Comic Book Day Outline - pt 2

in case you missed part 1:
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/03/comic-book-day-outline-pt-1.html

another pose of George

maybe that first pose was just too weird

how about the second one from the scene?

Cute Girl and Ren Running, Bob animation 12x beat

This girl character is based on Tex' Avery's Lonesome Lenny, which in turn is taken from Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men". It's such a funny concept it's hard to resist it. -Someone who loves his little pets so much, he squeezes them to death. "I'm gonna love you and squeeze you and kiss you..."

I tried to get a little pathos here with shadows of the bars and Stimpy pulling his rubbery gloves along the bars in heartbreaking agony.

I asked Bob to make the girl be light in this run and to have more drawings of her off the ground than on the ground in this run. There are 12 x per step. 7 of them, her feet are off the ground.

There are 5 where she has at least one foot in contact with the ground.




This is drawing 7 and drawing 11. There are 3 more inbetweens very closely spaced between them to make you feel this part of her run, where she is floating in the air. Bob used "tight inbetweens" a lot to great effect.

He also added lots of overlap to smooth out the run. Ren's bouncing overlaps the girl's up and down motion, and then Ren's hair overlaps his.
http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/RenStimpy/1BHB/BobImAlive.mov

That "I'm alive, I'm alive" bit is inspired by "Stranger On The 3rd Floor" - a great movie.

T Shirt Designs

Here's a couple t-shirt designs Kali and I are working on for the SD Con this year.
We are also probably going to have the Blen and Kubercheebie design from yesterday. Let me know if you're coming and which shirt you want (if any) so we know how many to print.

Big House Blues 5 Spumco - smack Stimpy

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/spumco/RenStimpy/1BHB/Hairballs3smackStimpy.mov

Student Copies Of HB Characters

Here are some drawings by Becky. She has a very strong personal style of her own, but has chosen to go back and practice some classic cartoon construction to supplement her already impressive talents.
These Preston Blair dogs show that she has a good grasp of hierarchy - making the details subject to the physics of the larger shapes. She also has a very natural flair for nice linework and appealing shapes.



I think she actually had an easier time drawing 40s style characters than the HB style, which at first glance seems simpler.

Becky drew a really cute Quick Draw above, but the proportions are different than the drawing she was studying. Obviously when I draw HB style, I change the proportions drastically too, but that's after first trying to learn the way they are actually designed and constructed and using that as a stepping stone for experiments.

HB isn't merely drawing flat or with no rules. The best HB artists - like Ed Benedict, Dick Bickenbach and Harvey Eisenberg knew and used the old cartoon animation principles and just applied them in a (superficially) simpler way. They cheated the odd little thing for style, but not everything.

When studying anything, it's usually best to be conservative and anal about it - to try to get your studies as accurate as possible - and to understand how something is built and why it looks the way it does. So you can tell the difference between stylistic license and mistakes.


This is great practice and the more someone analyzes their studies and makes adjustments, the faster they progress.