Getting there...

Yet another update on the walk cycle. I keep falling in & out of love with it now, I think I've just been staring at the same thing for too long. I was absolutely hating it last night, but then I got some really good feedback this morning, so maybe I was being a bit hard on myself. Regardless, it's still not where I want it to be, but it is getting closer. I should be able to get it done to my liking in the near future.

Here are 2 versions of the walk. First is 28 frames looping on 1's, then 56 frames looping on 2's. I also did a quick & dirty BG in TBS based on the sketch in my previous post. Ultimately I'd like to animate most of the BG elements to make the world seem "alive," but I'm not going to worry about that until the walk is where I want it. It's not a BG contest afterall...

I'm very curious to hear opinions on these, especially in terms of fast vs slow. Everytime I look at it again I like a different version, & I'm having trouble deciding. Is it too fast on 1's? Too slow on 2's? Aaaaaahhhhh!!! *pulls hair out* Well, whatever I go with I just hope I get it looking good by the end. I've already learned a lot through the 6 million mistakes I've corrected already & there are plenty more to go... So in the meantime, please give me your thoughts on the 2 versions.
On 1's

On 2's

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Lessons for the aspiring cartoonist

My Mom was talking about starting to draw again (she did a lot once upon a time) and I told her I'd try to dig up some lessons for her to get reaquainted with the basics. While her interest is not in animation, I found this excellent site that gives short lessons on cartooning. As I read through it, I had a hard time pulling myself away from it. The lessons are very brief, just a page each, but it's laid out in a very fun to read/do way. There isn't much in the way of how to, rather it tells you what to do. Replicating each step is up to you, but there's nothing that someone with basic drawing skills can't do, and the lessons build upon each other in a very logical & well thought out way. Anyway, without hyping it any further, give these lessons a look if you need help getting started, or if you just feel like you could use a refresher. I found myself doing a handful of them just for the hell of it as I was reading along. You can find them at karmatoons Enjoy!And here is the rest of it.

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Cut Out Tutorial Parts 2-4

Well, I finally got a day off & I didn't have to move furniture, work around a carpenter, or do anything else for that matter. So I was able to get the remaining parts of the cut out tutorial uploaded. Parts 2-4 are all in one big file. You can view it through the embedded player below, or through this link: Cut Out Tutorial Parts 2-4. If it doesn't look good or appears stretched it's because I don't know what I'm doing, but if you right click the video after it loads, you can select zoom, then full screen, & it should look fine.

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I really hope some people find these usefull. I apologize once again for taking so much longer than promised, it was admittedly more than I expected. I will continue to make these, but I think in the future I will try to keep them MUCH shorter & more concise. These ended up turning out fairly well, allthough there are certainly improvements to be made. Any places that get a little choppy, or seem like bad editing, are probably just that. But for a first & second attempt I'm pleased. Anyway, please leave some feedback, I'm curious to hear people's opinions.

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Some storyboards for intro to Early Birds & the purpose they serve...

Before I say anything else, let me make it very clear that I am not a professional (or even very good) storyboard artist. But I know I'm doing at least one thing right with it & that is leaving myself a very clear set of instructions for the animatic and eventual finished piece that are to come. This is of the utmost importance when storyboarding, as it is one of the most fundamentally important parts of the pre-production phase of any animation. A completed storyboard should resemble a comic strip, with still panels of the key moments in the action conveying the story. The finished storyboard will therefore serve as the best & only blueprint that you will have to work with as your project progresses, so you will want to put some effort into this phase to save yourself a lot of heartache down the line...

If I have an idea for how I want something to look, or how a certain action will be timed, I would never be able to make it work if I just started my project by trying to draw each & every frame once & once only. Everything is a process, and the storyboard is a big part of the animation process (not to mention TV & Film). If it is neglected, it will certainly be noticeable in the final product. Here is a great post I found in the archives of JK's blog which articulates the importance of storyboarding much more clearly than I could hope to do.

There are many sites that give lessons & tutorials about how to create storyboards, a simple google search will find you a bunch, & be careful as they don't all agree with each other completely. They do however emphasise the importance of clear communication. This may be obvious if you are working in a team environment, but is often overlooked just the same. Equally bad, many people feel that storyboarding is completely unnecessary if they are working on a project alone. Big mistake. Communicating effectively with yourself is just as important as communicating with a co-worker. There are plenty of times I go a day or two without being able to touch my work, and if I didn't leave myself clear notes & illustrations to come back to, I'd be totally lost. Saying you keep all your ideas "up here" in your noodle is just a recipe for disaster in which you are bound to forget that one perfect idea you had the other day.

There are storyboard templates available online to download, programs specifically designed for digital and/or traditional storyboarding, and of course the option I choose with most things in life... making your own. The template I've been using so far was created very simply in powerpoint, and is doing the job for me thus far. All I needed was a white rectangle, a yellow rectangle & a few lines for notes. I have a few alterations in mind, such as leaving more space for camera notes & dialogue, but I've been able to squeeze in what I need so it's nothing major. You could just as easily make your own with simple programs like paint, & powerpoint, or use something more advanced like photoshop or toon boom, and customize your template to your liking. Just check out some examples of professionally used templates online & include the elements you will need. Moving on...

I have a good number of storyboard sketches for the Early Birds intro that I'm working on. Some of them are rougher than others, but as with everything else, they will be refined along the way. Ideally, I want to use Louis Prima's version of "When You're Smiling" (or at least a portion) as the theme song for the intro. It has a great tempo, is catchy, & I think it will help with the old school feel I'm trying to achieve overall. What I've got so far will help me as I work on the timing of certain actions that I want to go along with specific parts of the song, & you can see that in some of my notes, if you can read them that is.








So far I have 16 sketches done, and I don't think I'll need more than 20 - 22 to finish it up. I will, however, add some more panels in certain spots to elaborate on key poses & action sequences. Some specific examples of this would be panels 2 - 7, in which Larry is all over the place. Ron's actions are slower & more deliberate here, but I will most likely draw out Larry's actions on a larger sheet & insert more panels (i.e. 2A, 3A, 3B, etc.) until I get the timing & flow that I want. I'll do the same with panels 13 - 14 as well, as I want to perfectly time Cyn being yanked out of the ground, stretching waaaaaaaay out, & then snapping back into shape. Also, the first camera moves happen through these panels, so I want to polish them up & make sure I get the right field of view. I also included the blank panels 17-20 to show how a tiny note to self can be so helpful. When I have time to work on it again, I'll know right where I left off & what I had planned at the time.

That's all I've got for now, I'll get the rest of the storyboard up as soon as it's finished, and hopefully an animatic shortly after that. I just downloaded a screen capture program as well, so I may take a stab at doing a video tutorial on something Toon Boom related.

Cheers for now...

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Larry Facial Expressions

Well, I promised to be done by this afternoon, & no matter how you slice it, it is most definitely after noon... I did manage to get finished though, & I had a lot of fun with this exercise. It was a challenge for sure, not so much in technical difficulty, but in that I really had to force myself to visualize what Larry would look like with each expression. I'm glad I did it though, & I can honestly say I didn't cut any corners, at least not knowingly. I'm not married to all the colors, but for the most part I like them. Still need to play with the inside of his mouth a bit, & his hands as well. Should I make them separate from the arm like in the "Yell" pose? or just have them blend in as I have it in the rest of the drawings? Any auggestions are appreciated.

Now without further adieu, here are my first and second drafts, along side Preston Blair's version using Jerry. This is a good example of using different colored pencils on the rough sheet in order to get the good lines for the inked version. Hope you enjoy, & please let me know where you think I can make improvements. Also, I don't like the image quality on this file, so here is a link to a better image of Larry.

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Drawing, poses, and character design tips

I made some comments about character design in my last post, and I've been involved in several discussions lately involving the drawing process (yes it is a process), so I thought it would be useful to show how these are of the utmost importance to a quality toon. I will start with drawing. When I first got into cartooning & started drawing a lot, I was absolutely addicted to my eraser. I used it more than I used my pencil, but my drawing skill was not really improving. Maybe eventually I got close to what I wanted, but not usually, & even if I did, it was hard to ink the right lines on a new page because of so many rubbed out lines on the first draft. I was advised by some people to stop using the eraser and instead use different colored pencils to correct bad lines. This was some of the best advice I have ever received, because by leaving your bad lines where they are, you can draw a good one where they aren't. Whenever I erased anything, 90% of the time I drew another line right over the one I just erased, then erased it again!(rinse & repeat?) When I started sketching in color, it became much easier to alter my drawing without erasing, & you can see that in a couple sketches on my last post. The end result of this method is that in time you will end up being able to make more confident strokes with your pencil/pen, and you will be LESS prone to making the same mistakes, whereas when you erase all the time, you will be just as likely to re-draw the same bad lines.
Another thing I find to be an integral part of the drawing process is making revisions. I usually start out with a very loose & rough sketch that captures the general idea of what I want, i.e. body position, size etc. Then on a fresh sheet & using a light table, I go over all of the good lines from the first drawing & tighten up the bad ones (this can be done digitally in TBS using the light table feature). This usually leaves me with a decent drawing but probably not perfect. This is where I look for details that could/should be added. Mouth positions, facial expressions & hand gestures can all add tons of personality to your drawing if they are done properly. Doing them properly requires as much or more discipline as it does talent. That may sound strange at first, but the fact is that the world is full of extremely talented individuals that never had the perserverence or discipline to amount to anything. *steps off soap-box*
So, now we need to work on some of those expressions & poses. This part of the process takes alot of thought, and the more you put into it, the more you will get out. The best tip I can give is to follow in the footsteps of Preston Blair. He was one of the most talented cartoonists there was, and whether you know it or not, you all know much of his work from Disney & MGM. The following pics are pages from his books that illustrate alot of what I said about building a final drawing through a series of revisions & stages. I'm sure his drawings carry more weight than my words, but to futher illustrate the importance of doing all this, I will give myself a homework assignment & try to duplicate the page of facial expressions using my character Larry. It will be a challenge for me, but I will be better for having done it, and I strongly suggest you do it too.

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Introduction to "The Early Birds"

This post isn't meant to be a bible on what order to do things, because I am certainly no authority on the matter. In fact, maybe some people can clue me in on things I am doing wrong, because I'm sure I'm making plenty of rookie mistakes. Anyway, I have an idea for a series that I've just started working on, so I figure this is a perfect time to start sharing my workflow & such. This blog won't be 100% dedicated to this series, but since I'm starting the two at the same time, it will be a good opportunity to share my creative process as it unfolds. Hopefully some people will benefit from reading it along the way, and anyone with advice or tips for me is certainly welcome to share them.

Step one in the creative process is obviously generating an idea. I'm sure everyone's brain works a little differently, but I know that the majority of my ideas (or at least the good ones) seem to happen spontaneously, so based on that, I would advise anyone & everyone to always carry a pad of paper & a pen. When you have an idea, write it down, or you will be cursing yourself later. Now I had wanted to do something with a couple of fishing buddies for a while, but that was all I had, no artwork, no script, no setting, no character personalities in mind, just an idea for a buddy piece that revolved around fishing. So I just kept that much in the back of my mind until something else came to me.

So I'm working with an idea involving 2 buddies, & the obvious path is the standard odd couple spinoff, or a beavis & butthead/ Bill & Ted/ Wayne's world type thing, which is O.K. but played out. So then I thought of something more like a Tom & Jerry or Coyote & Roadrunner relationship, which again is all well & good, but been done a million times. Then I decided based on a quick sketch I had done that my fishing buddies would be birds... no reason other than I liked the sketch & it looked something like a bird crossed with Grover from sesame street.

Now I have two buddies that sort of fall into the "Tom" & "Coyote" role, but who is "Jerry" or "the Roadrunner?" Well, fishing buddies need bait, & birds eat worms, and there's no bait more timeless than the humble worm, so... I found my third character, & more importantly, my "Jerry." At this stage I have the general idea for the overal story, two protagonists, and now my antagonist. I also have a few initial sketches that I've done which you can see here:










This is the character design phase, where I put some thought into who these characters are, how they move & what their personalities are, and of course try to bring all of this out in the drawings. The best example I have of this so far is this walk cycle of Larry. The first 7 frames I like, but I did a horrible job on the second half of the cycle, I was in a big rush to ink it, the pencil drawings actually look better. It is 13 frames on 2's, & as it stands right now I'm happy with the motion except for frames 8 & 9, I need to have his right leg look more like he is swinging it out to the side as it comes around. Anyway...
The main characters are Larry & Ron (I'm not married to the names but for now...) and of course the worm, I'm thinking he'll be called either "Cyn" or "anti" - more on why later. Anyway, Larry is a turkey vulture. He is a very laid-back, relaxed country boy, sort of awkward & goofy but still the man. He fishes because there is no better way to spend his time, plain & simple. Ron is more of the NRA type, donned in cammo gear, militant patriotic attitude etc, that fishes & hunts for sport. Now I have been using the names Larry & Ron because my first thought was to take a political angle with this toon, having Larry represent my liberal views while Ron represents my conservative ones. The worm is going to be loosely based on Antisthenes (student of Socrates & founder of the "Cynic" school of Philosophy) hence his name being either Cyn or Anti. He will be the one who points out the plethora of hippocritical behavior that he sees in both Larry and Ron. I also envision him with a big time Napoleon complex, he will have a tough-guy attitude & will always be ready to kick ass & take names, but alas, he is a worm.

I'm pretty comfortable with the characters right now, & think they have the potential to play off each other quite nicely if I can manage some decent scripts. At the moment I am still developing exactly what each character will look like from all angles, & figuring out how I want them to move. Aside from that I have been laying out some backgrounds & landscapes to try & establish the world they live in. Here are a couple super-rough sketches of Larry & Ron's bedrooms I have so far, they're totally out of proportion & perspective, but they capture the general idea I want.

Well, that post was longer than expected, but I've been writing it in pieces for a few days. I'll try to keep future posts shorter & more frequent, but I hope it was worth the read.... probably not.

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Here I am...

Well, as a first post I guess I should introduce myself & explain a bit about what I'd like to accomplish with this blog. At the moment I would say I am a novice cartoonist, but the important part is that I am a cartoonist. My favorite quote to live by is: "Become through being" (Aristotle), and that is exactly what I am trying to do. Along with that I would like to share the journey of my trials and errors with anyone interested so that others might benefit from my learning process.
I would like to give credit from the start to two people who have already helped me immensly, & who have also inspired me to participate in the free exchange of ideas, namely JK, and Will. They are both users of Toon Boom Studio, (among many other programs) which is the program I have been learning on. I will try to gear this blog towards tutorials & tips that I can share regarding TBS, as well as the animation process in general. That said, all questions & comments are always welcome whatever they might be about. If I can't answer your question, I will be sure to direct you to someone who can. That's about all I can think of for a first post, I will upload some stuff as soon as I get on my own comp, but for now: WELCOME TO PIRATE PRODUCTION TOONS

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