013 - Dino poses

Here are some Dino poses.  The character had to be Dino, and the poses had to be walking on a tightrope, chasing his tale, and pulling on a rope.  Dino is a pretty flat looking character, but I tried to think of him using actual volumes.

Pretty good silhouette.  Maybe should have him tipped a little farther away so he balances better.

This one was kind of awkward, my least favorite.  Tried to get the top part coming around while the bottom part is about to trail around the other way.

Like how hard he's pulling here.  Tough getting the legs coming together while still reading clearly.

What do you ya think?

012 - Better (hopefully) Flour Sac Animation

Made some changes to the animation.  The jumps should feel springier, and the squash before the jump as well.

Added the background layer to this one so you can see the actual course he goes through.  He's a little off on the second platform.

011 - Flour Sac Animations

Here are some Flour Sac animations from this week.

This is a rough one.  Just a jump with a twist in the air.  The twist is a little hard to see.

This is a cleaned up version of the jump and twist.  Twist is still kind of hard to see.

This one is cooler:  three jumps and a landing on a spring.  The focus of the spring is finding where the S curve happens, and getting a feeling of weight to the motion.  This one is still in progress, but I like the motion of the spring so far.  The spring might be a little slow though.  Thoughts?

010 - First Animation Assignments

Here is some animation I did.

This was our first assignment where we were introduced to drawing, flipping, and shooting our animation.  It's called an Anijam (short for animation jam I think).  The first and last frame had to be of the box.  That way we could link everyone's animation together into a short montage.  The emphasis was on playing with motion and timing, which fit nicely with my super rough scribbly style :)

Yes I realize he kind of floats around a little bit.  Maybe next time I'll draw some ground for him to stand on.

This one is (obviously [hopefully]) a ball with one leg jumping.  The ball had to jump and land in specific places which meant I had to do some planning and keys.  Each jump also had to be bigger.  The character reminds me a lot of the little Pixar lamp, you know the one that jumps around and then blinds you at the beginning of the movie?

The hardest part of this assignment was keeping the character consistent.  It's hard to look at just a single frame and see if something is off.  I had to keep comparing sizes of the leg and foot.

They were both a lot of fun to do.  I liked that we could keep them somewhat rough and focus on getting the movement right.

009 - Something OTHER than life drawing

Here are some character designs.  The assignment was for a mascot that could help promote sustainability.  I went more the route of having the environmental slant come through more in the poses he could be in, rather than giving him a cape and stuff.  I came up with a bunch of sketches.  These are the ones I liked best.

Fox guy.  Somehow he's classier pantless.

Yeti Dude.  Outlined the second version to help show the pose a little better.

Wise 'Ol Tree aka Treestach.  I've been drawing mustaches on a lot of my characters but I think this would have to be the biggest in terms of mustache to body ratio.  Kind of reminds me of Kang and Kodos haha.  I picture the roots moving around like tentacles.  Would be a pretty tough character to make an actual mascot out of.  Kids would be knocking him over all day long without arms for balancing or punching.

Two versions of monster Guru: one is the original sketch, the second I edited out the useless Batman style gauntlets and struggled my way through some super fast Photoshop colouring.

008 - This should get me started

So I had to get some paper for the start of the year.  I think I can cross that one off the list.


25 pads of 40 sheets: check
10 packs of 500 sheets: also check



Paper is heavy.

On the plus side, I've heard "We all have 10000 bad drawings to get out, and the sooner the better".  So once I make it through those 6000 sheets I should be well on my way.

I think the quote might have been from Walt Stanchfield, or maybe a Chuck Jones about a teacher of his.  Maybe the number was 100000.  I hope it was 10000.  Either way I've got a lot of drawing to do!