Another Scribner Bugs

So I tried copying down another of my favorite expressions Bugs makes from Heckling Hare. That look of ghastly surprise always makes me laugh.


My first attempt:
As you can see, the drawing is kind of flat and I completely messed up the nose since I didn't really remove it from his cranium sphere. Also the eyes are a bit too small.

My 2nd Attempt:
I fixed a lot of the flatness, and also took time to make sure the nose's form was more correct. If you look at the overlay the eyes are almost perfect. The left eyebrow bulges up too much from the head, and the ears aren't angled right. The draw is dropped a little too low, and I completely ignored the curve in the neck. My neck just goes straight down and totally kills the image. But I'm pretty happy with the facial features, they are much tighter and wrap around the head more accurately than the last one.

So I tried copying down another of my favorite expressions Bugs makes from Heckling Hare.

Scribner Bugs revisited

With more spare time tonight I thought I'd go back and try and tighten up the old Scribner Bugs Bunny that started this whole blog.


The head's tilt is too extreme and the muzzle is lifted far too high on the right. The cranium is also a little bit too small.






2nd try is much better. However, the nose area and the opened eye are slightly off. Although the wrinkles wrap around the form much more accurately than before.


I also tried redoing the dog. This time paying much more attention to proportions and empty space. The head is still not tilted enough. And this time I overcompensated the tiny cranium and made it slightly too wide, although the height is about right. The flapping jowls are also too short. The muzzle is the right width, it just needs to be elongated along the vertical.

More Squash and Stretch

With finals week almost done I had a lot of spare time, so I thought about tightening up some of those squash and stretch exercises I did a while back. Here are the results.


This one wasn't too bad, could have made the jowls a little wider though.



The first attempt is much more rough, but I think I capture the exaggerated teeth better than in the (slightly) tighter second attempt.



The head and cheeks were too stretched. The second attempt tightens up a lot of the features and is much more accurate.

Squash and Stretch during colloquiem

Instead of listening to a boring computer science, I had printed out the squash and stretch page from the Preston Blair book and went to town. These are probably from 3 or 4 weeks ago, but I figure they're decent enough to put up.

Construction Exercises part 2

I finally got around to doing the heckling hare exercise John posted. First I started figuring out the basic forms and angles like John said. (although I still didn't get the dog's cranium tilt right).


Next I redrew the forms and started building the characters from the ground up. I had a bit of trouble getting Bugs' muzzle right because I wasn't squashing and stretching it the same way as the frame grab, but I think I fixed it.




I haven't yet gone back to identify and correct all the mistakes, but right off the bat I can see that the dog's cranium isn't tilted enough, and Bugs on a whole is too elongated. The right side of Bugs that's supposed to be squashed is too low and looks a bit saggy. Everything on the right needs to be raised up a bit to get more of that exaggerated feeling. Bugs' neck tapers a bit before it connects to the head, when really it should flair a bit. Also, I didn't realize until I started to add the extra details, but the dog's head is way too narrow and his teeth are a little too small.

Construction Exercises part 1

Looks like I'm finally entering the best animation school in the world, John K's school of hard knocks! I even set up my scanner so I'm ready to go.

I anticipated that the lecture today would be boring, so I printed out some construction exercises instead of just falling asleep like I usually do. For some reason the heckling hair screen grab didn't print, but I did have my Preston Blair dog handy, so I gave him a go.


I realized I was paying half attention to lecture and half on the construction and the dog turned out kind of wonky. So I tried to identify all of my mistakes and took another go at the dog.


I think he turned out a lot better now that I stopped pretending to pay attention to the lecture. He still doesn't match up to the original 100%, so I'll have to go back and check all the proportions again and make sure I'm doing it right.