THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Last Friday was very hectic.  I had to work overtime in order to get all the work I had done.  Turns out, my board revision partner was out sick for a few days and wasn’t going to get his assignment done.  I finished my assignment a day and a half early so I took on the last part of his.  Namely, all of act 4.  I didn’t realize I was going to have to do it all myself. I was hoping he would finish the first part of his assignment and we would be able share the workload but it didn’t turn out that way.  He was still sick and it was really messing him up.

In the end he managed to finish what he had and took about four shots off my hands but I still had the rest to do myself.  It was brutal but we managed to get the work done.

Meanwhile, starting this Monday, I got a new office mate. He’s one of the veteran board artists on the show whose been out working on other projects for a year or so.  He’s going to be here for a month and then he’s going back into the wild. It’s fun to actually have someone  to talk to on occasion.

ART

(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)

After all that time, I FINALLY finished the final lines on the drawing I was working on.  This was drawn with, black Prismacolor pencil on tracing paper. It’s great because if I messed up, I was able to erase the Prismacolor:

If you compare the rough with the final, you will see that the “bad guys” are actually farther apart from Rob than in  the rough.  He definitely needed  more breathing room.  I finalized the background as well.  I didn’t really go out of my way to measure every little thing like,  placing the windows in the perfect places.  The things are a little off but I just didn’t think they were important enough to spend the time on.  The characters is where your eyes go anyway.  I also cheated the perspective in a big way.  If you pay very close attention to the bad guys on the right in the foreground, you will notice that the background lines are vertical to the way they’re standing, which is parallel to the picture frame.  YET, it’s a dutch angle, in other words the drawing is tilted. Shouldn’t the vertical lines be slightly angled like they are in the center part of the background? The answer, is yes but I cheated the characters in the foreground, so in order to make the background look right, I cheated it.  You probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t pointed it out.  Often with perspective in backgrounds, it’s more important for it to look right, than to make it accurate. That said, it helps immensely to learn to do it the “right way” before you begin to cheat.

The next step is to add tone.

What do you think?

PODCASTS

I’ve discovered a few animation podcasts this week.  It started with a Tweet from fellow artist Jose Gonzalez (a.k.a. Gonzalexx on Twitter). He pointed me to the:

• Speaking of Animation podcast – A podcast that interviews some “mainstream” animation professionals working in the industry.  It’s very cool.

I then went to iTunes, in order to subscribe to the podcast and discovered MORE animation podcast.  The ones I discovered though, have unfortunately, podfaded. Still, the interviews they have are very good and very informative to listen too. The podcasts are:

• The Animation Podcast – an interview podcast with MORE mainstream professional animator working in the industry.  Last podcasts came out in 2008. and…
• Toon In! – an interview podcast that interviews less mainstream animators.  They work in the industry as well but not in the high profile stuff.  Some TV guys, and European animators. Some do indie stuff.  Things like that.  It’s really interesting to hear this stuff.  The anecdotes some of these guys tell, are awesome. This podcast also podfaded around 2008.

I highly recommend these show for anyone interested in animation

For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Wow, talk about work overload.  I’m helping to revise show 3 for the next two weeks.  It got a MAJOR rewrite.  I didn’t get to work on it right away though. I was told to start boarding the Couch Gag for the show first. This turned out out to be a huge job. The gag was practically a short story and it’s long for a Couch Gag. It was asking for some really tough things which meant there were some very complicated problems to solve  Truly challenging.

After finishing my first rough pass, I was told I had to start revising Act 1.   Boy oh boy did it get overhauled.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that early into the act there was a huge dream sequence that required a lot of fancy styled shots. This small section of the board would be as challenging as the Couch Gag and it was only one small part of all the fixes I need to do.

So I started the Act, and midway through I was told  I need to finish the Couch Gag boards as soon as possible.  I had to stop my work on Act 1, which I was already behind with, and had to restart the Couch Gag board.

It’s turning out to be one heck of a tough week.

ART

I continued to explore the characters this week, trying to find the right face and shape for the Duran Duran Sorcerer:

I made up my mind fairly quickly (maybe too quickly) with the look I was going to go with for the Sorceress. Which used this picture as reference:

I then decided to focus specifically on the silhouettes of the characters:

The “final” silhouettes I placed at the top of the page below.  I put quotes on the word final because I’m still giving myself a little bit of leeway to adjust them if I need to, or get rid of them all together (I’m not 100% sure about the Sorceress yet, I might be rushing her). I’m the most happy with Rob’s silhouette.

I then decided to really start working out the details of the characters again.  I decided to start with the lead Sorcerer’s face, since I  felt I was close.  I accidentally hit upon a design for his face that I REALLY like. It’s not a solidly constructed drawing but it will do for now:

FINALLY! Two down, two more to go. After that, I have to design the backgrounds and the monsters. Plus test the flat stylized look I’m going to want to use, which means, doing an animation test.

So far all this has been fun and frustrating all at the same time.  After so many bad designs, it feels good when you hit one you like.

PODCAST

So I decided to listen to Catholic Under the Hood this week.  It’s a great podcast if you’re interested in Catholic history. he explorers lots of different things historical but from the Catholic perspective.  The latest episode was right up my alley since it was about a board game.

Rithmomachia.

Here’s what Fr. Seraphim wrote about it the show:

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Rithmomachia was one of the most popular games played in the universities and theological schools and promoted by Roger Bacon and Thomas More. Today, it has fallen into obscurity.

The show was really informative. So much so that it made me want to write a story from the info it put forth.   The game itself also sounded fascinating. Don’t know how much fun it would be to play, but the idea of the game is really cool. Great fuel for stories.

In order to talk about the game so that the audience could understand the relevance of the game to the mind of a person in the middle ages, Fr. Seraphim  had to explain the way the people saw number back then.  I couldn’t help but think of the numbers from  LOST.

Highly recommend listening to the podcast. CLICK HERE to do so.

For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

I’ve been working late hours this week.  Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I had twelve hour days.  Two days of overtime, and one day of making up hours because I’m going to be coming in to work late on Friday.  Today (Thursday) is the first day I have a regular eight hour day and I’m looking forward to it.  So far, the show I’m working on, looks like it’s on track. Still, I feel sooo tired.

ART

Last Friday, I was invited to my friend Raul‘s house.  He was having a “Sketch Party”.  The sketch party was described as a party where we would bring our favorite or current sketch book, show it off, as well as draw some. But this was not  just any sketch party, it was a Cartoonista sketch party.

What’s a Cartoonista? The Cartoonistas describe themselves like this:

We are a loose collective formed between friends to promote their arts and events in the San Gabriel Valley areas.

I was invited to come to the party because I was asked to join the group, sponsored by Raul.  I’m at a place in my life right now artistically, and socially, that I thought this would be exactly what I needed in order to develop as a person and as an artist.  My social skills are lacking terribly, so I figured, if I join a very social, self motivated, group of artists, not only would it be motivating, but through my art, I could learn to be more social.  Especially in an environment where we can all talk about things we have in common.

Well, the party was a blast.  Raul‘s wife Hortencia made the yummiest food.  She really went all out.  I also drank tons of her horchata. It was really yummy. Thing about being in the room with bunch of Cartoonistas is that the jokes don’t stop coming. It’s as if everyone has to come up with as many ways to make other people laugh as frequently as possible.  It was darn funny and fun being around these guys.

We had an “initiation ceremony”.  Raul suddenly ran upstairs to get “something”.  It’s funny because everyone got nervous that he was going to bring down something crazy for the “ceremony”.  When he came back down, we saw he held three books. A fancy Frank Miller hard cover book, an Essential Amazing Spider-Man, Vol. 2 trade paperback which contained Ditko and Romita Sr. stories in them, and The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. We were to pick  a book to be “sworn in” on. That was pretty funny (I chose the Spider-man comic).  But our swearing in was pretty darn silly too.  I was going to pick that moment to do a cartoon, but it turns out the whole thing was caught on video, so I’d just put that up instead:

It’s very overwhelming to be a Cartoonista. The amount of art these guys produce is ridiculous. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s the link of to all the Cartoonista‘s sites:

• JAVIER HERNANDEZ
• JIM LUJAN
• GRASIELA RODRIGUEZ
• RAUL AGUIRRE
• TED SEKO
• WILL CAULFIELD
• STEVE ROMO
• MICHAEL AUSHENKER
• JOSE CABRERA
• ROXANA JAVADI-KASHANI
• BERNICE TALLEY
• GEO BRAWN IV

Thanks for inviting me to join in guys.

ART

I’m taking a break from the Disneyland story again.  To be honest, I was hoping to have gotten it done already.  I kinda want to do something else and it’s starting to feel like work.  I don’t want it to feel like work, I want to have fun doing it, so I’m hoping to get back to it after I take a short break.

Having joined the Cartoonistas, has really put a lot of pressure on me to want to, “earn my keep”.  To this end, I have resolved to, at the very least, finish a comic strip or two, and maybe actually get a small irregular webcomic up and going.

Before I had joined them, I had also resolved to draw, a minimum, of one (non work related) drawing a day. With one very important rule: I must have fun drawing it. For years, I have not been having any fun drawing outside of work.  For the first time in a long time, I drew something that I truly had fun doing when I was drawing  the Superhero Versus Superhero drawings, earlier this year (click on the numbers to see what I’m taking about: 1,2,3,4,5,6).

Now I go home and draw  something at home and it’s actually fun.  I will occasionally put up one of these sketchbook drawing on this site.  Like I’m doing today, but most of the time, if I’m happy with something I drew, I will put it up on my Deviant Art page.  I invite you to wander over there once in a while to see if I’ve put up something new.  Here’s my latest drawing:

I’m in the process of teaching myself to paint again.   My current goal is to build a “development art” portfolio.  With the industry going to mostly digital, most of the drawing jobs are behind the scenes in the development process. In order for me to continue drawing for a living, I need to step up my skill set to be able to do  development art as well. To this end, I need to just produce as much art in that vain as I can.

PODCASTS

More Podcast for you to try listening to. This time, it’s some Cartoonista podcasts:

• Javiland Podcast: Javier Hernadez‘s podcast where he discusses drawing indy comics.
• Ghettomation: Jim Lujan and Kevin Cross discuss making homemade animated films.

Check them out.

CLICK HERE to buy an Uncle Chestnut T-shirt with my art on it.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.