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