Fancy Comic Book Inking Easy To Do For Animation Now

I always admired the way guys like Shane Glines, Bruce Timm, Joe Sinnot and the Harvey Comics inkers could wield a brush. I never had the dexterity to use a real brush with ink myself.

But once I got a Cintiq and started inking on the computer I found programs that allowed me to do the thick and thin styles I like so much in Comic books - and without the mess.

I started first with Illustrator -which was a bear to learn. Now I'm finally used to drawing in Photoshop - I can do the kind of lines I like, but can't use the paint bucket to fill flat colors because to get the smooth lines, PS antialiases the edges which buggers everything up. - We used to do Thick and Thin in Flash but that was a monstrous process - expensive, tedious and time consuming.

But in Toonboom's programs, it's really easy to do good lines (even for a non-dexterous person like myself).

We made a demo to show how easy it is to ink on the computer in "Animate".

John K Inks George Liquor from John Kedzie on Vimeo.

By the way, Toonboom's "Animate" is on sale today if you wanna get beautiful comic book style inking in your animation.

TOONBOOM OLYMPICS SALE

Naked Dead Baby With Dangling Parts Cut Off Construction

This has to be the cheapest character design ever.
It's just a construction model for a stock 40s baby character.

It's such a funny concept to have a character without a design or any details at all. Even ears are too expensive to draw!


There are a million characters based on this construction, but this is the only one that is nothing but construction.

Here it is with ears and clothes:
Here he is with ears, a hat and even hair! That adds to the expense.

I like this Harvey artist too

This is the other Harvey artist that draws the characters in a really appealing style.




http://davekarlenoriginalartblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/steve-muffatti-friends-salute-to-unsung.html

Puppet Interlude

I wonder how it's possible to take something cute and do this to it:

Design Quirks: Contrasting Leg Theories

Many Harvey kids have "stubbies" like Canadian beer bottles.
Ketcham's kids tend to have bell-bottom legs.
The basic forms that make up both Harvey and Ketcham kids are very similar. They have the same stock cartoon kid head construction.
The 2 styles have some minor -but recognizable general differences - like the legs.Then each individual character has some specific accessory design element and that's what makes him or her iconic and identifiable.
Usually the hair is a specific design, as in Dennis', Joey's, Margaret's, Audrey's.
Another way to make a generic design identifiable is to have the clothes or some other surface detail be recognizable - Dot's dot dress, Margaret's glasses.

Dot and Audrey are the exact same designs-same body, same face, same dress. Dot's hair is generic. Audrey's is specific. What's the main difference? Dot has dots on her dress.
Underneath these indentifiable details which enable us to instantly recognize the character, the forms are pretty similar.

It's rare that a cartoon character truly has a specific design in its underlying forms. Cartoonists use the same handful of basic shapes over and over again and most are probably not even aware of it. Here's an exception.

Howie Post's Attributes

Howie Post is by far my favorite Harvey comics cartoonist. He has the most fun style. It's like he is caricaturing the Harvey house style and bringing out all its best elements.

Appeal

"Appeal" is more than just a principle. To me it's the sum of the other fundamental skills. It's controlling your visual skills in a way that makes the result the most enjoyable and exciting to look at.

For me, without appeal a cartoon is not worth watching or reading. It's the appeal that first grabs your attention and draws you in to the story, to see if there is anything else that's worth your time. I know that's very old-fashioned thinking. When I was a kid, it went without saying. You read the comics and read the cartoons first because they were fun to look at. If they were ugly, you wouldn't get far enough in to find out if they had other attributes.

Howie Post has tons of appeal. Real eye candy.

Great Backgrounds

His backgrounds are cartoony, stylish and inventive. Oh... and bold!

Design and Style

He has the strongest graphic style of any of the Harvey cartoonists.

Composition

His compositions are not only totally clear functionally - they go much farther than that; they are designs in themselves.

Cartooniness

His characters are very cartoony. It's rare to see strong style and cartooniness working so seamlessly together.

Poil

Actually all the girls Howie draws are very cute. Poil, Audrey, Wendy, Lucretia and the rest.

Imagination

Howie's stories have some really magical characters and designs.

I'm going to do some posts on each of these aspects of Howie's work.