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

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