Forcing New Information To Stick In The Brain

I copied a couple of my HB Rubber toys to see what I could glean for future use. (HB characters make the best toys)
I took two characters and turned them to see what general characteristics they had in common,
and what features were specific to the particular design of each. Whatever they had in common might tell me about what happens to cartoon faces when rotated - and more, what happens when toys of cartoon faces turn in space. It's even more 3d than a model sheet turnaround.

TESTING MY MEMORY

A couple days later, I tested myself to see if I actually learned anything. Could I reproduce anything I studied? If not, then the study would be for naught.
I also wanted to know not just how to reproduce superficially something visual that I memorized - but more important, did I understand what I supposedly learned? The eye copies what something looks like on the surface, but it takes the brain to comprehend it. That's the trickier part for me. Why does something look the way it does? - not just what does it look like?

crappy one

CHECKING, REDRAWING, CORRECTING BAD MEMORY

I absorbed some of what I studied, but not completely, so I went back and drew the toy again, this time trying to get a more accurate copy and to ram the info into my brain.

Could I make a drawing that feels like a toy and not just a 2 dimensional drawing of the characters as they appear in cartoons? I'd have to have an understanding of what makes a character look like a toy.

I tried drawing toy versions of toys that don't exist to test my understanding.

They aren't exaggerated enough yet to satisfy my goal.

Plastic Toys Have Seams

Then I tried drawing what the characters might look like as plastic toys, which have their own unique properties.

WHY ISN'T THERE A BOO BOO RUBBER TOY??: MY SUGGESTION

It is my opinion that study and drawing practice is a good thing - but only if you force yourself to try to understand what you are studying - and then to apply it to original drawings that aren't copies of something right in front of your face.

Some day Bill and Joe will call from Heaven and let me design a bunch of Hanna Barbera toys - and in the wrong colors. Then all my studies will have had a noble purpose.

Yogi Defends Boo Boo

I did this color in Painter 2 long ago. It was a bugger of a program to use, and it got worse with each new version. I'm not able to do this sort of thing with the later versions.

Original Ranger Smith Story Notes

I always thought Yogi Bear cartoons could benefit from more true-life nature bits. That way the fans could not only enjoy hearty laughs with their favorite forest oaf and his youthful charge, but would also learn about what really goes on behind every innocent looking tree and bush.

"Wake up Kids! This is REAL LIFE!...
OK, now sit down and enjoy some wacky forest antics."

When I was about 11 or 12, I had a friend from the catholic school who was huge, and already had a filmy mustache. He was a year older than me, but 2 years behind in school. My friends at the public school would ask me, "Hey, who's that MAN you hang around with?" The "man" was named "Beaver", but everyone was afraid to ask him why. He used to twist the other kids' arms off and punch you in sacred areas. But I would tell him all the latest jokes, feed him cigarettes and draw funny pictures of him, so he never killed me. Every time the urge to mangle would come over him (and I could see it in his eyes and stiffening mustache fibers) I would have to quickly come up with a crazy joke, or just do something stupid enough to make him laugh. He also took my cowboy hat and rode my tiny mustang bike all over the neighborhood. Beaver basically owned other the material wealth of every other kid in town. Every kid cartoonist should befriend a bully who's body has matured years before its time. It's great training.

Of course the lesser bullies be jealous that I was protected by Beaver, and whenever he was around, then they would start in on me and I had different strategies to stay alive for them.

One thing especially fearsome to us Protestant kids ( who took about 2 more years to reach puberty) was that all the Italian boys had pointy shoes "cockroach kickers". They absolutely hated wearing them - except when soft unformed Public School boys came around. We were easily punctured.

Boo Boo

describe Boo Boo's personality

Yogi Bear Model Sheets and cute versions

Very Appealing Yogi and BooBoo

hey-there-its-yogi-bear-by-mel-crawford.html

Here's the later ugly Boo Boo with the inverted curves at the sides of his cranium.
All the cuteness is gone.

Trying Ed Love's Head Bobs at Spumco

I did a couple Ranger Smith cartoons for Cartoon Network eons ago and tried using a bunch of old HB lmied animation techniques. In this scene, I used an Ed Love theory that I had seen in many Huckleberry Hound and Flintstone cartoons. This was the first time I tried it.

I created my basic 3 keys, Here's the down pose.

This is a middle pose.

Here is the up pose. - with the signature neck hotdog that Ed Love uses.

I also made inbetweens between these poses, but didn't always use them or sometimes used them as keys for lesser accents. This is an inbetween below. I tried to make it all fit the dialogue track (voiced by Steve Worth!) another inbetween...

Here's the up key again with a different mouth.

By using a small handful of head key positions and some inbetweens, you can have a big variety of expressions and levels of accents. ( I can't upload the whole scene here, because it will be too big. I'll put up 2 pieces to give you the idea.)

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/JohnHB/BooBooWildClips/1howmuchhair.mov

If you watch this scene in its entirety - I guess on TV, you can see a lot of different faces - made up of combinations of head positions and different eyes and mouths for each position and inbetween.

http://www.cartoonthrills.org/blog/HB/JohnHB/BooBooWildClips/croup.mov

Next: Anthony Agrusa applies the same theory to more extreme scenes with smoother animation.

Writing For Cartoons 8a: More Gruntspeak - Boo Boo woos Cindy Bear

I started really getting into the gruntspeak after a while and found more places to use it.
You know how when you listen to classical or instrumental music, you understand the meaning of the music but you can't put it into the words? I tried to do that with grunt speak. I put in lots of inflections and even some dirty feelings.

It's too bad I don't have the raw track for this section to play you. You have to listen closely because Cindy talks over some of it. I tried to weave the most meaning full grunts through the pauses in her dialogue.












CLICK HERE TO SEE BOO BOO CLIP!