Merry Christmas everyone!

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Helping out on the new crew for the last few days.  The Director has been out sick all this week, so we’re trying our best to do what we can as best we can.  Next week I’m going to be working on a new crew.

ART

So my friend Paul IMed me a link to this at work:

This movie is based off of a very popular samurai series of a blind swordsman called Zatoichi. It was once a TV show with a 100 episodes done of it and then 26 movies after that.  A new movie came out a few years ago and now this new one starring a woman in the role.  It’s definitely one of my favorite samurai series.  After seeing the trailer and the clips of this new version on the Funimation site, I got all excited. Then I wanted to draw samurai and I wrote Paul telling him so.

Paul wrote back, “Go for it,” but I’m so busy drawing other stuff that I didn’t have time.  I then wrote Paul that I had drawn a monkey the day before (which I had for Kevin Cross’ Monkey Mod).  There was a slight pause in the chat…then Paul wrote back, “Samurai Monkeys!”

It was all over.  I knew I wasn’t going to get anything done after that.  All my projects and things went right out the window.  All I wanted to draw were Samurai Monkeys.

We ended up expanding it to Simians so we had more to work with. So off we went…well…off Paul went.  I managed to keep myself under control and finish working. Paul came by 30 minutes later with this drawing:

When work was over and I went home, I sat down (after the kids were asleep) and began to draw like a madman.  I hadn’t been able to get the pictures out of my head and they were dying to get out:

Unfortunately, the more I drew the more I realized I didn’t know how to draw monkeys.  None of the drawings above are drawing I was very happy with.  The problem being that I couldn’t control the drawing. Since I was not familiar enough with the monkeys I was drawing, I couldn’t get what I wanted. It was driving me crazy.

The next day I went over to Paul‘s desk to show him what I was doing.  Only to discover that he wasn’t even drawing any Simians as Samurai at all. He was just drawing Simians.  Plain old, normal Simians. This is what I saw:

“Hey! I thought we were drawing SAMURAI Simians. Not just regular Simians.”

“Well, I have to learn to draw them first.  That means I need to study them.”

Darn it! If I had to do studies, that meant I couldn’t do the FUN stuff that made me want to do this in the first place. I refused to do it.  I sat down at my desk and continued to work.  Then I thought of something Marcelo Vignali had said at the CTN Animation Expo last month.

“When I begin on a new project, for example, Brother Bear, which I worked on and was one of the first people on the project.  I don’t just start by looking at other people’s designs of bears.  What I do is, I go out and find as much reference on real bears as I can.  I go to the zoo, look at google, look in books and I just study bears for a week or two, just so I can learn to draw them and get familiar with them. Once I feel I know what I’m doing, THEN I begin designing.”

I IMed this information to Paul, who then wrote back, “Listen to Moe,” (Moe is what Marcelo‘s friends call him).

I resisted at first, but then I gave in:

The more I drew, the more I began to learn. Not only that, but I found myself enjoying it.  I was learning sooo much.  I drew the monkeys when I had time, all weekend.  I sent a text message to Paul telling him that Marcelo was right.  He wrote back, “SEE?”

Two of the four drawings on the page below I drew from my imagination, just to test myself to see if I was learning anything.

Once I felt comfortable drawing the monkeys, I decided to give my designs another go:

I definitely felt more comfortable drawing the monkeys at this point…well sorta…

…as much as I like the drawings so far, there is a lot of research that still needs to be done when it come to the costumes.  As well as the hair styles and what they mean.  After seeing this, Paul asked me what kind of sandals the character should wear? I’d forgotten to draw them. He reminded me that they wore them a certain way and the way they were tied was very specific.

We then got into a discussion about what the different hair styles might meant according to station.  As well as how the swords are supposed to be worn and how the sashes are supposed to be wrapped.   Things I hadn’t thought about.

Great, more research. Still I’m having fun with this.  My goal is to be able to do a painting.  I still have four more simians to study as well as all the other samurai stuff to research.  This thing went from being a fun little drawing game to a full on project.  It’s fun though because Paul and I are feeding off each other.

Since I know this is going to go on for the long haul, I think I’ll slow down a bit on the amount of work I’m putting into it and work on it in smaller bites.  This has taken me away from my comic for a good week already, as well as distracted me from my sister’s logo.  I need to get back to that stuff as well. Still this is just so much fun.

Paul told me he would post up some of his drawings soon.  I have copies of everything he’s done. I just wanted to tease you all with two of his drawing so you can go check out what he’s up to on his site.

Merry Christmas!

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