of course, the canadian-accented tutorial videos help, eh?

The ghost character below is addressing my friend Grant Thackray, who was with me when I got the idea for this! I kept it a secret though, until now.

Learned a lot about the process too. I’m sure there’s plenty I’m doing wrong, and that there’s easier ways to do certain things, but hey–one step at a time, right? It was a lot of fun.

December 12th: Exquisite corpse and other games

So many other good friends and I have been making a habit of getting together this December and watching good ol’ christmas favorites (like the Star Wars holiday special… um…) and tonight we played a good few rounds of the game Exquisite Corpse (which I explained in that post about the running elephant about a month ago).

First, Grant and I wanted to see what would happen if we both made a drawing then gave it to another person to interpret–simply to observe how different visual styles are used by different people. We first drew each other, then acted as if that person in the drawing (after we gave it to the other person) wasn’t anyone we had ever met before.

Featured artists include Grant Thackray, Laura Killip and Michelle Leigh!

The character below is named Bo, a four legged monster who suffers from halitosis.

And here we have a sociopathic organ-grinder, ‘but you wouldn’t know he was evil until he took you back into his dungeon and tortured you.’

BEYOND THIS POINT, pictures from a hearty game of “exquisite corpse” reigns supreme. I’ll list the prompts/phrases right before the picture, as close as I can remember them.

“Mr. President, you’re going to have to dismount the merry-go-round.”

-something about soggy cereal and a crime scene-

“Quick, Franken-Dracula-werewolf-man! The Whirl-a-Tilt’s on fire!”

“ALL THE BIRDS
when the radio is on”

“Shake it”

“If radioactivity doesn’t kill that cat, I’ll have to DO IT MYSELF”

“I think the TV ate the cat again. Get your gun”

“Ms. Frankeldorf can get the cat to jump through the time-space continuum.”

“What are you doing, you crazy old lady
that’s not my food, that’s a giant onion”

For your viewing pleasure.