Archive for the ‘Sketches’ Category

January 27th: Layouts for Test Flight

Jan 28th, 11 / 0 Comments

Tonight’s show was a special one. An old friend of mine and Whitney’s from SCAD, Tracy MacLauchlan, is revving the engine on her senior animation project: a short film entitled Test Flight. She let me know awhile back that she was looking for artists to join her team and crank through the project, and I was happy to offer my help whenever she needed it. Now that the ball is officially rolling, I’m beginning my work on my promised part of the deal and producing background layouts for various scenes in the film. Whitney is helping with the project as well, producing costume concepts/designs for the characters (although she wasn’t on camera tonight).

Over the two hours of tonight’s broadcast, I finished up two individual scenes: the first is an overhead shot of the butterfly woods (with one tree shaking after being struck), and the other an interior view of the butterfly woods, showing details of the millions of butterflies clinging to the bark and limbs of the trees. The final look of the film is going to be a vector style with flat colors. To take a closer look at the concept art and animatics that have been produced so far, check out the official Test Flight production blog.

Hit the jump to watch the video. The final scans of these images won’t be posted here, but they might make it onto Tracy’s blog at some point.

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Sketches, Videos

January 12th: P&C Pencils, and the Return of the Headcam

Jan 12th, 11 / 0 Comments

Tonight’s show was a return to form for the Inking Room, with the Head-Cam resuming functionality (in reality, I just had to figure out a way to fool Whitney’s iMac into registering it as the default webcam for streaming, which was a bit of an ordeal). Anyway, the show ran the full two hours and got the panel layout, lettering, and half of the panels finished in pencil. I still have the first three panels and all the backgrounds to finish before I ink it, but I feel good with the amount I got done over a couple hours of work.

Hit the jump to view the feed, as well as a couple gratuitous shots of Whitney’s cleavage when she would come over to mess with me while I was working. Your new cohost, ladies and gentlemen. ;)

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Page Production, Peter and Company, Sketches, Videos, WIP's

January 10th: Commission Work

Jan 10th, 11 / 0 Comments

The first video stream after the holiday break was a slightly different format than what has been the norm up until now. Due to my laptop dying in mid-December, I had to switch to using Whitney’s iMac in the living room to do the stream. Unfortunately I couldn’t get it to register with the webcam, so I had to use the front-installed iCam to get the stream running. This means it was nothing but a full frontal view — so there aren’t too many closeups on the actual work being done — but it was still a productive evening, with both Whitney and I doing some good sketch work over the course of the program.

Hit the jump to give it a watch. The cam was fixed after the broadcast, so the Head-Cam will resume functionality after this point.

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Sketches, Videos, WIP's

November 11th: P&C Halloween Portraits

Nov 11th, 10 / 0 Comments

On tonight’s show, I finally managed to get through the pencils for the Peter & Company Halloween portraits I have been planning on doing since before the actual holiday. I’m a bit overdue with it, but hey, better late than never.

Basically the concept is just to take the kids’ costumes from the Halloween comic and draw them in parody images of the corresponding characters. Since most of them (except Iggy) are film characters, I used references from stills or posters to determine how each one is posed. I’ll be inking and coloring these over the weekend, but won’t be broadcasting it on camera since — as is mentioned in a few posts and journals elsewhere — tomorrow is my birthday, and I have plans with the family that last through the weekend. The only day coming up that I might be able to do a show is Saturday, but it remains to be seen if I’ll have the time to turn on the cam. I’ll be making a post on the Facebook/Twitter feeds if it works out, so just keep an eye on there if you’d like to catch it.

Otherwise, hit the jump to check out the video from tonight’s show, as well as scans of the (almost) finished pencils for each character’s portrait.

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Peter and Company, Sketches, Sketches, Videos, WIP's

October 5th: Foreshortening Tutorial

Oct 7th, 10 / 0 Comments

A viewer last week requested that I do a tutorial on drawing organic objects (like natural objects and human figures) within a 3D space. The tutorial I came up with assumed that the viewer has a basic understanding of perspective ahead of time. Basically it revolves around the concept of visualizing a non-geometric form as basic shapes, reducing it to a three-dimensional object that can be positioned the way you need it. Once you get accustomed to interpreting shapes this way, it’s only a short jump to rendering them in their true organic form.

The video of the feed broke just before the end when my internet decided to go out here at home. I quickly reset it and got back online, but the recorded video does have a sudden abrupt ending after Part 1. Both parts are shown, alongside a final scan of the demo picture I sketched up during the tutorial, after the break.

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Sketches, Tutorials, Videos

June 29th: P&C Cast Page Revamp, Part 4

Jun 29th, 10 / 1 Comment

With this update, the final sketches for the Cast Page Revamp project are complete and ready to be inked later in the week. In fact, we had so much time left over once the last sketch was done that I took the opportunity to start on the inking phase of the project as well. Looks like things are rolling on right on schedule with how I anticipated!

Dr. Munchkinn, now posing alongside Fritz in his patented drysuit:

Robert and Celine, Peter’s parents:

Inked version of Whitney’s image:

Tomorrow’s show will take a break from this project to start working on something else that is long overdue: the first page of the Chronicles of Ademar. I got big plans for this one.

Cast Pages, Inked Lineart, Peter and Company, Sketches, WIP's

June 28th: P&C Cast Page Revamp, Part 3

Jun 28th, 10 / 3 Comments

Tonight’s broadcast went into overdrive, with a plethora of doodles and sketches being cranked out in the two-hour time limit. We had a ton of fun with the sheer randomness, particularly when everyone started talking about Portal out of the blue.

Which brought on this:

So yes, onto the character sketches!

Ezzy, playing a certain unnamed dual-screen handheld system:

The worms, hauling around a Trojan Worm for certain ill intent:

Eddy strangling Jeff by his own mailbag strap:

Dr. Victor Munchkinn, in all his eccentric genius:

There are only a few characters left — namely Robert & Celine (Peter’s parents) and Dr. Fritz. These will be drawn with tomorrow night’s show, likely amidst a slew of random off-color sketches.

Oh yes, and to those who tuned in, don’t forget:

See what you miss by not watching the show? ;)

Cast Pages, Peter and Company, Sketches, WIP's

June 27th: P&C Cast Page Revamp, Part 2

Jun 28th, 10 / 0 Comments

Sunday night’s broadcast was shorter than usual since I had a number of things I still had yet to fix on my Mac. Now that it’s 95% back up and running, things have been picking up speed quite a bit. Since it was such a short show, though, not as much material was produced; as such, only two additional sketches were finished for the Cast Page Revamp project.

Chelsea, holding Persephoni as “Pearl,” with the bunny’s true form invisibly floating next to her:

Korgar, with his legion of desk kittens and accompanying “Yes” and “No” stamping tools:

Admittedly the relationship between Chelsea and Persephoni is the most difficult to portray in a single image. Even with how it’s portrayed in the comic it can still get a little confusing to the readers. I’m hoping I can find a good way to make it readable without leading too much into confusion.

More to come!

Cast Pages, Peter and Company, Sketches, WIP's

June 22nd: P&C Cast Page Revamp, Part 1

Jun 22nd, 10 / 1 Comment

The artwork on the Peter & Company cast page has remained untouched since the start of the Guardian storyline in January 2005. I’ve been meaning to revamp the section for a long time now: redrawing the characters, including the ones that have debuted in the comic since then, and redesign the interface to make it more streamlined and artistic. Tonight’s show was the start of that project, which will extend into the next couple weeks over various nights of penciling, inking, and digital coloring. Eventually I’ll have created 10 individual images of character art, which will all also be grouped together into one huge cast shot for printing purposes.

During tonight’s show, I managed to get through the pencils for the first three character pieces: Peter & Seth, Iggy & Skin, and Whitney. Wednesday and Thursdays shows will also be dedicated to this project, so expect the next couple nights to be filled with lots of P&C pencils and more random Megaman music.

Peter and Seth:

Iggy and Skin:

Whitney:

I’m going to hold off on inking any of these character images until all of the pencils are complete. I like keeping my workload in an “assembly line” format, just to keep things organized.

Cast Pages, Peter and Company, Sketches

June 21st: Turnaround Tutorial Time

Jun 21st, 10 / 0 Comments

Tonight’s show was focused around a specific request from a viewer. They wanted more information on how to make a character turnaround — specifically with the tools and techniques used — and since I had sped through the production of Buckley’s turnaround without any real explanation as to the process, I dedicated the entire show tonight to creating a new turnaround with Lily as the subject.

The original sketch for this one was extremely rough and kinda lopsided, so I’m just going to include the rough sketches for the turnaround itself as the visual example for today. Also, for those who missed the show, here are some of the tips I covered for making one of your own character:

– Use a large enough paper to cover the pose you want to draw in the angles you’ll include. I use 14×17 Bristol vellum.
– Be sure to use at least the four main angles: Side, 3/4, Front, and Back. You can include other angles as well if you want to be more thorough, but those should be key.
– Draw two starting lines for reference: one for the top of the head, the other for the feet. Again, plan ahead so you don’t use up too much of the paper based on the pose you’ll be drawing. Admittedly sometimes my turnarounds end up overlapping between angles, and this should generally be avoided — after all, the entire point of a turnaround is to get a clear view of the character from all sides.
– Draw the first pose in any position. Use the shoulders as the reference point for the definition of the angle (i.e. 3/4 view, draw the shoulders at 3/4 and base the rest of the figure on that).
– Loosely sketch in the frame/figure for the other poses, lining the main points (hips, shoulders, head, etc.) up visually with the rough position of the first finished pose’s sketch.
– Using a T-square, draw light lines across the page (or small hatch marks on each of the other poses) to line up with the key landmarks on the first sketch. These landmarks include any reference point that will help you keep the views consistent: bottom of the chin, hairlines, hands, feet, knees, prop points (tip of a sword, barrel of a gun, etc.), clothing; basically anything that is important and can be used as a horizontal reference point between each pose.
– Keep in mind that these are rotations, so each part of the figure should look different from the rest. Example: if two different poses have identical-looking feet (i.e. the toes are facing head-on at the viewer in both angles), then the rotation effect is lost. Make sure to keep in mind the physical rotation of the character as if they are frozen in place. This can be very tricky (and frustrating), so it may help to use a model for this at first until you get into the practice of visualizing it.

In the two hours for the session, we managed to get through half of the turnaround for Lily. At first I was worried the pose may have been too active/dramatic for a good turnaround, but I’m actually pretty happy with it. Most turnarounds will use more of a static pose since it’s more for reference than to show off the character, so don’t think that yours have to look this energetic.

The rest of the poses will be completed on a later show. I’ll likely dedicate a show sometime next week to finishing all the turnarounds I’ve started so far, since they’re starting to pile up over here.

Chronicles of Ademar, Sketches, Turnarounds, Tutorials, WIP's