Finger Blisters

2009-03-18T00:14:00.000-07:00

Line of action stuff- absolutely no clean up

2007-11-27T11:18:00.001-08:00

2007-11-13T16:07:00.001-08:00

2007-10-30T00:10:00.000-07:00

SOOO close to being done birds...only a few short chapters more before I get into the animation chapters!

2007-10-23T19:24:00.001-07:00

2007-10-16T17:31:00.001-07:00

2007-10-15T18:11:00.001-07:00

2007-10-14T02:32:00.001-07:00

2007-10-14T02:26:00.000-07:00

2007-10-11T00:46:00.001-07:00

2007-10-09T11:41:00.000-07:00

Wolf Day

2007-10-05T09:16:00.000-07:00

The way Mr. Blair designed the face on this cat really emphasizes something that one of my AM teachers said- eyeballs with pupils that sit directly in the middle of the iris tend to give a character a vacant or strange look.

When drawing my version, I just couldn't force myself to draw the pupils directly in the center of the iris- they kept drifting towards the direction the cat is looking.
I think my version looks a bit more alive than the one in the book, but that also makes it off model.

2007-10-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

In the week between semesters at Animation Mentor I have drawn my way through several sections of the Preston Blair book. It's been fun and my speed and accuracy have definitely improved. I will probably not be able to keep up this pace once classes resume, but I'm going to try...

2007-09-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

2007-09-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

I'm having some trouble with these "tough guy" characters.
It's so easy to straighten them up to much and weaken the line of action, or get the proportion of the head to body all wrong because their heads and chests are so ridiculously massive.

This bear, for instance, came out pretty good in the head and arms but he should be stretching forward more with his torso.

2007-09-11T22:16:00.000-07:00

2007-09-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

This puppy is supposed to be a "cute" character. While I know my version isn't 100% accurate, I don't think either my drawing or the original is so much "cute" as "freaky"

2007-09-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

2007-09-04T21:40:00.000-07:00

Back again.
I've been animating in Maya and working a lot lately, so I'm feeling the pull to get back into drawing and using my hands again.
I think at this point i can safely say I've completely fallen off the John K animation course wagon, for numerous reasons, so I'm just going through the PBlair book at my own pace and enjoying it.

2007-07-24T00:28:00.000-07:00

I am so done drawing dogs.
So even though I haven't really perfected Preston's dog heads I am moving on to other pages in the book.
At first it was hard to make the switch because I was used to drawing the dogs.
Notice the first rabbit is kind of smooshed and the duck is like one of those "spot what's missing" games in the funny pages- wrong number of buttons, fingers, etc...
but things started to click again by the time I got to the vultures.

2007-07-04T12:40:00.001-07:00

''

Wow, look at this thing break my blog template. Oh well - I tried several video sites (including the one I work for, lol) and aniboom dropped the fewest number of frames when encoding my video. It's my first attempt at putting something like this together and I'm pretty proud of it despite it's roughness and technical issues.

I have been drawing but haven't had time to scan and upload anything yet. Ciao for now! Go see Rataouille!

2007-05-08T23:27:00.000-07:00

2007-02-05T00:18:00.000-08:00

Good news is I'm currently working on some short animations which will hopefully make it into a documentary film. Bad news is I've had no time for drawing in weeks. Harumph.

2007-01-02T23:59:00.000-08:00

Finally! Christmas allowed me to make some long overdue drawing progress. Well, sort of progress. Having to take such a long break meant I felt pretty rusty at first, but I got some flow going about the middle of the second page. (the first 2 dogs are from my edition of the Preston Blair book; for the other dogs I used the official first edition drawings)

This last drawing (my lines are in red) shows how far I still have to go.

2006-11-01T22:31:00.000-08:00

2006-10-23T23:43:00.000-07:00

Whoa, look how dirty my scanner is getting! I better do something about that...

2006-10-19T23:11:00.000-07:00

More....

2006-10-17T21:42:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty happy with the way these three faces came out, considering what a struggle it was to do the first one (in the post below). The cat still looks too much like a football, but the one in the book looks lik a football too when it comes right down to it.

2006-10-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

PS - For some reason Blogger will only display some of the images in each post, but the images are all there. Reloading the page usually helps, or you can just click on the empty boxes to be taken to the full size image view.

2006-10-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

I have figured out the one weakness of my version of the PB book - the book has been reformatted horizontally, which means all the images are smaller than in the original book. This makes tracing every drawing (as suggested by John K) impractical, especially for the drawings near the spine. Ah well.

Lesson 1 continues...

2006-10-04T22:57:00.000-07:00

Phew, I'm almost through lesson 1...

2006-10-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

2006-09-25T22:10:00.000-07:00

I finally got my book!

I found it at Pearl art store. It was actually a bit pricer than I expected, but it's not the single volume - it's a soft bound collection of several of Preston Blair's books. At $30 it was still a steal.

So since I actually have my book now, I went back to the beginning and did some copies of drawings in the intro pages. The puppy didn't come out quite right- I made him blockier and less goofy than the original - but I think the scruffy dog is pretty close.

2006-09-07T21:52:00.000-07:00

Horrible discovery #1 : I have been using the computer to get around drawing basic shapes for far too long.

It's so easy to have the computer draw you a perfect square or circle, so why bother doing it yourself? Well, this is why - because it makes drawing an egg of the same volume 10 or so times without the computer really bloody hard. Meh. More practice to follow soon...

Horrible discovery #2: People don't wear hats anymore.

They really don't. So I have no experience drawing them (baseball caps and knit caps yes, but it's not quite the same thing) and couldn't even find a fully brimmed hat to look at. Hence the disappearance of the hat halfway down the page. Also, this guy may be off model but he's somewhat...consistently off model. I think I need to get a hold of some tracing paper and the course book soon.

And what the heck is that thing on the head of the old woman supposed to be? Again, my inexperience with headgear shines through.

2006-09-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

John Kricfalusi, of Mighty Mouse and Ren&Stimpy fame, claims that the best animation course ever is Preston Blair's and he's willing to sort through the crappy blogs of hundreds of wanna-be animators to prove it. Who am I not to take up the challenge?
So begins my attempt at the $100,000 animation course.

Given my schedule, I think I'll be posting here about once a week, scanner willing.