Short Break, but first.....

Of course, holidays always have a way of interrupting anything you might have going on personally.  Work also did not spare it's interruptions into my private life in the last quarter of 2015.  With the recent changes at work, and with my husband being back in school, I found it necessary to scale back my volunteer efforts across the board, perhaps with the only exception being Mr. Connecticut Bear (because in this case only, the most is at stake).  Taking time back did allow me time to contemplate what was really important, and where did I want to spend my time.  Hence, this blog was brought into existence. 

Between all the goings-on of holiday preparations, time out for hubby and I, and preparing for the upcoming Mr. Connecticut Bear events, I did manage to keep one part of my brain in my self-guided Animation School.  The next lesson I'm supposed to do involves drawing cartoon character toys from multiple angles to learn how they exist in space.  The online lesson has you working from their photos of toys.  I decided to hunt down some actual PVC figures since most of the toys I have are either action figures or robots, which wouldn't apply.  I've discovered a line of Hanna-Barberra figures that were made in the 1990's by Miniland.  The first arrived right around Christmas-time.  The rest are on their way from Portugal... the one I have is Hucklberry Hound.  Top Cat, Peter Potamus, Wally Gator, and Magilla Gorilla are on their way!! (eBay and I need to stop meeting like this).

The original exercise called for drawing Top Cat, and since looking over the exercise, I've become a bit Top Cat-obsessed.  I just picked up the Top Cat Complete Series on DVD, and I'm studying it like mad.  I also had to take some time out to design, ink and paint a few of my own characters with a similar feel.  These guys are code-named "Sailor Cats".  Who knows if I will end up doing anything with them, but for now I wanted to share. 

 

 

I suppose you could say I made a resolution to draw more this year.  It's really more than that.  I resolved to first finish what I said I would do... and that is to produce a bigger Mr. Connecticut Bear.  After that, it's draw more, read more, write more.  I'm reading three books right now:

Debra Jess:  Blood Surfer

Ben Bova: New Frontiers

Arina Tanemura: The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross Vol. 1

I figure the best way to keep my brain pliable and creative is to put more good stuff in it.  So there's where we are right now.  Winter Break will be over soon.. and then, back to my animation lessons!

Body Built From Rounded Or Circular Forms (2 of 2)

Tonight I had a bit more energy than I did last night, so as I finished page 3, I paid more attention to the proportions of the bodies.  I seems two things got me into trouble.  One was when sketching the heads, they often didn't end up in the same place as in the original drawing... too high, too forward, and so forth.  The second thing again was differences in the book between the guide sketch and the final sketch.  In reality, if you are going to copy somebody's work, the guide lines won't be there, so my focus needs to shift to visualizing the guidelines in the finished work.  Tonight I will post all four comparison drawings from tonight's work.  They're fun to look at.  Seems like half of them were really close, and the other half were off, for whatever reason.  Most had more aligned torsos, so I will take it as progress.  Thanks for looking.  Please leave comments below :-)

Body Built From Rounded Or Circular Forms (1 of 2)

Tonight I moved ahead to drawing some dogs using circular forms.  With this exercise, I tried drawing larger than what I was looking at in the book.  I got myself into a bit of trouble as I was trying to blow everything up.  I missed proportions and in some cases, made body parts a bit puffier than they were supposed to be.  Making accurate copies was harder than I thought it would be.  I'm posting two pages of work below, along with a scan of the lesson so that people can see where this is going (and so they won't wonder why I drew a cowering dog... I didn't make this up on my own).

I looked ahead in John K's lessons and can see that I skipped over his exercises in drawing toys.  I will give that a go once I wrap up this lesson (I'm about half way through the "bodies" lesson.    In looking ahead, I also noticed that he wants people to check the accuracy of their work, so I took a stab at it tonight with a couple of the dog drawings.  It's pretty obvious I messed up a lot of proportions, so at some point I may try to do these over.  I will most likely go back and check some of the previous work

I've also been shopping around for toys to sketch.  I mean, I have tons of superhero action figures, but no actual toys related to classic animation.  I will have to remedy this!!  More soon!!

Squash And Stretch On Heads

This was a fun exercise.  The dog in Blair's design is adorable and has lots of personality.  I rather enjoyed drawing him.  I admit I was quite intimidated by this exercise, at least at one point in the past.  The more I draw, the more I can see my thought process changing as I look at the book and make the sketches.  And that change in processing is coming through in the pencil.  The lines on the paper are beginning to flow a little more freely, and I like that.  More to come!

More Heads Constructed

I'm learning that there are subtle differences between each of the illustrated steps in the lessons.  For example, the illustrations of guidelines and framework vary ever so slightly from the finished illustrations.  I'm learning to look ahead to the the finished drawings to place my guidelines on my own paper, so as to avoid having to change things I may have already committed in my own drawings.  So here is today's exercise... more heads. 

Construction of the Head

These are two parts of the same initial exercise, learning how to draw an egg-shaped head from multiple angles.  I think mine are a bit to oval-ish but I'm learning a lot already.  Much of this is challenging because for me this is a totally new way of drawing, and I don't mind!!

Animation School

I've had this idea kicking around for a couple years now, that in my spare time (you know, all that spare time that I have just lying around, doing nothing), I would fashion together my own Animation Self-Study program, for no other reason than to teach myself how to make classic cartoons.  About a year or two ago, I actually sat down and made a list of books that I would want to get, most of which were used by animation schools in North America.  I recently revisited the idea of doing this, and in my travels, I stumbled upon a blog here that basically outlines everything that I wanted to teach myself, and much more.  As I dug deeper into the blog, I discovered that it's written by John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren & Stimpy, and that his starting point was the same as mine: follow all the lessons in the original Preston Blair books.  People following his online animation school are encouraged to blog their results, so I am joining the party because this is something I simply MUST do!!  If it kills me!!  By some accounts, my brain is much too old to be learning any of this, but I am just ignoring this and plowing ahead.  I believe I have the raw ability to animate; I simply need to draw, and draw, and draw.  So this blog will document my progress... I'll be doing my best to finish ALL the exercises and not skip over anything.  And if I'm really, really lucky, maybe I'll get to hear from JohnK.  Wish me luck!!