I's Can Sculpt!

Here are some sculptures that I made a long time ago. This is one of the first incarnations of Zoot Manhattan. He was pretty much a caricature of Dean Martin, one of my favorite singers (I'm a big fan of the Rat Pack).




I actually really liked how this one turned out.

Next up, we have another original of mine, the Jolly Bomber!





He was made to be a comic book villain. There are some flaws but I had fun coming up with the character and sculpting it. Man what a huge ass!

Dr. Robotnik!

Roughed it out on an index card, cleaned it up with mechanical pencil on the back. Colored in Photoshop.

Love Birds Revisited!

Still some flaws but I like how this one looks more. Actually, this is how I'd like the final scene to look. What do you guys think?

One thing's for sure, I could sure use some practice on my backgrounds. Think I'll work on that some more.

Let's get Dangerous!

Roughed out on one side, inked on the other. Colored in Photoshop.

Next time, I'll scan it in as a black and white image. May do away with a lot of the roughness.

Updated Love Birds progress...

Okay, here's a step by step progress. First I studied the original panel that inspired the last image.

Then, I made a rough (very rough) layout of the image on a 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. I tried keeping things within a 6 x 8 in. box (usually the ratio when I normally animate).

After that I tried tying everything down on their own layer (not scanned). When I finished, I started doing a tonal study based on the original storyboard panel.

Once I was finished, I did a tonal layer to each of the tie downs. I also added a black outline to the characters.

Finally, I added color in Photoshop. I used the same color scheme from the last image, since I kinda liked how that looked. I also cropped the image based on the ratio that I applied. Here's the final result.

My thoughts:

Layout: Shouldn't have settled on the first drawing. Should've made sure that the characters (the most important part of the scene) fit within the scene. Too much of them break out and it looks sloppy. Maybe start with the character's general shape and then build the background around them? I should also study tree branches. Even for a cartoony design, these look kinda weird.

Tonal Study: I actually kinda like how this looks. I don't know if it's helping me as much as I'd like it to, though. It does help figure out the composition. Perhaps I should do a color study as well.

B/W Art: This should probably be called grey scale art. :-P Need to practice on the outlining of the characters. The contrast on the greys looked pretty good when before I scanned them. Maybe I need to up the contrast a bit? Maybe I should go straight to colors?

Color: Maybe I should skip the whole Grey Scale/Photoshop color deal and try coloring them as a final clean up instead. I just don't like the result of this. Other people pull it off really well but I think I'm missing something.

I don't want to give up on this image just yet. I'm gonna give a few more tries. After that, I'm going to start working on other aspects of this short, whether or not I perfect this!

Wish me luck. :)

Love Birds posting!

I have a few shorts all nice an' story boarded and now that I'm done with school, I have the time to work on them!

Here's a story board panel from the short, Love Birds. This was done a while ago.



I tried to do a clean-up of it (the characters on one layer, the background on another) with Micron Pens and then do a tonal study with some grey felt markers.



Then I done-did the colorins in that fancy ass program, Photoshop!



Ehhhh, needs a little work. Maybe next time I'll work on a larger medium. I need to pay more attention to the general shape of the characters. There are some ugly lumps and bumps here and there. I also should have built the shading from the inside out, starting out with a light grey general shape and getting darker as I tie down the volume. Doing it the opposite way caused some nasty smudges here and there.

Oh well, practice makes perfect. :) I'll probably post the rest of the story boards later.