Summeritis and Sketches of Chicks

Hi folks!


Yeah, I've been horrible about posting this summer. Maybe I've been preoccupied since my wife and I have a baby on the way... not to mention our week's vacation down the shore, bathroom renovations, moving in new furniture, a hectic work schedule...


...or maybe these are all just excuses.


Anyway, time to move forward. I've got a backlog of topics to talk about, but for now here are a couple of sketches of women I did a while back.

This one reminds me of that young rising starlet, Amanda Seyfried (couldn't remember her name, thanks Google)

It's no secret that women are harder to draw than men, particularly when you are cartooning. It's harder to make them look pretty... with men, you can make them lumpy, ugly, angular, whatever and it's usually acceptable. Feminine characters require a bit more subtlty and restraint, but not too much- you don't want to hold back on the caricaturization, and end up with a drawing that is too weak or soft.

Hmmm.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I didn't get accepted into that art show. Erica did, though! Guess that means I have to show my face at the gallery opening.

Did you say "Abe Lincoln"?

It's allergy season again, and last night was a hellride for Ol' Kingfish. I just couldn't stop sneezing. Hence, this illustration of the day.

God bless you, my friend!

Takin' Off Like Bob & Doug

I'm taking off tomorrow morning on a trip to Montreal, Canada (also known as "America's Europe"), so I thought I'd leave you with a little doodle I cooked up today. I'm not really sure how well this is translating, but basically the one guy is pulling on the other guy's tongue, and his skin is being pulled off from the inside as it is directly attached to the base of his tongue.

See you next week!

Blobbie

A Floating Head

I drew this fellow, again, as a doodle on a piece of scrap paper at work, and after a process of scanning, coloring, and painting, he found himself a disembodied glowing head floating outside his freaky cave on Mars or something.

What hideous misfortunes could have led this man to such a state?

A Classy Lady Doodle

Hey folks. Just trying to keep this thing from getting too stale (in case there's anyone who actually reads it!). This is just a quick doodle I did at work today and colored on the tablet for fun. It's just a regular ballpoint pen like all us desk jockeys use at work, so it is very rough.

I've got a few topics to talk about on here, and plenty of sketches, so I'll get to those when I get a chance.

A Green Ghoul

Today I just have a sketch of a weirdo guy I drew in the late hours. Just practicing digital coloring/painting.

Not a very friendly-looking customer, is he?

He looks like someone out of a Coen Brothers movie. He could be played by John Turturro.

Duckheads

A little Donald doodle I cooked up.

Cartoon duck heads are incredibly fun to draw. The bills have these very satisfying curves to them. I always loved the way Donald's (and Daffy's, too) beak came to that rounded point and you could see where it folds back up around itself. There's a delightful logic to it.

I could draw duck bills all day. Here are some drunken unpleasant ducks I drew on Post-Its at work. They're hidden on my website.

Rens & Stimpies

Some doodles I did with my pen tablet.

Two of the most fun cartoon characters in the world to draw... mainly because the rules are so loose. To draw Bugs Bunny, there are a lot of little subtleties you have to get right or it just doesn't look like him. Ren & Stimpy, on the other hand, look different in every scene. That's because John Kricfalusi has a much more liberal idea of "on-model" than most animators.

This remains one of the best cartoon series ever made. Everything about it was fun: the voices, the crazy plots, the cartoony expressions. And it was the first cartoon I remember to give kids what they really want: booger and fart jokes!

I'm feeling good: here's a cartoon!

What the heck, they're free... here's another:

UPDATE: My mistake- I didn't realize the version of "Big Baby Scam" was the edited version. Here's the deleted scene of Ren & Stimpy in the bathtub with Grandpa:

Flat but Stylish

Here's a doodle I did today just for the heck of it:

I tried to keep it loose but still keep the basic feel of the characters. The lines are a little squiggly because I was using my pen tablet, which I am still getting the hang of, and trying to be conscious of the hierarchy of thick and thin lines. Came out ok, for being a quick sketch... I guess Barney's hand looks a little weird...

Like most people, I always liked the Flintstones, but I did have problems with it. The Hanna-Barbera limited animation style of all those Cartoon Express cartoons always looked cheap to me, even as a kid, and the flat drawing style bored me. The humor was also pretty thin... how many times did they use that same punchline when an animal is being used as a household appliance: "Eh, it's a living!" It also always bugged me that the characters would run with their arms hanging still at their sides.

More recently, though, I came to appreciate what HB was doing in those early days of made-for-TV cartoons. The drawings were more flat than their earlier theatrical shorts (like Tom & Jerry), but they were very graphical and stylish... an extension of the UPA style. The art was very carefully thought out by top designers like Ed Benedict and Carlo Vinci.

The backgrounds above are very stylish and well-designed as well. They retain the style of the character drawings but stand back because of the textures, and the limited color palette. I don't do a lot of painting (almost none actually) but I've been trying to incorporate this look into some of my drawings using Photoshop brushes. I may try out Corel Painter one of these days... can anyone recommend it?

This stylishness can sometimes be lost in the way these characters are depicted now... Sometimes you'll see them rendered with three dimensional shading, which makes absolutely NO sense with the way they were designed. Certainly not in this style, anyway:

They work so much better flat and grapical. The above just looks like a lousy Disney cartoon. In the '90s they even made a live-action movie. I guess it's interesting for about five minutes to see what they'd look like as real people, but when you stop and think about it the whole endeavor is kind of stupid, isn't it? I don't get why studios do this... if you want to make a Flintstones movie, why not a cartoon? It's the medium the whole concept was created around. Fred's outfit makes no sense on a real human body.

Everything has its place. These HB cartoons can be sort of boring to watch but there is genuine skill in the way they were executed that I am just now beginning to pick up on.

Here's a couple funny clips, including Fred and Barney hawking cigarettes in the 60's:

Angry Old Men

Some sketches of middle-aged men that popped up in my notebooks and post-its at work.

I don't know what happened to this guy, but he seems pretty annoyed about it. I guess this is the punchline to a comic strip or something.

This fellow reminds me of a teacher I had in high school... sort of an irascible, effeminate middle-aged man whose shirts were always a bit too tight.

This guy probably has a hard time finding a shirt that isn't too tight, too.