I think I am gonna bring my doodles over to the store that sells my t shirts this week in case anyone wants to collect some.
Malynisky and his innocent charge wonder what kind of evil monstrosity would tamper with the God-given tensility of their beloved Orthodox undergarments.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/11/toenails-11-shock-of-real.html
What horrific plans does Kaspar have in store for the hapless man things?
Fragile, flaky hominid bones are no impediment to Kaspar's grip force.
Yes, he has found the day's prey.
And what glee does our forest fur mountain display at the sight of his defenseless victims?
Eyes protrude with true Slavic hunger.
Leathery lips quiver in anticipation of the exquisite pleasures to come.
Chomp!
Kaspar absorbs the nutrients from Ranger marrow by chewing them into a soft fleshy man-paste.
Grind! Gnash! Absorb!
Is this the end of of our ancestors?
Here are some fun explorations Jim did for Tiny Tooooons.
Imagine if the toons themselves looked this solid and CARtoony?
Was this from Eddie's Stomp For Freedom song? Below? I remember laughing at that.
I wish I had copies of Jim's TT storyboards. They were amazing. The setups and compositions looked like illustrations from Collier's.
http://www.drawfurry.com/?p=5
Here are some neat images from 2 of my favorite sites.
I love the look of these early HB cartoons. The BG colors in 2 Corny Crows are really clever and tasty.
Sometimes I think it's harder to pull off simple than complicated.
These layouts have everything I talk about, with just enough detail to give them organic texture.
I think I will take that superficially simple "Nowhere Bear" cartoon from the other day and compare it, creatively point by creative point to some big budget modern animated executive created leviathan. Any ideas of what movie I should use? That furry picture would be good. 
Or the afro-'tude-frog-princess-revert to our roots and sell more princess dolls picture? There are too many to choose from.![[GeorgeLiquorThanksgiving.gif]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/R0XVpoe1y6I/AAAAAAAAJVM/o81U4U_fuH4/s1600-h/GeorgeLiquorThanksgiving.gif)
I guess the thing to be most thankful for is family. It sure inspires the funniest cartoon ideas!
That's me, my sister Elizabeth and my Great Granny.
Here's the 2 sane people in my family, the girls. They are the calm rational ones. Me and my Dad seem to have the hot blooded quick to fight Slavic blood surging through our barbaric veins.
Here's a typical 70s dinner in the wilderness at our Canadian cottage.
Awww....
There's Elizabeth and our pup Jocko.
This is how I block out poses. Then I stare at them and se what looks toned own.
I see that the expressions have lost a bit -especially in the eyes, so I am gonna go back and push them farther.
Thanks for all the suggestions about how to embed sound in a picture. I'll try a couple of them tomorrow. About half of you suggested Flash. I'm not sure how that helps. I don't want to make an animatic and then have to upload that to youtube or something and then link back to my blog. Too many steps for me and for the reader.
I made the silhouettes of his face and the underpants clearer. Also added perspective to his huge body.
Kali made another attempt and improved all those things. His face is now much more open and not cramped. It has a good silhouette too.
Feet are better planted.
The Focus of the pose: THE FOOT PUSHING THE DRAWER IN.
His body leans back. I used a line of action to do that.
Second in importance to the physical action in the drawing, is his reaction to it. His feeling. His personality. That takes place mostly in the face.
To help read the face against the arm I made sure that there was a clear silhouette to the edge of the face. Some shapes push out (muzzle and nose), some indent in - the eye mask area. This indented eye mask area helps him look smug. It helps pull his eye brows up.
Note that the smile line and cheek line above create a shape (in yellow). The smile is pushing the meat of his cheek up, squeezing the area between. Note also the soft angles curving around the cheek/face area. It isn't a simple circular curve or half oval.
His fingers are not doing anything so I keep them contained within the shape of the hand.
The other hand is just hanging back and those fingers "splay". They aim very slightly apart, also for organicness.
I put weight on the foot on the ground by bending the knee and having the lower part of the leg overlap the top of the foot.
Eddie though, seemed to like the idea. He really latched on to the transvestite Elmer.
Here are my versions of the reassignment below.
Eddie comes down with a mild case of reassignment.
with beautiful meat on both front and back. Make your mother proud who packed this lunch for you!
Construction, line of action, negative spaces inside and outside, clear staging, opposing poses, contrasts, organic...everything good
Some folks think that learning good basic drawing is a style. It isn't. The style is what you lay on top of the solid foundation - once you have one.
This Bugs character looks pretty conservative for Eddie. They are really good, but I'm surprised he had to write "acceptable off-model". I wonder who needed to be convinced it was acceptable? I bet the model department wasn't!
I really like Eddie's Porkys. These show a special love for the character.
You gotta be a real cartoonist to realize the creative beauty and humorous potential of Warner Bros.' seemingly most conservative character.
These are some great poses below. It's weird to see Porky wearing pants, but somehow Eddie manages to draw him as if what's under them is aching to come out. He knows what people like about Porky.
You know somebody can really draw if they like to do back poses - and can make them funny! Many artists are afraid of drawing characters from the back - not Eddie. He embraces the backside. This Porky below is really appealing. Damn those pants!
Here is definite proof that Eddie can draw cute!
I love how he can get perfectly clear poses, construction and attitudes in just a few lines on a tiny thumbnail drawing. Eddie's storyboards are super fun to lay out, because he's done the hard part for you. I don't know how you can go wrong with storyboard drawings like this.
Story Artists No Longer Are Allowed To Tell Stories
He had a really bizarre design in the cartoons. - a giant brain with a tiny little vestigial beak. (I did a bunch of giant brain tiny Toons drawings making fun of it)
Eddie was one of the first directors during the idealistic days of Tiny Toons' birth. (Or reincarnation) He was the perfect choice. He had a unique "voice", a strong individual drawing style and a really funny way of seeing the world - as you all know from his genius theory blog. Plus, he knew all the cartoons that they were basing the baby version on.
I was watching Fox News the other night and a funny commercial came on for the National Review. I guess it's a super right wing crazy magazine. The ad looked like it was made by a local TV station for 5 bucks.
But all the covers had these great caricatures!
They must have a really good art director.
They showed some killer caricatures of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid but I couldn't find those on the internets. If you have 'em and wanna scan 'em and send me links, I'll link back!
I really admire good caricaturists.
The ones that don't just copy the procedures and styles of other caricaturists.
I also like the caricaturists who capture the person's whole head shape, and not just wrap their individual features into a wobbly sack cloth with a random silhouette.
This is not easy to do. Takes a lot of brain power.
"As shoon ass Ve are Shnug in our Onderfings, ve can take a nice cold shower!"
Uh oh! Little Horst senses a disturbence in his nether regions.
He feels no snugness today. Can this truly be spring?
In a flash his papa, experienced in the ugly parts of life, knows who's to blame for this atrocity. "Only vun wrrretched creature vould do soch a ting!"
The ruiner of all precious treasures enjoys his well-earned moment of spite."Who eesh dat ting all coovered een hairss, Tato? Whoooo?"
George Peed's best character translation.
This is someone else on the back, but it's pretty swell too.
George Peed was the 70s and 80s king of off - model. Check out Bugs' little hands.
He drew tons of cartoon record album covers and they outraged me when I first saw them, but I quickly grew to love them.
The funny part is, these look accurate compared to the way they've been drawn in the last decade or so.
I love those donkey ears on Porky and Elmer's tiny wide set eyes.
Did you know that George is Bill Peet's brother? Bill changed his name slightly, but George stuck to his heritage.
Thanks to Tony W. for finding it for me.
Jojo was over the other night and so I showed him how to translate a storyboard pose into a layout pose.
Here's the pose. Notice that it's a scribble. 
Not every line is meant t be taken literally. You have to maintain the pose and the guts and expression, but make a finished sensible constructed drawing, using logic (and appeal).
etc.
Milt Gross draws my favorite backgrounds. They make no logical sense and don't follow perspective, but somehow they aren't wonky.
I have no idea how he does this, but I wish I could do it.
A lot of cartoonists tend not to see space. We see fills or positive spaces. 
Areas of interest to us are eyes, mouths, ears, arms, fingers, but we sometimes neglect the big spaces between the fills. And those negative spaces are needed.
I've noticed when students are copying drawings from Preston Blair or old cartoons, or even life drawing there is a tendency to shrink the open spaces.
On a 3/4 angle, you see more space behind the eye that's close to you than the one that's farther away.
Chuck Jones is a master of balancing fills with space. And of using contrasting shapes.
He doesn't pile balls on balls, yet he uses all the classic 40s animation principles.
In this earlier model sheet of the bird you can tell the WB artists are just trying to get the basic principles down and it looks more like balls on balls. Chuck's more interesting individual style developed after he got confident of his principles. Then he stopped piling up balls.
Many cartoonists today (including me, when I'm not thinking about it) draw the whole face filling the head shape, with no space around it. This makes the image cramped and unfocused. It also leaves no room for the features to move if the character needs to raise his eyebrows or open his mouth wide.
Even in an extreme close up where perspective is distorted you can see that the face doesn't take up a lot of space within the whole head. - and that there are spaces between the features. The aren't all crammed together.
What if there was a kids' network that was programmed by someone who actually liked you? If I was a kid, I would want cartoonists to schedule network programming for sure, (instead of psychologists, lawyers and market research biddies) since we are just big kids ourselves and still watch cartoons and puppet shows and play with toys.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/02/calling-all-girls-heartaches.html
http://johnkpitch.blogspot.com/2009/09/kaspar-pilot.html
Here's a great article about how unnatural symmetry is:
Here, John is following instructions in the lessons.
He is making solid shapes, each of which interweaves and connects to their shapes within the overall structure.
This was a tricky one below.
ok, John. this is the correct way to hold a saw. Pay some Goddamn attention for once, will ya? 
either right handed or left handed. 
and you don't need eye or ear protection.
it's boring and you can't hear
the blade turning. when you go to cut wood, attack it with your foot holding it down like you're holding down a hippy. 
this saw is a Husqvarna 362 and is bad ass. the Swedes made good saws and good clogs. 
their hockey players are pretty good too, but nothing like Canadian players. Swedes won't fight either.
that gun is my great grandfathers. i smuggled it across the US/Canada border a few years ago. i built the fire place too. these rocks are from the creek. no one knows how to do this anymore , especially Cal arts animators who think they're tough
What a modern day lumberjack would be like. But let's go back in time, shall we?
In fact, some say he was born with a chainsaw in his mouth. 
He has been chopping down trees every day since he was a wee lad. And boy, was his Ol' Man proud.
He has even won the medal of freedom for his great contribution to the depletion of our essential resources.So should we let him get to the job God put him on this earth for and let him take down a couple of His precious rainforests in a day or 2? 
No sir, this is the 21st Century and we don't do things that way anymore. 
We are much more scientific now. 
We still wanna take down the rainforests, but we need to do it with the aid of inexperienced experts who can do it sloppily in a much longer period and at 50 times the cost.
No pinkies that wrote these instructions have ever been tainted by the roughness of bark.
Those who can't do surely must make the rules, because after all, they are not prejudiced by old-school practical experience. 
They obtain their immense knowledge in the abstract, through market research.
Well no one can say ol' George ain't the sporting type.
He's willing to give the new cumbersome ways a shot.
My gosh, what a mess we have to clean up! But that's how we do things in our modern world.
Moral of the story:
If animation producers ran the chainsaw business, this is the tool they would give you.
Next:
Like, what is the chainsaw designed to do best?
I bet you think it's to cut down trees.
Pshaw. Piffle. Poo Poo on that. How shallow.
Of course they do that very well and better than anything else, but is that ALL we should be doing with them?? The mere fact that it does that better than other inventions is exactly the reason not to do it! This is 21st century thinking now.
No, surely there are other things to do with wood cutting tools.
You don't want to limit the creativity of wood cutters by just having them saw wood. In fact, we should eliminate that purpose altogether. You can think of some things chainsaws aren't really designed for can't you? We are all equally creative now after all.
I know! This is something they really aren't good at! Chainsaws, like cartoons could raise your kids right (since parents and church can't) and teach them moral values that the people who run the businesses don't have.
You can also use chainsaws to explore the depth of emotion in little children.
How many animated cartoons have dead Moms in them? The theory is if you make cartoons that make kids cry, that is a much higher purpose than making kids laugh. Killing Moms in cartoons is a very effective and highbrow way to make kids cry. I suppose these animated producers beat their kids regularly, knowing how much they all enjoy crying. I wonder if they also charge them 10 bucks for it?
Moral of the story: Chainsaws should be good for you and never do what they do best, just like cartoons.
http://nicolasartblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/popeye-toy-turnaraounds.html
Of course you have all thought of the obvious analogy of cartoons and chainsaws. Like, what if the same people who run the cartoon business got ahold of the chainsaw industry? My take on that is coming...
I can't think of a better drawing exercise for an animation student than to draw a toy of a classic cartoon character from different angles.
I drew mine too big and cut off the feet.
I would love to see cartoonists start to use some perspective in their cartoon drawings speaking of feet.
Note that the bottom of his feet aren't cut off on a straight line like you see in many cartoons today. That's the worst (and ugliest) cheat I have ever seen in cartoons. It means anyone can be an instant cartoonist.
If you are going to copy this, I suggest you don't try to "fix" it or put it "on-model". Whenever copying anything for study purposes - draw what you see - and FEEL.
This has construction just like a classic cartoon character, but the proportions are different than the cartoons. And the shapes are more rubbery looking because it's a toy. Try to capture the feel of that (without shading).
These are the easy angles. If I see anyone who's done good drawings of this turnaround, maybe I'll put up the harder angles next.
By the way, have you ever seen this man's (the one in the illustration) talk show? Eeegad!
I suggest (if you don't already) supplementing your cartoon studies with some life drawing. (I know this is a photo, not a live model)
my conservative attempt at Chloe's style
Some artists are too stiff and draw mechanical characters.
Ever see those Gene Deitch Tom and Jerrys made in the 60s in eastern europe? They are a total misunderstanding of the 40s American animation style. The characters are drawn stiff and move stiffly. They look like they are made of badly drawn balls stacked on top of each other. 
Here's a weird combination of wobbly and stiff at the same time. That's an achievement! Whenever anyone draws Tom and Jerry now, they give them these bulbous balls for toes that they never had in the original cartoons.
These drawings are not remotely realistic. They have no real anatomy. They are entirely made up of animated cartoon forms - spheres and pears. Yet they don't look mechanical and they are full of life. They aren't balls piled on top of each other.
Here it is done wrong: 1980 Tom and Jerry at Filmation, Balls on balls. A complete misunderstanding of the 40s style. We used to laugh and cry at these model sheets at the same time when working on these cartoons. (Thanks to Tom Minton for saving these hilarious monstrosities)
These Eisenberg characters are much more convincing as life forms, even though they have no literal realistic anatomy.
That's because they obey some principles of reality. They are organic and solid at the same time. Asymmetrical in a natural way. They have weight. They are not robotic.
You can really feel this drawing of Tom smashing into the log. It makes sense. It isn't random distortion. (His belly is accidentally painted wrong; that's why he looks skinny at first.)
USE NEGATIVE SPACES WITHIN THE FORM!
Face is kept well to the front, with lots of negative space behind it. Top of face (eye area) is smaller than bottom of face (mouth area) for design contrast, Nose isn't in the middle. It's not symmetrical or evenly proportioned. If it was it would look mechanical.
Dino's whole face is squashed together at the top of his head. Same with the top of his body where his arms are cramped together with no negative space. These are easy corrections if you are thinking about it.
A vertical line running down the top of the face. Horizontal lines under and at top of eyes. These construction lines follow the form of that part of the head. This is where today a lot of people get it wrong. 
They have the plane of the eyes contradict the plane of the face they are sitting on. (It came from a mistake in a Ren and Stimpy cartoon, and everyone thought it was on purpose.)
Disney eyes are very specific to them and their followers. You can always tell a Cal Arts animator by certain things they can't break out of - like Disney eyes. Sometimes the eyes have 4 corners. 2 subtle ones at top. But they always are thinner at the top, wider at bottom.
Disney eyes and same head construction on all these characters.
From Mark Mayerson's site:
By the time of 101 Dalmations, the handful of stock Disney designs were all morphing into one. Every character in Dalmations has the same construction and eyes. Maybe Cruella has a very slight variation in head proportions, but the exact same eyes and eye expressions. This is the Don Bluth bible, and later in degraded form, the Cal Arts bible. Same character designs, same eyes over and over again.
Slightly different jaw. Same eyes, only bigger. New nose! The Goth cartoonist's template.
Animation is infamous for recycling designs. (And even more for recycling stories-but I'll save that for a rant)
Here's a much funnier variation on the head shape-and with original specific eye shapes. Try to catch all the subtleties. It's hard!
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