THE SIMPSONS NEWS

The act I’ve been given for this week has some HEAVY rewrites.  I told my director I’d try to be done by the end of the week, but it’s pretty bad.  I’m not exactly sure I’ll be able to make it. We’ll see how it goes.

Wednesday night, I showed my director my rough fixes for my act. Usually it takes me about a day or two to rough them out.  It almost took me three for this one.  I spent about a three and a half hours going over the act with my director.  It was a very creative and exhausting experience.  By the time it was over, it seemed to me that I had more work to do than I did before we started. And that was AFTER I had worked three days on the roughs already. I think the act is better off for it.  I just wish I had more time.

…and now for something totally different…

Further down in this post I’ll be writing about GATCHAMAN. As I looked for pictures to use, I stumbled on these fantastic Simpsonized versions of the characters, courtesy of the FELIX IP blog.  Go over to his site and give this artist/art director some love.

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.)

Since I just wasn’t happy with what Rob’s design looked like (still), I tried doodling a version on the first piece of paper I had on hand.  It so happened to be the last page of revision notes I had for the show I was working on a week ago. The notes are cryptic if read out of the context of the episode.

I liked the doodles and I used them as a model sheet:

I changed the model of  Rob’s face from last week.  I also added the raven on Rob’s shoulder:

I then began to clean up the drawings, and as usual, have lost something of the “life” from the roughs.

If you notice, the background is blue in some of the drawings.  Why? Because that will be the color of the sky BEFORE the bad guys show up.

I’m going to give myself permission to mess around with these drawings a bit more. Especially the raven’s wings in the first shot.  Still, they are just about ready to be colored.

Before I even began to do a clean up line, I experimented with timing out the scene, just to make sure it would work.  I even thought of roughing out some “anticipation poses” and an “overshoot” pose but I’m not sure it’s what I want.  It may plays just as clear without them.  So far, it looks like it’s going to look good.  Once I’m done cleaning up the last pose, I’ll begin coloring.  Doing that will give me a guide as to how long it will REALLY take to finish my “Illustrated Film”. At that point I’ll make the decision whether or not to render out all the drawings or not.

BOARD GAMES/VIDEO GAMES

If you’ve read my blog for while, you know I love playing board games. The problem is that I don’t have anyone around to play them with.  Once in a blue moon I might get a game in, but it doesn’t happen very often and my games just sit there collecting dust.  Occasionally I play with my kids but they’re 4 and 2 1/2 years old. It’s not quite the same thing.

Sometimes, the only alternative is to play a video game version of a board game. The thing is, most of my favorite games don’t HAVE video game versions…or so I thought.  Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this “Geeklist” at Boardgame Geek:

Sebastian Sohn’s SoftBoard Games: Free, Commercial, and Abandoned Computer Version of Board, Card and Role-Playing Games with Computer AI (Artificial Intelligence) Opponents with Screen Shots

and found links to video game versions of my favorite games!

For example, DOMINION.

Though DOMINION is not exactly one of my favorite games, it IS a game that I own that I haven’t gotten to the table almost at all and I’ve been dying to play it.  This gives me a happy alternative. To download this game, CLICK HERE.

Then there’s a the homemade unofficial MAGIC: THE GATHERING video game.  MAGIC is one of my favorite games (CLICK HERE for my review), so it’s nice to be able to play it whenever I’d like. This one turned out to be a pretty darn good  homemade game.

To download it, CLICK HERE

And last but not least. The game that got me the most excited.  One of my favorite games, (if not my all time favorite game) DREAMBLADE! (CLICK HERE for my review) So AWESOME! Now I can play DREAMBLADE whenever I want. Hurray!

To download it, CLICK HERE

And if you’re a fan of DnD and don’t have anyone to play with, try this ROGUE like version of the 3.0 rules of the game:

INCURSION

Of course, none of these video games actually replaces playing the game against a human being around a table, but it at least makes you feel like you’re getting a little bit of board gaming done.

I recommend you look at the list to see if you can find a video game version of YOUR favorite board game.

WEBSITES/MOVIES

I forgot who linked to this on Twitter. My guess is that it was ShermCohen. In any case, I thought these storyboard where inspiring.  I really want my  “Illustrated film” to have this much energy and clarity.  I thought I’d share the link below:

GATCHAMAN (FEATURE) Storyboards 

I LOVE Gatchaman. I grew up watching them and I can’t wait for the movie to come out next year. Check out the trailer:

PODCAST

Last Friday I went on fellow CARTOONISTA Ted Seko’s IDIOT ENGINE podcast. It was a lot of fun and if you haven’t heard Ted‘s podcast, you’re really missing out.

Here’s the link to the podcast, if you’re interested:

IDIOT ENGINE episode 36:  Passion and how it relates to our Artistic Purpose!

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

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