THE SIMPSON NEWS

I managed to finish my ACT 2 assignment on Monday.  I would have finished it last week, only I took a longer lunch break than usual last Friday. I went to a local sports bar, with co-workers, to watch the Spain vs. Chile game.  It was a lot of fun, but it meant I had to make up the hours this week.

I’m now working on ACT 4, which has less to do than ACT 2.  I’m hoping to be done sometime today.

ART

Okay, so this page of drawings was just drawn to have something to post up. I did some adjusting on the Sorceress’ face so that it was a bit more stylized. I also drew out her face so I could, at least, see what she looked like.  I straighten out her skirt so it wasn’t so girly, and I worked out a bit of the arm detail of the long haired Sorcerer’s arm:

On Monday, my wife got invited to a get together with some friends from her work and the whole family went.  At one point during the evening I did my typical anti-social thing and began drawing in a corner. I decided that I was going to try to draw Steve Buscemi from a photo. I pulled a picture up on my phone and began to draw it.  The reason I did this was, since I was using him as inspiration, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to just try to capture his likeness “for real” in case I could apply what I learned from doing so to my design. So this is what I drew:

Red color pencil under drawing, inked with a Pentel brush pen. I used 2 Copic neutral grey markers and a black one for tone with a Whiteout pen for highlights. It came out okay but I think if I drew a few more I would eventually “be right on”.  I think, had you not known it was him, you would find that it looks familiar but you couldn’t put you’re finger on who he was suppose to be. At least it was fun to do and it’s WAY better than my other attempts.

So did I learn anything for having drawn the above drawing? I have no idea.

I definitely want to start on the backgrounds now. I’m going to see if I can find some time this weekend to go out and “location scout”. It’s possible I won’t be able to though, since I have a wedding to go to this Saturday  two hours away.

I’m still not sure where exactly my story should take place.  At first I thought it should take place outside a Wienerschnitzel type place. Then I was thinking that it might be better if it’s takes place in front of a portable hot dog stand.  If that’s the case, the story can take place, just about anywhere.  Thing is, I want Rob (the protagonist) to sit down on a bench to eat.  Then again, he could sit on a wall or…well just about anywhere.  So where should this take place?  A park? A street corner? I want obstacles and things to destroy so that at the end we just see the smoldering ruin of the area they just fought in. Also, it would be nice to have some “natural” obstacles so that it’s more difficult for Rob to get away. Any ideas?

If I don’t manage to get any photo reference, I’ll try doing a “style test” with all the characters. Basically I’ll just do a finished drawing with all of them in a picture, possibly in color.

VIDEOS/ART

I’ve known about this for a while but I kept forgetting to post about it.

It’s a video of Pixar storyboard artists at a panel from the CTN Animation Expo last year. They talk about their job, their influences and their approaches.  One of the speakers, Ted Mathot, is a ex-Simpsons layout artist.  It’s a must watch if you want good tips on Storyboarding and visual storytelling. Click the link below to watch:

PIXAR IN THE HOUSE: STORY STORY STORY

This next video, is a talk on how to get into the animation industry by  Dreamworks director Steve Hickner. I really enjoyed this one as well:

HOW TO BREAK INTO ANIMATION

BLOG

It’s tough being an introvert in a world of extroverts.  There’s a lot of misunderstanding that comes along with being one. I know, since I AM one.

Two years ago, at the end of a post on this blog, I linked to an article called:

Caring for Your Introvert.

I’m not sure how many people caught that link since it came at the end of a long random bit of writing. I found the article refreshing and enlightening. I thought it was important enough to call attention to it since it helps people understand introverts a lot more.

Recently I’ve become aware of yet another article on introverts.  It’s a good compliment to the article above so I thought I’d post a link to it too.  Read both these article if you want to learn more about the introvert in your life:

Field guide to the loner: The real insiders

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