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.

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.

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.

Need Artists Soon. Can You Draw A Republican?

HOW TO CHECK YOUR COPIES:

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-3-how-to-check.html


It's been about 28 years since I first drew this guy.

Well I found a sponsor to produce 40 minutes of George Liquor cartoons. No dirty hippie ladies this time. Real men who think George will help promote a decent society of upstanding Americans.

DO YOU NEED A JOB DRAWING DECENT CARTOONS WITH POSITIVE VALUES?

I'm going to need an assortment of talent to help me. I'll do a few posts to tell you which jobs will be available and what skills I'm looking for. Today, it's storyboard and layout artists who can adapt to my style.

I won't have time to train people on the job. But I will help you learn to draw the characters on my blog.

I'll need folks like Hillary, who can sit down on day 1 and start to produce functional and entertaining cartoon scenes. If you've already worked on my cartoons, then you will have a big advantage. Anyone who can show me that they already can draw my main characters will make it much easier for me to make a show that will be successful.

The best way to learn to draw a character is to start with the head in neutral expressions, just to learn how he is built.

GEORGE IN NEUTRAL EXPRESSIONS

3/4 VIEW

Some of my characters are extra hard to draw. George especially, so I would start by just learning to construct his head in simple expressions-smiling, or just neutrality.

I'll do more posts, next George with specific expressions, then one for George's body and body poses.





I wouldn't try to draw wild poses or really specific expressions of George until you can already just draw the construction of his head. That's enough of a task by itself. Don't try to be Rod Scribner the first day.
Things to note: There is a lot of space behind George's facial features. Behind his eyes and mouth, you can see his jaw, his cranium and his neck. Many young cartoonists will cut off the cranium and neck or draw them too close to the face.

Remember that a face is at the front of the head, and there is a lot of space between your face and the back of your skull.

You also need to leave space above his eyes - between the top of the eyes and the bottom of his brush cut. That's where his eyebrows will go, and they will need some flesh space in order to move up and down to make expressions.

FRONT VIEW

PROFILE

On the profile you can see that the front of his skull is higher than the back of it. His head slopes backwards. It's very tricky to draw, but is important to his Republicanism.


If you draw this bugger, then post a link in the comments. Once I see a few folks who can draw his basic construction, I'll do a post of george with more specific expressions. Then Jimmy and Sody.

STORYBOARD STYLE VS. LAYOUT STYLE drawings

Storyboard artists don't need to draw the characters perfectly "on-model" or clean, but they do have to understand the core of the characters' look and personality.

Layout artists need to be tighter and make the continuity of poses "flippable" for the animators, but they don't need to be perfectly clean like the drawings above. Just a good pencil line that an inker can interpret.

Of course, my first choice will be professionals who have done storyboards and layouts, but who knows maybe someone out there is just a natural, who easily draws good poses and construction.

QUESTIONS?

Ask in the comments and I will try to answer.