Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Drawings 008
Anyway I quickly drew up this after kelven emailed me a bunch of character drawings of the main character of a project we're working on.
I'll show and tell more about it when I make a new blog purely for that project.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
No more stuff from Ol' John
Yip I'm locked out too. I'm pretty bad at writing anger letters (As you can see with my grammer and spelling) Period! so I decided to just draw out my emotions about the whole situation...It helped.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Dracula_Caricature
Friday, October 16, 2009
Dismemberment does exist in Cartoons
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Slap-Happy Lion 02
Here's some more from the model sheet "Slap-Happy Lion", I started drawing the mouse as well:
The second one of the lion is pretty stretched but the effect is still there...at least I think...
And here is some random proof that I don't trace my drawings and I do do what I talk about (Printing out the model sheets first).
Ya all come back now, ya hear?
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Slap-Happy Lion 01
Taking the advice of John, I've been playing a model of a character I've always liked.
I can never remember the names of the characters in a lot of Tex Avery cartoons mainly because the names were barely mentioned...I just remember that this character was just called "The Lion".
As I've mentioned before, I don't really enjoy coping characters because I've got to trying and guess what was the motivation behind the character's action, what was the direction of it all?
Monday, October 12, 2009
Drawings 007
Here's some more stuff:
Once again I didn't design these characters (Although I did draw these), they were done by my friend Kelven but I did direct how the cat looks (I focused too much on the interesting details and now I'm living to regret it since I'm trying to learn how to draw them). Kelven could always draw them with such control...I've still got room to improve.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Clear Staging Vs. Logic
Some are things like line of action and silhouette. But some are more typical things that we've been drilled into over the years that we have to unlearn...things like reality and logic...things that will restrict the pose from being the best it can be.
I read this book once called "The Animation's survival Kit" by Richard Williams...now you'll notice if you read between the lines that all his tutors, teachers and mentors all told him that he was being too technical...and I agree with them...a lot of the examples in the book were too focused on proving a formula then successfully showing what they really trying to do.
Although I did find one thing I still think is important, unfortunately he did explain it too much in a technical way.
He calls it "Breaking the Joint"
I call it "Dismemberment" or "Disjointedness"
It's removes the expection of trying to force realism into a pose that could jeopardise the whole direction or intension of the pose and what it stands for.
I hope this example helps push the understanding of what I'm trying to say. This is a true fact, why is the chin pushed into an unusual way? Well mainly in cartoons you have a larger range then simply trying to copy reality. Sometimes you have to shift the character around to read more clearly.
Here's what happens when it restricts itself to reality: Doesn't it look weird? it's whole pose is messed up now.
Have a look at the two together: Ok, technically if we changed the head/cranium around on the second one it could still work but ultimately the message behind it has gone now...Reality has robbed it of it's direction and punch.
Here's the line of action: The line of action is all screwed-up on the second one, there goes a form of direction lost. Here's the rest of the direction out of it.
Because the head isn't leaning back, the kick has lost a lot of energy out of it... Here is one of the drawings I've posted earlier this week, to be honest...it lacks a lot of energy to it and the pose is scrambled.Logically you'd think a character would do this if they were going to take a swing and I must admit...It has some good factors about it but...you risk throwing away part of his expression in the action, yes you see some of it is in the eyes but it's not clear. This pose I like best, you get more of a pull behind the pose, more direction but you don't throw away the expression, all your throwing away is how you'd do it logically which in truth no one really cares about to begin with.You know it needs to be a big swing because most of the line of action is in the bat and arms of the character
The direction is improved, the action is simple and clear...you don't need reality in interfere with entertainment.
"Focus on the result...Not the Formula"
A Half Decent Modern-Day Character
I'm a big fan of Team Fortress 2 (Or just TF2), I stopped playing after a while because of boredom and the fact that they ruined the best character of the game...
THE HEAVY!!!
He was the first class I saw for the game and He's always been the most fun character personality wise.
He always had the best lines, best expressions, best voice, best everything...He was to me a "NATURALLY" appealling character.
His personality: He's a impulsively proud character...confident in his general size and strength (He refers everyone else as "Wee-lil Babies"). He's passive/aggressive character in that he is mainly quiet and serious when he is dealing with normal life things (Like the "Meet the class" interview) but he's back in the zone when he's fighting and killing in that he yells and screams his famous "Cry some morrrrreeeee!!". Everything he does he does it in a strong manner, it has a forcefulness to it. He has a thing for his minigun (The thing he has in his hands below) in which he calls "Sasha".
His voice: His voice is very distinct to any other russain impersonated voice I've heard, his voice is husky, deep and funny as hell to listen to.
I'd love to see Valve make a short animation cartoon about him, he's such a great character...
He's like the modern-day popeye to me, he's the character you really want to win, he loves getting into fights and he eats heath food...
Friday, October 9, 2009
Caricatures have direction as well
I've found another example to explain this idealogy I had on this missing animation principle I call "Direction"
You see I read this book a while ago about caricatures by Alex Hughes called "Learn to Draw Caricatures" which I think is a decent start on caricatures.
I'm going to use a page I found as an example:
This is a good example of "Stretch" with no direction, as he explains in the book he's just stretching the face (Which explains that why just stretching the entire face isn't always the best soluation). Unfortunately a lot of cartoons nowadays have "Squash and Stretch" with no real purpose behind it (Without Direction), they're just relying the principles and formulas to animate.
These examples show that he isn't just stretching features, he's also holding some back as well. He's identifies which factors on the face need to do what, he's found the purpose his aiming for. Unfortunately he's final drawing is a little too focused on design gimmicks and things I guess he likes to add into his drawings out of habit (I'm a bit like that too).
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Drawings 006
Here's some more stuff.
I always liked this character even in development, He's a classic screwball character.
His name is Robbie, He's a brittish punk-rock dog. My friend can draw him way better, I'm just getting use to his structure which I think it very important. I find with building a character or practicing with an already created character, it's best to simply play around with the construction design very heavily to test it's functionality.
Also I love quirky Zombies, not the violent, crazy bloodfest ones...I like the dumb and funny-looking ones. They're in things like Shawn of the dead, Timesplitters, Simpson Zombies, I can't think of anymore examples.
but I like the horrors that are quirky...A lot of the old horrors were like this, they were terrible at being scaring but they were still fun to watch instead of the other way around. I don't know, maybe I'm just a big wuss.