THE SIMPSONS NEWS

I’ve got a ton of work to do and it all has to be done by May the 13th.  It feels as if I’m getting no where fast but that’s only because it’s still early and I’m only now getting into the meat of the work load. It also doesn’t help that we’re inventing the “pipeline” as we go. Nor does it help that many of the scenes I finished need more work done to them so I have to fix them while still getting new scenes done.  One great thing about how we are doing things now is that I feel like I’m getting to propose my own ideas into the show.  It feels like I’m more involved in the process. This actually make the giant work load much more tolerable since it fuels my creativity and makes me WANT to come in to work everyday.  I hope other directors I work with are as open as this one.

So our superhero drawing thing is still going on.   Tommy has eased out of it because he’s doing some freelance work for Ben Ten, so he has no free time. Still he managed to draw a few pieces before he started on that. Thankfully, he drew one that I could post on my blog, so here’s his drawing:

Quicksilver (Marvel Comics) Versus The Flash (DC comics).  They fight because they are, what the DC comics universe calls a “Speedster”. In other words, they have super speed.

Then, just because he could, using the magic of Photoshop, he changed the colors of  Flash‘s costume and turned him into the Reverse Flash (a.k.a. Zoom). 

Meanwhile, Paul is getting himself married over in his home state of Hawaii. Besides, as I mentioned last week, he doesn’t want me to post anymore of his drawings since he’s publishing them in his Sketchbook. He’s probably over there drawing pictures of waterfalls or something and having a great relaxing time with his new wife…Jerk.

So instead, we have a picture from someone else who decided to join in on this craziness. Raul (remember him from a few post’s ago?) decided to draw this:

It’s the Green Hornet (Harvey, Now, Acme, AC comics) Versus The Spirit (by Will Eisner).  They fight because they look very much a like only one is green and the other blue.  One of the reasons Raul drew this was because he didn’t think we had thought to put these guys on our list.  He was right.

So here’s my drawing for the week:

I’m cheating today. This is an original idea and not a “comic book versus” idea. It’s the image of a High Fantasy Western.  The week I drew this, I wanted  to try my hand at something different.  I was driving home from work and I was trying to come up with story ideas just for the heck of it.  One of the story ideas (or in this case just a random concept) came to me with a fun little image, so I thought I’d try to draw it.  This is the first time I’ve attempted a drawing like this. I want to learn to do animated feature “development drawing”. This is my first stab at one.  It’s heavily flawed.  Especially since I rushed through the drawing of the background, plus I really didn’t make much of an attempt to smooth out the pencil strokes (among other things). I’m only partially happy with it.   The idea was to put the generic fantasy archetypes in a western setting.  The Native American looking guy being the Warrior. The elf woman in the center would be a Ranger/tracker with a magical, rune encrusted, prosthetic, machine arm. Behind her is the wizard who is also a bit of a Rogue since he’s a Gambler.  They’re in the forest trying to track down a dragon that’s sneaking up on them from behind.  This was all drawn with some hard and soft pencils on regular old animation paper.  I really need to practice this a lot more. I also need to have more patience.  I really got tired of the drawing after a while and began rushing it at the end.  It looks very sloppy.

My inspiration for this drawing were artist’s like:

• Marcelo Vignali – a good friend of Paul‘s who I got to meet one day when I went to The Sony Feature Animation Studios (when they still existed) where Paul was working one year during hiatus.  He’s as a great guy and showed me all the drawings he was doing on the movie they were working on.  I was a fan of his work before I met him so I was geeking out.  I think that helped get me on his good side. He’s amazing. He’s worked almost everywhere in the industry.
• Richie Chavez – another friend of Paul‘s and an good acquaintance of mine, ever since we took a Kung Fu class together.  He was the art director on Prince of Egypt and he also worked over at Sony when Paul was there.  This is another guy that’s worked almost everywhere in the industry.  He doesn’t have a website though. One of his drawings is posted in this website: CLICK HERE.
• Paul Felix– he was one of my drawing teachers.  He worked over at Disney Feature and TV developing movies and shows. He’s awesome too. He doesn’t have a website but you can look at some of his drawing on this post HERE.

Those three guys are just amazing artists.  Talk about being able to draw anything and draw it awesome.

MY WEEK

Saturday I was out in the cold without a jacket. The next day I woke up with a crazy cold.  It knocked me out.  I managed to make it to Church with Dante but once I got back, my body went into shut down mode.  I was in bed the rest of the day. When I wasn’t sleeping, I was reading some of the comics I had gotten a few weeks ago, so it wasn’t all bad.  Still, I wish I could have stayed home Monday to recover but I really needed to get my work done. Whatever it takes to keep my job.

Thankfully, by Tuesday, I was feeling much better, so it turned out that my cold didn’t last for very long.

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