October 9, 2006

Getting Closer

Well, finishing out the basics of the face has gone a long way to establishing his character for me, as has selecting if not "the" colour palette, this colour palette should at least be very close.

Of course, there's still the arms/hands and the legs/feet ... and the all-important tail ... to get to next.

Once I get this "flat" image done, the next step will be to decide how much depth I want to give this cartoon and thus, how much highlighting and shadows to create. I'll then create a walk-around model sheet. For those of you who aren't animation geeks, a walk-around and model sheets are usually the animators' bible for a particular show. They give the basics of what each side and the back will look like, often the walk itself, and of course, common poses and facial expressions. For a produced cartoon, this usually means that the extra-creative folks, the senior animators of the project, do the "key frames" of the cartoon ... and the "tweeners" go in and fill out the frames that are necessary to move the characters between key frame to key frame. So, a good bible for a cartoon is essential as you'll have a slew of people working on the animation and while each person has their own personal style, Bugs Bunny looks a particular way, and the tweeners can't just impose their style on top of the existing design.

It's amazing to me how much adding the basic eyes added to my concept of the design. I've got a really solid idea of what I want to do next, whereas before I was simply playing around.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:55 PM | Comments (1) | Sketches | TrackBack | Stumble

October 8, 2006

He's Coming

I've got more than this done in Flash, but this is what I'm prepared to show at the moment.

For all of my writing -- and reading -- I am very character-driven. Once I have a good sense of the character in my head, I can start asking those characters what's going on in their lives and thus begin writing the story.

I have read a few other writers who make the same claim ... the characters, in some sense, take over the story and the best authors often find that the well plotted outline they had for a particular story just doesn't happen as the characters, like children, develop minds of their own.

For me, that's the part about novel-writing that I've always enjoyed the most. Watching the characters grow and surprise me.

Who else will be in the cartoon besides the still nameless monkey? (Yes, I know you can't much tell it's a monkey from the head and this particular style.) Well, I'm also quite fascinated with dia de los muertos and those cartoon-ish depictions of skeletons. So likely, I will resurrect my Li'l Muerto character from ages and ages ago and see what he looks like in this style of sketching.

So if I'm a bit quiet lately ... hopefully I'm drawing and beginning to write character sketches and sketching the critters themselves.

P.S. Just so no one gets the wrong idea, is NOT my drawing ... that's one of the Blacy icons, not mine!

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:08 PM | Comments (3) | Sketches | TrackBack | Stumble

October 2, 2006

Ghostbot

I love animation. And the Esurance commercials out in the U.S. right now are absolutely charming. If you've not seen these, there's an example at the bottom of this post. (Hopefully by the time you've finished reading this post, it'll have loaded through youtube.)

The nice thing about these is that they employ a particular style of animating which minimizes some of the movements. This allows them to utilize the creative time to come up with some really nice plots for 30 second commercials and also spend some time creating kick-ass characters. These have been done by the Ghostbot team for Wildbrain. What I love about these is they're beautifully done. The style is distinct, the Flash animation is nicely done for the time and budget constraints of a 30 second commercial. I really love the way the characters flow and the animations flow.

*sigh* I've GOT to finish working up my character sketches and start moving the pieces into Flash if I'm going to make the next Nicktoons and/or Cartoon Network contest. It stinks when you've got a great black and white sketch done ... and really don't know what colour palette is going to best work ... at the moment, I'm ignoring colour palette and going to get the major character into Flash, then experiment with colour in the library.

I have just realized that unless you like Flash animation, I have TOTALLY lost my entire audience with this post. Oops. I'll try to get some scans uploaded in the next day or so so you can at least look at the somewhat budding cartoon.

And now, one of the Esurance commercials:

Oh, for good measure ... check out more drawing goodness at the Drawing Board.

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:34 AM | Comments (1) | Sketches | TrackBack | Stumble

September 20, 2006

Bits and Pieces

Just a couple of random pieces I've been working on lately.

The first one was a relatively simple cut out placed over a background. If I hadn't been so danged preoccupied and short on time the last few days I would have made the "Hate Me" look much more like a tattoo. I will probably continue working on that next week when I have some time (I hope).

The second one was a bit more work. I had already found a nice blue butterfly some time back, but the site I wanted to advertise had a bit of a connection to red, so I wanted to change the moth/butterfly to a red hue to match (even though there's a blue butterfly on her blog ). I worked with the butterfly first since that would be the central piece of this ad block and used the adjust hue function in each colour channel to change the overall colour. Once I had the hues adjusted, I decided I wanted to toy with making this block look a bit more like a painting than just a photo. So, I copied that layer and began experimenting with the sketch filters. (NEVER, EVER apply filters without first making a copy of that layer ... maybe you'll have redundant layers that you can delete later ... but chances are at some point you'll have need for that unaltered layer!) I believe I finally settled on a nice dry brush, but then I faded the filter a bit to bring back some more of the detail to the image.

Next, I highjacked the sunflower from the person's blog and again used adjust hue to colourize the sunflower since the original was in black and white. A much more faded version of the dry brush filter was used here.

The clouds were cut out and inserted ... but depending on which monitor I'm using ... well, on some monitors the clouds work ... on others I'm not so sure that they do. I think they may simply confuse the issue of the flower ... why do the clouds which appear so distant also appear in front of a section of the flower? Ah well ... not bad for about 45 minutes playing.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:21 PM | Comments (2) | Sketches | TrackBack | Stumble

September 12, 2006

T-shirts

I now officially Goodstorm.com.

I ordered one each of my own t-shirts (I'm just a geek that way) and I love them. The t-shirt quality is great, the print quality is wonderful. If you are looking to sell some shirts, I highly recommend Goodstorm.com over CafePress. While CafePress does do more than just the t-shirts, their products seem to be a bit hit or miss. I wouldn't trust their black t-shirt print process just yet after they messed up a pair of shirts (with one of my designs) sent out to a customer who was prepared to order several more. Unfortunately, after one washing, the shirt's design fell off in the wash.

At Goodstorm.com, though, I'm loving the design freedom in terms of image size and placement. They're a lot more flexible and the products are just wonderful. Now, I just need more than 3 designs! Meanwhile, please peruse the meager offerings ... I've been working on a few more, but my vector art skills are a bit slow still and I've been a little ahhh, obsessed, I suppose, the last week with a new project ... finally have the first character for my own cartoon ... have him sketched out on paper in black and white ... now I've got to get him into vectors and begin playing with colour. (Although I am beginning to toy with the idea of a greyscale cartoon instead ... or really muted colours ... hmmm.)

At any rate, check out the shirts. And if there's a shirt you've always wanted to have, but haven't been able to draw it, let me know and I'll get it set up on Goodstorm.com for you.

And, if you like warped beyond all measure, don't forget to check out T-Shirt Hell which has some of the most WARPED shirts I've ever seen. The kind that are a guilty pleasure to laugh at. The kind that'll really tick off the neighbors, your parents, your boss. "Also available in sober" ... "Don't Mess with Texas ... it's not nice to pick on the retards" ... "Canadians are Eh'holes" ... "I Heart Transitive Pictograph Verbalizations" (you'll have to look for the shirt ... the picture will make you laugh) ... nothing is sacred there and everything is either funny, offensive or both! Not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. (Really ... some of that stuff at T-shirt Hell is raunchy ... but most of it's funny.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:12 AM | Comments (3) | Sketches | TrackBack | Stumble

September 7, 2006

Skeletoons

I have always adored things that some folks consider macabre. Even as a child, I found horror stories fascinating and devoured every Alfred Hitchcock movie and book I could get to and quickly graduated to things like The Amityville Horror. (Although the discovery of the red painted dinky hidey-hole hallway simply made me laugh ... that was in the original 1979 version of the movie.)

As if that weren't enough, I grew up in Texas and learned early about dia de los muertos (Day of the Dead), a latin american holiday celebrated the day(s) after Halloween. And, in Mexico, this is often celebrated with some really whimsical and to some, macabre, art. Sculpture, drawings, paper cuttings ... of skeletons doing normal, everyday things.

And, of course, you know I love cartoons and animation. So, whilst on a journey of random links the other day, I discovered a nifty animation site ... which, of course, had best still be in my browsing history because I forgot to bookmark the darn thing ... which had a link to: the best and most creative artwork I've seen in a looooooooong time. Michael Paulus is my hero.

Enjoy!!

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:42 AM | Comments (3) | Sketches | TrackBack | Stumble