THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Ooh, job pressure is rising.  Turns out Act 3 had more changes than Act 1.  I started working on it and got pulled off it in order to work on a couch gag.  That meant I had even less time to revise Act 3. Now I’ve got to really crank it out so I can be done by tomorrow since it’s my last day before I move on to another show.

In other studio news, I made my way by the ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN animated show area of the studio earlier this week and saw all the development art on the walls.  It’s sooo cool. I love the visual ideas that are coming out for the show.  I’m curious what they’re going to ultimately stick with.

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.)

Color color color. Color is sooo important, and yet I’m so new at working with it.  It’s going to be one of those learning moments for me.

I’ve gotten to the point in this process where things are overlapping.  On the one hand I need to finalize the designs of the characters. The thing is, I need to also decide what style I want to finally go with. Which in turn informs the colors that I will use in the final product.  Should I start with the colors first? I mean, the characters have to wear colors that will make them stand out from the background right? I still haven’t designed the backgrounds though. This means I need to work on them, but how should I approach them? Should I paint shapes or sketch them like I did the characters?  In the end, whatever I draw will be informed by the style I choose to go with. You see how they all tie together?

In the end I think I’m going to need to play around in sketches to see what style I want as a final look.  As I do this I’m going to be designing the backgrounds and finalizing the characters. In doing so, I hope that all of it combined will end with a final look that I might like.  Personally, think introducing any color will be the most difficult part for me.

Now to change the subject.

A bit down below is my second attempt at finding a skin color for Rob that I like. I’ve also reworked his hair design. Once again, I don’t think I’ve succeeded in the color department. The hair, on the other hand, I like.  I really didn’t like what his hair looked like before.  The Man vs. Art, Raul Aguirre Jr. suggested I should look at some anime characters for hair ideas.  I thought I WAS, since I’m so heavily influenced by that style. But being influenced and actually studying a thing, are two different things. So I thought to myself, what anime hair do I want to be influence by? Well, I kinda wanted  Rob to have big late 70s early 80s anime hair, so after thinking about it I looked at the character of Rick Hunter/Hikaru Ichijyo from ROBOTECH/MACROSS.

He wasn’t my only influence but I wanted big poofy hair like that. So I looked back at my reference picture of Tom Welling:

and tried to design it to look a bit more anime-ish:

Since I was also thinking about the final look of the cartoon, I went back and looked at the pictures that influence me to begin with:

The thing about the artwork was that it was cool and cartoony, but the end result, also reminded me of Alphonse Mucha‘s art:

So I thought that, I’d look at Mucha’s work and try to do my version of it, but without all the super detailed curves and things (for the sake of my sanity). I just wanted the general impression of his work.

I didn’t have time to color it, which makes a pretty big difference.  In the end, I don’t think I succeeded and what I ended up with, kinda looks a bit more like a page out of a kid’s coloring book than Mucha. At some point I’ll add some color and maybe add all the curves and decorations in Photoshop using Paths.

What I DO like about the drawing, is that I can see a final version of the character now.  The hammer still needs work.  Especially the hilt.  It kinda looks awful, but I definitely think I’m going with this design as the final look for Rob

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