Even more

Here's some treats from Rex:

More Scribbles

Even more later today....

Johnny Hart and more!

Hey I found another great comics blog:

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/

It's filled with a lot of great cartoonists I didn't even know about and a bunch I did, but didn't know about some of their less famous work.


Bud Blake did a lot of stuff I didn't know about...The sonuvagun could sure draw.
I love this early Mort Walker stuff. I used to draw Beetle Bailey all the time when I was a kid.Here's an especially weird and interesting artist. Klaus Nordling.He has a few posts about Johnny Hart, creator of B.C. and Wizard of Id.
http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/search/label/Johnny%20Hart
These comics had a great influence on me. I loved the interaction of all the distinct characters, the great staging and continuity, but what I thought was most unique about it was the sincere humanity of it.
Johnny Hart and his crew (Brant Parker and others) had a way of drawing expressions and attitudes that reflected the real life cynicism of men and boys. I had never seen this in earlier strips. I think it was a revolution.Johnny also had a funny way of drawing pain. You really felt the charactor's agony from the gnashed teeth and hideous grimaces he (they) drew. I'll try to find some good pain faces in my own collection...

When I read his strips, I was always amazed that they ever made it into the funny pages, because they weren't all upbeat, safe and happy like most humor comics. They had a new kind of honesty and observation of the way we humans really are. Like dirty socks.

Hank Ketcham of course, is a genius and the site has lots of rare early stuff...
What beautiful layout and composition!

Hunt around the site for many cartoon treasures!

________________________

more roughs to come later today...

Some more good inks, with subtle nitpicks

These are some of the best inkers I've found (or who found me) so I'm putting them up as good examples, but also am going to nitpick them slightly for the edification of everyone who wants to know how to ink our stuff. The fact that they made it into the post means I like these artists a lot.

This is how I like to check the inks against the pencil drawings - as jpgs next to each otherThe inker changed the head shape and position from my pencil layout for some reason.
George's eyebrow is too short in the above and missing the eyebrow wrinkle that should accompany it. I think it's supposed to be the same eyebrow as the rest of the head that is being re-used from scene 3.

Jacket didn't need to be redrawn, just the part that stretched.


***All INKS should be labeled, just like the pencils! - 1) numbered and with 2) action instructions and 3) dialogue (this is the first time I've told anyone that....)




lost some shape in the arm above...Back of arm in pencil is an 'S' curve - changed to an even "C" curve. Front of arm in pencil is straighter (not totally straight) has been changed to be fatter.


These are excellent. (Jimmy's smile line is indicated in pencil to be thicker...)I'm sure that the reason these are so good is that Ryan is a big UFC fan and pretty solid himself.



This is impressive...Mitch is critiquing himself and improving his work with each critique. This is a good way to learn any skill - to be self critical. Some young artists love everything they do and don't take to constructive criticism well, which will inhibit their progress.









STAYING TRUE TO SUBTLE ORGANIC SHAPES
This one by David is very faithful to the subtle contrasts in shapes of all the elements, which is very important to me. He has not turned the eyes into ovals, and has captured every change in direction of each curve. He has kept it solid and organic.


He also kept the bends in the curves in the same places that the pencils have. Many people when they trace drawings move the bend in the curve to the middle of the curve.

I have 1 criticism: the line weights are inconsistent. One side of the tongue is thin, the side thick. Same with the arm. One part of the face silhouette is thin, the other thick. This makes the big forms not hold together and breaks apart the image.

The eye outlines should be a bit thicker and so should the bottom line of the open mouth. The whole open mouth is a single shape that should hold together by the width of the lines.

I indicated a thick side to the shirt button in the pencil, but it's not in the ink.

The line around the tooth should be thicker to make it a whole object. Etc.

Compare to this one, which holds together the larger forms more consistently.
HOLDING BIG FORMS TOGETHER WITH THICKER LINES

The big shapes are bounded by thick lines, while the interior details are thinner and wrap around the big shapes.

The hierarchy of line widths is well thought out - plus he kept all the subtle shapes and organicness.

The bottom of Jimmy's legs are behind a box, but should have a blue line cutting them off like in the pencils.


KEEPING IT FUNNY AND APPEALING
This one is 90% there.....

a couple minor notes on this one:

The Inking is making the characters fatter than the drawing, because the inking tends to be on the outside of the pencil lines, instead of straight down the middle

Overall lines could be thicker (I think there is a button in Illustrator that wil take them and do it automatically)

Slab N Ernie's eyebrows could be closer to the drawing

Slab's sleeve should flow along the form of his arm on the right side.
Be a bit more conscious of angles - like the back of Ernie's head and his ears

it's very good though, I'm just nitpicking



Here's some funny stuff inked off my crappy story sketches...

David did a nice job inking Katie's sketches below. He kinda softened some of the contrasts in the shapes but it still looks funny and cute:


BTW, should I post more rough story sketches from any of the cartoons?

some storyboard and layout images from our commercials

You can see how rough our boards are. Their purpose is mainly to tell the story, not be finished cleaned up layouts.
I draw my boards at EAT on Magnolia during breakfast, while I don't have to think about anything else and no one bothers me. I scribble them out as fast as I can, just trying to get the gags, continuity and story to flow.I use crappy cheap lined writing pads and BIC medium ballpoint pens, so I don't worry about wasting good paper. I want to draw fast, not worry about construction too much and not worry about clean lines at all.

This below is a pencil storyboard sketch on fancy paper and is less lively than my crappier scribbly ball point pen sketches on wood pulp.


Here's a couple of Jim's setup idea sketches...
Jim has his own theories and techniques and they make his style unique and fun.
More of my continuity scribbles...(not in continuity though)


If you don't have to draw perfectly clean and on-model while you do storyboards, then you can access the part of your brain that thinks about STORY, rather than clean up.

A lot of studios today have a department that's called "storyboard" but they don't use storyboards in the same way that they were originally intended. They use them instead as mini-layouts, that are supposed to be blown up larger and used as keys for the Asian animators.

"Storyboarders" don't usually get to do story anymore which is a shame and an irony. Writing with pictures is a blast and brings so much more to your stories, than merely trying to describe everything with words.

It's also hard to draw good detailed layout drawings small, so the end result of storyboarding from scripts, is both bad storytelling and bad layouts. The poor storyboarders don't get to have much fun in this system. I'm sure somewhere there are a couple exceptions.

A lot of lucky accidents happen while doing rough storyboards, and the trick is to preserve them in the layouts. When taking the idea sketches and blowing them up to animation size, tightening them up and flipping them from pose to pose, there is a great tendency to tone everything down and lose the humor and spontaneity.

In fact, every step of the animation process has a dangerous tendency to lose some of the life of the previous step. I have been working on a science to combat that for my whole 30 years in the business.

Finding good layout people who can draw with life is a blessing from above!


A side note:

Many times in a cartoon, I have tried to get funny layout drawings inspired by the storyboard to flip right and lost the humor in the process. In those cases, I would just use the funny poses, even if they didn't animate right. Lucky for me and the rest of the industry, Bob Jaques and Kelly Armstrong developed techniques to smooth the connection between 2 not very well connected poses. This technique (in simplified form) amazingly has become the standard for most Flash animation today. Carbunkle's animation used a wide assortment of techniques and they customized many scenes, but a couple of their tricks (without the custom tailored thought) became the standard style for whole studios down to today.

That's why you see so much "snapping" from pose to pose today, where you antic and go past the next pose and settle back into it. (You are in effect, avoiding the inbetweens) It's one good technique that's useful in some cases, but it gives me a headache when I see whole features use it to connect every single pose. No variety in timing or emotion. Every emotion using the same timing trick - or handful of tricks.

If you watch an old 40s Warner Bros. cartoon, you will find all kinds of custom timing and posing that is designed to fit the story and emotions. They didn't use a handful of tricks. They really thought about every scene and its context. Of course we can't afford to do that with today's TV and internet budgets, but they could easily afford it in today's animated features, if people in charge had the will to do it.

Need Production Assistant part time

Hi - I'm Marc, the production manager "Kingpin" for the new George Liquor cartoons.

I'm looking for an on-call assistant to help with:

• scanning

• moving boxes around the office

• picking up and delivering files

• rubbing out the competition

• picking up supplies

• etc...

If you live in the Los Angeles area and are interested in helping out on a part-time basis - send me an email at:

marcdeckter (at) yahoo.com

Thanks

Marc

I come in 2 colors, depending upon my mood

Milt Gross Character Designs

some good inks

Here's a link for tips on inking in Adobe Illustrator:

digital-inking-basics


HOW TO MAKE A BRUSH

Here's some good stuff, and I will add yours when you meet this quality level!

Mitch L
Ryan G

George's mouth should not be filled in black, but it's a beautiful, faithful ink.

Slab N Ernie layouts from CANS WITHOUT LABELS

Here are some layouts of Slab N Ernie for those of you who are practicing clean ups and inking and are sick of the same George drawings.

here's one by Mitch. He's hired. (I hope you separated the chairs from the characters, Mitch)
The hierarchy of his line weights is very logical. The overall forms of the characters are held together by thicker lines and the interior smaller details use thinner lines that wrap in the same directons as the larger forms. Especially on the heads. (The bodies could use a little more of that.)

He also did not even out any of the asymmetrical shapes, which is a huge plus to me. I have a hell of a time getting people to preserve the guts and flair of the pencil drawings, when they clean them up. Good job Mitch!



Here's Amir Avni. Pretty damn good. I gave him a couple corrections.

And here they are:

setup 3 (above)

Treats from Brian

Brian Romero stayed up all night designing these boxes. He's on his way to the Con now and I'm sure most of you are, so maybe you won't even see these.



Barack is done, but I don't know if I wanna give it all away just yet.

examples of how to ink our stuff

Here is my original in blue.
Here is an ink/cleanup by Kali. Note that she very carefully preserves all the nuances in the drawing. The varied shapes and forms. The asymmetry. The flowing organicness of the curves. The construction.

Note also that many of George's parts have been inked on separate layers. That's so individual pieces of him can be animated in Flash. This is similar to 60s TV limited animation-like the Flintstones.Here she colored each layer so you could easily see how it works. Each individual part has to be inked all around, even where you won't see it in an individual frame.







****Note- see where I made the pencil lines thicker in the indentations of the smile line? That makes the cheeks and smile feel fleshy and full. Follow that through in the inking. It helps the expressions read.

The same thing applies to the lines that indicate the eyelids. They are thicker in the middle, which also helps you see the eye expression.
Note that wrinkles and minor details are generally thinner, but they still follow the directions and planes of the larger forms.

Individual teeth lines should be thinner than the line that outlines the complete set of either upper or lower teeth. That holds them together as a set. It's a hierarchy of important and less important lines. Big important forms generally get thicker lines. Details that wrap around the bigger forms get thinner lines.
If you are applying for inking or cleanup, these are stellar examples of what we need.

Some of my favorite Brianne drawings

Not only do Brianne's drawings have great style and flair, they also use classic principles-the same ones I always crab about.
Her stylistic influences are obviously a different assortment than mine (with some overlap) but they are held together by the same exact principles that my artists aspire too.




Her designs are real designs, not just collections of unrelated abstract flat shapes. They have hierarchy - an overall statement that is then broken down into levels of sub forms and details that obey the planes of the larger forms.
Her drawings have form; she can draw from difficult angles and in many styles.
She almost makes me like Anime!
Beautiful shapes, contrasts, large negative areas, clear silhouettes, line of action, construction....the whole shebang of good drawing skills, and to top it off, a lot of individuality and fun!

Political Chaos in Toy Form

Here is Barack and his magic podium. If you rub the podium against any of your problems and hope them away, they will vanish!


If hoping your problems away doesn't work, then try the other method: Blow 'em away!

Or try hiding them in your pant suit!




McCain and Obama were sculpted by Chris Peterson. Hillary sculpted by Arshak Nazarian. All color styled and painted by Beth Colla. Castings by Richard Vanover at Wheaty Wheat.

They were manufactured by Reel FX. They are rounding up distributors at this very moment so add yourself on the list if you want to get 'em in your stores!
Wait'll you see the fancy-ass packaging Brian Romero is designing! I'll post 'em later this week.

_____________________________

These toys are not only sculpted beautifully, but we've taken extra time and effort to color them slightly off register, just like old fashioned 60s toys!





And here's some more nifty toys to rock your ass off! Sculpted by Chris Peterson and company and colored by Beth Colla at Wheaty Wheat.

These were manufactured by Thunderdog toys and distributed by Strangeco to comic book stores and specialty shops.

Chris is busy sculpting my latest batch of toys - George Liquor, Sody Pop, Jimmy the Idiot Boy and Cigarettes the Cat for Strangeco.We are recreating this historic scene in toy form! Tell me you will run to the toy store and buy 'em!

these are pretty good

These are by David De Rooij
They are solid, meaty and maintan Jim's feeling very well. He's hired.

George's mout is a little too symmetrical in the one above. Hard to tell in Jim's rough, but if you squint you can see the mout is higher on the right and then connects to his lower jaw. (Jim has two different mouths there on top of each other. One sligltly open. Either one would work.


George has a bit too much hair here, but it's a very observant cleanup and preserves George's meat well.This one by Aaron isn't bad either, though a tad o the wonky side:

Jim Smith needs a cleanup artist

Jim Smith is just about the most talented artist I've worked with. His drawings leave me in awe. They are solid and funny at the same time.Jim is doing some dynamite design and layouts on the George Show and I want to give him some help. I don't want to waste his time cleaning up his own roughs when he could be doing more drawings. The more Jim drawings in the cartoons, the more fun they will be!
He has a very specific elusive style and I need an assistant who has a natural eye for solid manly drawings and good perspective.
There are a lot of subtleties in Jim's style and I want to capture those.
You have to be really careful when putting a clean line down on his drawings that it doesn't flatten them out. No mechanical straight lines or even curves. Solid and organic at the same time.
The best way for a young cartoonist to break into the business is to be able to clean up the work of a star. You absorb a lot of information by osmosis. ( although we wouldn't turn down someone with experience either.)

This is how all the old cartoon animators learned their craft and why the cartoons kept getting better and better over the years.

Now so much of the important creative work is sent overseas or done in flash, that we don't have much apprenticeship opportunity left.

I would ideally like to have an artist who lives in LA, but if you are really good and live elsewhere we can try the email thing.

Are you man enough to work for Jim? Better start pumping some iron.

Layout breakdowns - Dialogue mouths

BREAKDOWNS - CONNECTING TO LAST SCENE

these 2 frames will barely register; they are just there to connect George's pose from the last scene into his main pose in the new scene. It's a hook up that by today's regulations doesn't hook up. But in motion and cuts it works.

KEY

Here's the key pose that's based on the storyboard pose. Below are some breakdowns of main mouth positions created in layout. They all work within the emotion of the key pose but accent and color the dialogue.

DIALOGUE POSITIONS - LIPSYNCH IS ACTING, not merely "mouthing"

In most cartoons the same few mouth shapes are used over and over again. This looks robotic to me-even in fully animated features there is an obvious formula for lip synch.

I like to design every dialogue scene based on who the character is, and how he feels at that moment. I listen to the track, close my eyes and imagine the character. Then I draw the appropriate mouths. It's a lot of fun to custom design mouths.

What I do before I design mouth shapes is write out the dialogue and figure out where the accents are. The accents are usually vowels and that is where the biggest open mouths will be.

Since this is limited animation, I plan to reuse certain mouth shapes in different orders for different words. That's why I write out the dialogue. Above the dialogue I assign which mouth shape I'm gonna use. Each mouth shape has a letter or 2 that phonetically describes the sound.This is not your normal "O" mouth, obviously. I just thought I would do something related to the key mouth shape.
"OO" mouths work best when preceded by an "O" mouth. The O provides a quick accent that helps you notice the "OO".

"I" mouths are long and tall, just like the letter itself.

"T" 's can be used for "N", "G" and some other letters.

"M" can also be used for "B" and "P", although you can make a separate mouth for each that build in intensity.

KEY

My Dad Discovers The Big Boys Following Spumco

sent by my Dad

"Here are some comments from viewers on Seth MacFarlain's entry into animated commercials, You have a head start, hope your show gets a lot of attention, looks like Google is interested in animated commercials. I sent this to you in case you have not heard about it, I saw the article in the Ottawa Citizen to-day."

ReadWriteWeb

• RWW Network
• ReadWriteWeb
• ReadWriteTalk

Google to Make History with Exclusive Animated Internet Series?

Written by Corvida / June 30, 2008 9:15 AM / 13 Comments

Google is getting some serious press, support, and power from Hollywood today. According to the New York Times, Google will be bringing on Seth MacFarlane, creator of the hilarious TV series "Family Guy", to work on a secret animated series called "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy." While that's nothing short of exciting, Google's distribution plan for the project is causing heads to turn.

The Distribution Plan

Apparently, the plan is going to involve a lot of of work will use Google's Adsense advertising system and the Google Content Network to run the series.

"Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane's target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a "Cavalcade" video clip. "

There will be numerous strategies used for incorporating the advertisements into the clips including "preroll" ads, which will remind viewers of a commercial, banners at the bottom of the video clip, or a "brought to you by" note at the beginning.

The Animated Series

The series will be exclusive to the internet alone. The series will also include a new line-up of characters and will be 50 episodes that are two-minutes each. MacFarlane describes the episodes as, "animated versions of the one-frame cartoons you might see in The New Yorker, only edgier." MacFarlane will receive a percentage of the advertising revenues and will also work with advertisers to provide original animated commercials to run with "Cavalcade" for a hefty fee. There's no word yet on who's signed-up for the deal.

Why is This a Big Deal?

If Google succeeds, this could become the premier internet business model for Hollywood to look into. With a multimillion-dollar production price tag and a high-profile Hollywood celeb, Google could make history, while making Hollywood's dreams come true. This pay day could be huge for both sides of this fence if Google succeeds.

_____________________________________

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/12/creativity-magazine.html

Milt Gross, 20th Century Renaissance Man

There used to be a great magazine called "Cartoonists Profiles"

that featured articles about every imaginable kind of cartoonist. Mike Fontanelli brought over this issue which featured an article about Milt Gross who was not only a top cartoonist, but a playwright, a gag man for Charlie Chaplin, an animator and a hundred other things.

He was all these things and more in an age of giants - During America's Golden Age - when it seems almost everyone was talented and no one could have imagined that popular amateurism was mere decades away.






Look how cool his early "Mutt 'N' Jeff" style was! Totally different than his own personal style that came a bit later.



These strips below are courtesy of Marc Deckter
http://blog.marcdeckter.com/?p=75



who spends every red cent I pay him on great old comic strips.Marc told me he bought a bunch of Gross strips from 1930 and 31 and that they were among his best.
Here's 3 of them and they are beautiful all right.

Look at the great mood in this last one! I love all his compositions. So clever. Every shape he draws is beautiful.

Thanks Mike and Marc for giving me an easy post to do!

layout breakdowns

KEY

What I'm calling the layout "keys" are the drawings that match the storyboard expressions. These drawings, as I explained in my last post, are tricky to do and are just translations of the previous artists' storyboard poses.

I have a main rule in my cartoons and that is for each successive stage of the production to build on the previous stage.

The storyboard artist tells the points of the story outline....then pluses them...but he doesn't ignore the points or tone them down, or rewrite the story. He tells the main points, then adds details, gags and dialogue - all in context of the storyline.

The layout artist then takes the storyboard artists' key poses and stages and makes them stronger (but doesn't throw them all out and start from scratch).
Then he adds more poses and expressions to color the scenes and make the story points, gags and acting stronger.


In most studios, each of the creative stages of a cartoon tones down the previous stage until the final film is a very bland literal conception of the written story, that doesn't even make the story points clear, let alone emphasize them.

To me, the story is just the beginning of the fun, but it is important and everyone working on the film must understand what it's about and what each successive point and gag means.

You need to believe the story and the characters and know the hierarchy of ideas and what to stress in order to make the audience understand and enjoy the story.

I've worked at studios where the artists didn't know the story at all, and didn't even have a complete copy of the storyboard to work from. They never knew the meanings of their scenes or the context of them within the overall story. They had no idea what to stress and were told not to stress anything anyway. Just trace the model sheets and don't worry about the performance. Crazy. But that explains a lot of modern cartoons.

My layout artists have to do more drawings than the storyboard poses. I don't want them to throw out or tone down the SB poses, but that's not where the creative part for the pose artist comes in. The fun part is creating the extra poses that link the main ones, or accent them, or color the overall scene.

The sb keys are the jumping off point for the layout artists, but there is plenty of room left to be creative in between the main poses.

BREAKDOWNS

these are connecting links between the main expressions and poses. This scene only had a couple of breakdown poses. I'm showing you a simple scene to get the idea across.

KEY

Next post, I'll show you breakdowns using dialogue mouths and expressions that really help act and color the scenes.

Dialogue does not just happen in your mouth. But mouth shapes are a big part of acting. You'll see.

From Storyboard To Layout Poses

Here are some layout poses from the thumbnail boards.

Here's the board.A layout artist have to be able to capture the essence of the attitudes, poses and expressions in storyboard but add:
construction
proportions
flesh
details

but details can be a hindrance to the liveliness of the poses, so be careful!

What I'm really after are skilled artists that can do all this...WITHOUT TONING DOWN THE STORYBOARDS.
It's not an easy task. You have to be careful to not let the details get in the way of the line of action and overall clean silhouette.

The flesh and clothes wrinkles - if they stick out too much from the silhouette of the pose, will eat away at the pose and distract from the overall message.
Some artists have submitted samples of their layout interpretations of these same poses and had some of the problems I mentioned: adding too much sticky-outy flesh and clothes wrinkles that ate away from the pose.

Evening out the asymmetry is also a big problem. If any of you brave souls would be kind enough share your drawing tests in the post I could show everyone what I'm talking about. It would help you and others too, but I don't want to post them and embarrass anyone so let me know if I have your permission.

these 2 poses are the first 2 I did when planning out the scene. They are the stiffest and least lively. I warmed up after a while.

Note the wrinkles on his jacket form around his body shape and they ad up to an overall curve rather than each being a diferent size and diferent direction. That would make a confusing image.


These drawings are just the first step of layout posing, translating the basic poses from the storyboard without toning them down.
The next step is to add poses and breakdowns.


I'll show you that in the next post.

Mike Fontanelli's Latest Amusements

Lamb With Human Eyes.

I will put up some of my George Liquor layouts tonight for those of you who are wondering how to translate storyboard drawings into layout poses.

Painting Technique - Scott Wills

I think one of these is Bill Wray's, but I'm not sure which...
Color style and paint technique are 2 different skills and talents. All these paintings by Scott Wills have very clever color styling and expert technique.
I've worked with a lot of talented painters. Scott stands out as someone who has a really high level of skill in technique.
What I mean by technique (as opposed to color) is the ability to handle brushes and paint tools with:

Smooth control
A wide variety of brush looks- drybrush, airbrush, textures etc...
Control of values and hierarchies of contrasts in the values.
Scott may possibly be the neatest painter I have every known. His work is super clean and precise.

I myself am the sloppiest painter on earth and have the highest admiration for someone who can make brushes do what they want them to do.
Here is a potentially busy BG that is rendered completely readable and fun by Scott's skill in creative decision making. It's very colorful and fun without being stock cartoon colors.

He has broken down the pan into groups of color families and separated each group from the background colors by putting black areas between the foreground groups and background colors. Black, like grays, whites and browns are neutral colors and tend to not compete with brighter more primary, secondary colors.

The background is a slightly grayed purple and olive green in a slightly darker than mid range value.

Any colors placed directly on top of the mid range colors-if they were of similar value would not separate very well. Putting black between the foreground colors an the BG colors separates them without competing with them.

In this mountain range, the values are kept close; not a lot of contrast. The contrasts are supplied by the washy greenish foliage against the pink sky.

Because the contrasts are low, characters or animation levels would read easily against this BG.
The contrasts in the above picture are higher, suggesting that we are supposed to notice the tree branches. The details behind them are much lower in value contrasts, yet have enough detail to make the image atmospheric rather than completely cold and flat.
There aren't a lot of different paint techniques employed in this particular modern cartoon style-mostly drybrush and sponge - harkening back to early Hanna Barbera BGs (and Ren and Stimpy's version of that style).
But Scott's control of these minimal techniques and the clever color choices makes the BGs feel rich and much more colorful than what we normally think of as cartoon backgrounds. In the minds of many studios, cartoon colors mean garish colors. Garish equals colorful. Garish to me means ugly and formulaic.
Painters like Scott have an extra daunting task, having to take super flat and cold layout drawings like these and somehow warm them up and wring some fun and mood out of them.
Painters like Scott are rare. This is not the only style he does, unlike many artists who copy this style.

I constantly challenged Scott (and Bill Wray and my other painters) to experiment with different techniques and moods that would help enhance the stories.


This modern background style (especially in the drawing) is to me a very restrictive set of rules, outside of which the painter can't stray without undermining the "style" of the series.
Personally, I don't want to have a house style or a set of rules for any cartoon series. Every story and gag has the potential of using different paint techniques.


Scott painted beautiful moody and deep BGs for Son of Stimpy that were in a completely different style than the more graphic paintings in say, Sven Hoek.

I'm sure I drove all my talented painters crazy by never settling on a style. I bombarded them constantly with inspiration from illustrations, old movies, kids' books, old cartoons, fashion magazines, nature photography and anything that had strikingly interesting looks that you weren't used to seeing in cartoons.

Scott and Bill in turn brought their own inspirations and ideas to the shows and that's why there are so many different approaches to both color and paint techniques in Spumco cartoons.

Hard to do, stressful but in the end everyone is proud of the experimentation.

Thanks to Pumml for collecting up all of Scott's great work.

SCOTT WILLS ARTICLES BY PUMMMMMML


Here are some other paintings that have excellent technique in different styles of technique and color.



These colors are more "cartoon standard" than the Samurai Jack BGs, but have great and varied paint technique.

http://comicrazys.wordpress.com/

http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/Garish color, amazing technique.

Beautiful color, garish yet expert technique.

Warm and inviting and completely atmospheric. Expensive too.

Completely garish, too much contrast and hard to read, but I'm assuming it wasn't painted that way.

Garish colors, and bland uninspired technique.


BUY THIS BOOK

Organizing BG layout elements

Rob Richards has made a great blog where he restores old animation BGs. This makes it very handy for me to study them and pass on some observations to you.

http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/

ORGANIZING ALL THE ELEMENTS INTO A WHOLE VISUAL STATEMENT

Composition and Hierarchy of forms are 2 major fundamental tools of good artists. You can have a million different styles, but the best artists use the same fundamental skills of organizing the elements within their drawings to show them off.


Big picture first, then working their way down through the levels with each level relating to the larger form that it is part of.

USING NEGATIVE SHAPES AND FRAMING ELEMENTS TO DRAW YOUR EYE TO THE FOCAL POINT

HIERARCHY: FORMS WITHIN FORMS

This title card has a masterful use of hierarchical organization. From the overall framing of the trees around the title lettering, all the way down to the smallest level of individual leaves that radiate froM the branches and fill the washy clumps behind them. Each of those clumps flows naturally next to the other clumps and al fit together into an overall shape of foliage.

The perspective of the round bushes leads us deep into the distant horizon and keep the image from being too flat and graphic.


Each bush fits within an organized group of bushes and is also divided into sub forms and on down into the suggestion of leaves that flow around the forms.

The fungi group also has an overall form, while trees all have similar organizations and directions.

ORGANIZING CONTRASTS

The fence is wide, contrasting against the skinny poles.

The areas of sky are different widths.

The houses are low, to contrast against the high fence.

The textures of the trees are detailed, while the geometric shapes of the houses, fence, street are flatter.

Big heavy tree next to a skinny frail tree. Lots of space between them to make it easy for us to see the contrast.

The plank is basically a man made geometric shape. This contrasts against the wheat grass which is organized into its own overall flowing form with obedient subdivisions of grass and wheat, but is more organic than the board. The cans are also man made geometric shapes-but round stubby ones to contrast against the long flat rectangular board.

GROUPING DIFFERENT TYPES OF FORMS

Each group of forms has its own types of shapes and direction. No anarchy here. It's all arranged to give a group of waterfowl a direction to swim off into the distance.

ORGANIZING NATURE'S CLUTTER

Drawing a thick forest can easily add up to hard-to-read anarchy, but with organizational skills and hierarchies and patterns you can create quite pleasing and functional scenes that help support the characters with a rich environment and atmosphere.

A chaotic thick forest would distract from the characters, confuse the eye and defeat the purpose of being a background.

STYLIZED, YET ORGANIZED

This 50s WB style is what many studios misinterpret today as "wonkiness" - no rules. Some modern layout artists see a license for anarchy in these stylized images. I see very slightly distorted perspectives and stylistic interpretations of reality, but with still great planning and organization of all the graphic elements into a quickly readable statement that has a purpose in the scene and story.

Each element does not follow its own physics ; it is subservient to the overall composition. Every detail follows and helps define the larger object it is part of.

(unlike wonkiness where every element exists in its own universe, unrelated to anything else in the picture)

BTW, I was out of town for a few days, so have not yet had a chance to check all the comments and links about storyboarding for the George Liquor Show. I will in the next couple days. Thanks!

Ready for Storyboard Artists: Setups to storyboards

SCENE SETUP

Jim Smith has prepared scene setups for the first couple cartoons. For each scene we hand out setups of the basic BG and situation to the storyboard artists. (They aren't all in color and finished like this)


They are more like these Jim Smith drawings:



We also hand out my outline of the scene (and the whole story)

OUTLINE

Then what I expect from the storyboard artist is to sketch the continuity. The drawings don't have to be cleaned up, but you do need to be able to draw the characters well -understand their basic shapes and their proportions.
You also need to understand the story and the personalities of the characters, so you can draw the acting. I will help by giving you some of my sketches and acting out the whole scene, either in person or over the phone.
The drawings have to have life, be specific and put the point of each gag and story point across without ambiguity.
Your storyboard should provide a strong framework for the pose/layout artist who will do tighter versions of the storyboard roughs and add some breakdown poses.

I'm not looking for wild abstract crazy drawings. I need strong acting that is in context of the scenes and story. And of course is funny. Funny and CUTE to steal a great trademarked phrase.

So if you have experience doing either storyboards or layouts and can draw both cartoony and fairly solid, and are going nuts from working on formula stuff, and are funny, then I need you.

It's a different way of doing storyboards than the studios use, looser in one way, tighter in another.

It's a lot of laughs if you have good control over your storytelling and acting. There is room for your gags too if you can make us laugh and keep the gags in context of the stories.

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Other jobs available:

Designing Setups:

This is like drawing illustrations of a story for a Golden Book. You take the essence of a scene, design the background around the character and plan it so that the board artists and layout artists can have the characters move around and act out the scenes.

Layout or Advanced Cleanup:

Someone who can interpret the storyboard drawings into finished pencil layouts that will work for animation.

You have to be careful to not lose the life of the board sketches, while adding the details and construction.
I'll do another post on this soon.

Ready for storyboard and Layout artists

I'll be putting up a post later today to show what I'm looking for in storyboarding style.
So check back in a couple hours...

Mort Drucker Compositions/Layouts

Mort uses the same big picture idea that Owen, Gross, Kurtzman and Frazetta uses, but also adds little details (like crosshatching) on the last levels.




Hierarchy:
First Level: Ground plane and Sky.
2nd level: Driveway on Hill and road
Next level: Hill split into driveway and vegetation
Next level: Vegetation split into grass and bushes. Note that there is more negative space (the grass) than filled space (the bushes)
Next level The bushes make a long organic form that flows along the hill and driveway.
Next level: Then the bushes are broken into separate rounded forms that flow along the overall long form.
Final level: Each individual bush is broken into an outline of leaves hat radiate along the organic form of the bush.

7 levels- each smaller one is subject to the form of the next level up. No level exists in its own wonky abstract plane ignorant of the the overall picture.

Layout-Composition, the Big Picture Designed Owen Fitzgerald

Owen Fitzgerald's layout and composition sense is great for study. Why?
Because he doesn't use a lot of detail in his scenes. It's all about the overall statement and clarity.

He uses plenty of empty space in between more filled areas.

He doesn't compose anything directly in the middle.
Nothing is evenly spaced.
He uses a combination of controlled framing devices and intersection. Nothing is placed in the scenes by accident.




He uses lots of contrasts, tall and thin, short and wide, characters posed on angles to contrast against perpendicular furniture and buildings. Organic VS geometric shapes.

His scenes have an overall clear statement. The whole frame reads as a design.

You know how you can tell if you have a good composition? An overall pleasing design statement and a clear image? Not just a bunch of clutter?
Look at the image small. If you can still easily read what is happening and the overall shapes add up to a clear design, then you are probably there.


Frank Frazetta has beautiful intricate details in his work, but his images also are stunning simple compositions. The whole image is a design.

Tricky angles

Owen can draw scenes from any angle, and he is still careful to organize the elements in the frame so that everything reads clearly and is a handsome design.

In my opinion, a good clean handsome layout beats a ton of evenly spaced cluttered detail any day. Especially in anmated cartoons where you keep cutting from scene to scene.

toy packages for Brian

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/03/john-k-package-design.html

Mort Drucker's Bob Hope and extra treats

Mort Drucker is an all around great cartoonist. Everyone knows his caricatures and movie parodies in Mad Magazine and lots of artists copy him - superficially. They copy his surface, the little squiggly lines he cross-hatches with, the Searle noses and stuff.

But it's not just his details that make him great. It's his grasp and control of all the essential drawing tools.

He's great at girls too.


He seems to be heavily influenced by Owen Fitzgerald. The way he composes his characters together in a scene, the opposing poses, the groups of characters as blocks of people, the use of negative shapes...
He draws really cartoony cars that still are solid, and he can draw anything from any angle.
His clean compositions, full of pleasing negative shapes to draw your attention to the filled shapes.Hierarchy of forms within forms.














I'm gonna break down some of his skills in further posts.

From what I hear, Drucker is self-taught! He looks like he has many influences: illustrations, animated cartoons, comic strips, comic books. His style tells me he is a big fan himself of cartoons and drawings of many styles. He puts them all together in a completely unique and fun way - and it looks like he is really having fun too.

RARE DRUCKER TREATS!

Thanks to Sherm for finding this stuff! Hey Sherm, gimme the link to the site it all came from!

And thanks Alex for giving it to me....

Favorite Horror Films

Tom Blunt at AMC asked me what horror films influenced me. Here are a few.







Beautiful scene of exposition!
















http://blogs.amctv.com/monsterfest/2008/07/ren-and-stimpy-creator.php

They quoted me saying this:

Would Kricfalusi ever try making one himself? "I wouldn't mind making my own live-action horror movie, if I had another lifetime to live. I'd make up for all the things that pissed me off about monster movies when I was a kid -- get rid of all the filler and give them what they want!" (The Monster)

What I meant was, it's a horror movie tradition to hardly ever show you the monster. They wait till the last second or make you suffer through some cheesy romance between 2 characters with no personality or some retarded plot line, when all you want is the fear and horror.

It's the Hollywood executive theory that the audience can't sit through 90 minutes of solid entertainment - in any genre! They think you need boring parts in between.
There are a few movies that have disproven the rule- Naked Gun, Night of The Hunter, The Raven, Detective Story, Champion and a handful of others.