Toby Tortoise (Sketch Day # 1)

Well it's been over six months since the last post I've made, and... Well, let's just say that a combination of studies and my utter lack of a work ethic helped me quickly lose track of following the Preston Blair exercises. And the lack of a consistent job and a university still a month away has left me completely and utterly bored.



While I definitely want to continue them, for the time being to try and give myself more of a short term goal to follow I'll be doing (somewhat) quick and (somewhat) basic construction exercises based off old cartoons to boost my own skills up before I jump back into finishing the first part of John K.'s cartoon college. No idea how many, but it'd be nice to make it a force of habit every day so I can eventually worry less about mastering basic principles like construction and proportion while I work on understanding more advanced concepts down the road. Consider it a new years resolution. I'll be alternating between digital and pencil sketches since my old WACOM tablet hasn't gotten any love for awhile. ;-;

To the two or three people who'll wind up reading this, wish me luck!

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 2

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 2

It's been a month since I've last posted anything on this blog, partially due to incoming deadlines I had for most of last month, but mostly because I can get pretty lazy. Doesn't mean I've been (entirely) skimping out of some much-needed animation practice.
These sketches have been done for at least a fortnight. While all of these are the attempts at replicating Blair's heads I was most satisfied with, I feel that I'm taking too much time on each individual sketch which eventually leaves some of the linework involved looking a bit stiff. I'd say in the end I spent around 10 to 30 minutes on per finished head, which may be way too much time. Or not. Anybody else who's worked through these lessons have any advice on that matter? 8D

Animation Drawing Course - Lesson 1 Part 2

Oh hey look, the rest of the heads (I *think*) from the 1st animation lesson. Spending a boring university lecture drawing the bunnies from Bambi is fun, but goddamn their ears are hard to get looking right. Hoping I can improve these when I lay them over the originals in lesson 3.


Also this is how the announcement of Super Mario Galaxy 2 and 4-player Mario Bros. Wii left me after Nintendo's conference earlier this week.

At least until I found out Brutal Legend might not
be getting released thanks to Activision being
colossal douches. Again.

Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 1

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 1

I have a tendency to jump on the bandwagon quite awhile after everyone else. Or in some cases, trail 100 metres behind said-bandwagon desperately trying to catch up. So seeing as the ASIFA and John K. probably don't have the means of physically stopping me from undertaking their 3 year old online animation course (which is pretty excellent by the way), I'll go ahead and post what I've done in the past months I've had the time to work on these.

Firstly, here's the animation industry's most beloved character, 'Egg Head Dude'.

Something I'll point here; none of these sketches are my first attempt. In many cases, they're the 5th. Or 6th. Or 7th. Or... You get the idea. While I'm genuinely happy with the rest of the sketches I'll post, against all odds both series of egg-headed characters gave me an unbelievable amount of difficulty. Well... Not so much difficulty, but I could never seem to get a smooth enough curve for the basic oval the character's made of. Whether I'm trying to rush my sketches too fast or there's something I'm specifically doing wrong with my drawing technique is something I'm trying to work out. Anybody have any ideas on a good way of improving one's overall sketching technique? There's a virtual brownie in it for you.The above I'm significantly more satisfied more with. While I haven't overlaid any of these characters with Blair's original drawings (not going to skip ahead to lesson 3 and whatnot), especially with Droopy, Not-Micky-Mouse and the duck I felt I was able to get the proportions and composition of facial features down faithfully. The same with the goat, yet the fox and wolf (both about a fortnight older then the rest of the sketches photoshopped into this, if that indicates anything) are *close*, yet certain features even in the thumbnail are noticeably larger and/or smaller then the reference material. Unlike Droopy and co., I wasn't as used to measuring and constantly comparing my sketch to Blair's superior sketches. Derp.
The last of the sketches I felt were close enough to Blair's sketches. I'm definitely happy with how the dog turned out; while I'm too embarrassed to post really, really initial attempts at the character, I feel that (especially the above two dog heads) really improved my analysis and construction techniques of cartoons. I'm not entirely sure if the jaw-dropping wolf is as close as the two dog sketches are (the dogs are the most recent sketches... Probably from half a week ago?), yet unlike earlier sketches shown I was somehow able to whip it up much quicker then other sketches and produce (what I think anyway) really natural looking line-art.

I'll probably take another crack at the rest of the sketches not posted from lesson 1 in a few days... But for the moment, any comments anybody has on them would be pretty groovy.

Oh yeah, and thoughts on whether the following is a stroke of genius or a terrible idea infringing on several copyrights would also be swell. Shitty facial expressions ahoy!

An effective example of why staying awake on caffeine at 11PM
trying to finish a film analysis on A Clockwork Orange while sketching
is NOT recommended.

Better late then never!

I think. It probably would've been a better idea to start up this blog after my first semester, but I guess it's too late to change what I've started. Anyhow, hope anybody who happens to come across this blog enjoys what they see, or if they don't, at least has a fun time laughing at the probable mediocrity that is my creative work. And if that still doesn't draw your attention, I can start uploading photos of cats with funny captions underneath. Ciao!