Sody and her curves

My latest Sody ink. I dunno if it's cuz I'm a dude and study womanly curves every other second of the day, but I think this is probably one of my best inks so far.

This time I was really concentrating on keeping all the forms together with lines in the correct hierarchy since I noticed on my previous inking with Sody some of the forms turned out a bit wonky since I didn't use the proper lines to contain them. This time I think I was fairly successful.

*Edit

After looking at Katie's tips (thanks Harmke), my eyes are a little more adjusted on what to look for in bad inking...

1. Blunt Ends: I did notice a few of them while inking, but had such a hard time making nice smooth sharp points with Illustrator that I'd just leave them in (especially if it was where two seperate strokes met). But sharp points really do make a huuuuge difference in quality and I'll be sure to fix those in future inks.

2. Follow Through: At the top of the head between the two strands of hair, I've got a line that doesn't follow through with the other lines of the head it's supposed to connect.

3. Lines too think: Some of my lines are too thick, especially around the hair region. This thickness probably doesn't help in creating those blunt ends either.

4. Tangents: The piece of hair that comes down in front of Sody's face, I used two strokes that went all the way down, and where they meet it does look a little wonky throwing off the nice curve that should have been created around the front of her face. I should have stopped one of those strokes where the weird tangent occurs.

5. Changing/Toning down angles: I really messed up the two pieces of hair that come out of the back of Sody's head. The angle on the bottom piece of hair got completely destroyed, so instead of looking cool and hip with that nice angle, that piece of hair looks a little like a limp dick, which is soooooo not what Sody is about. The top piece of hair also got a little fatter and stubbier, so again the hair loses it's hipness.

6. Not Always Tapering When I Should: Some of my lines don't taper when they should, like the left hip line. It starts off nice and thin near the belly, gets thick, then stays thick, and I think if I had tapered the end a little better, the hip would look a little nicer and sexier.

Things I Did Well

1. Good use of think thin: I did pretty well this time creating a hierarchy of lines. The legs, hips, hair, and shoulders got nice thick tapery lines, then as you go down the hierarchy the lines change thickness, like going from body line to shirt line to shirt wrinkle line.

2. Organic Curves: I was able to keep/create a lot of nice organic curves keeping the image alive. One of my favorite is the right torso/belly line. It's smooth but still organic and changes with the shape of Sody's body keeping it "meaty" (although Sody isn't meaty per se, hehe).

3. Points and Tapers: Some of my points are sharp, mostly around the leg/hip region. And a lot of the lines have that nice fat "S" line feeling, where you start small, get fatter, then end thinner (like the left leg line).

Sodypop Inking

My first attempt at inking Sody.

Inked George Liquor Setups

This time I started inking some of Jim's layouts. Sticking to John's advice I've been spending a lot of time trying to maintain control over my lines. These lines are definitely an improvement over my first attempt at inking a few posts down.

Inking (My Attempt at Cleaner Lines)

I've been striving for cleaner smoother lines now. I'm still not 100% comfortable inking with the tablet (and I hate illustrator for not allowing me to rotate the canvas like Painter, stupid Adobe). But after using better posture, steadying my hand, and moving much more slowly, I think I'm starting to get the hang of it.

The image closest to the pencils are the new inks...

George Liquor Inking

Here's the first batch of illustrator inkings done from John K's George Liquor pencils...

Moonicks Inked and Colored

Here's the final versions of my moonicks. Done in Painter.

Moonicks Character designs

After looking at a bunch of Gary Larson cartoons I think I was able to hone in on what would make up a Far Side beatnik cow...

Cow Poetry (Moonicks?)

I have a new project to work on for my digital cinema class, animating a poem and incorporating text into the animation. A good friend suggested using the Cow Poetry cartoon from Garey Larson's Far Side, which is totally awesome.

Here's the original comic strip:
So my take is to make it a beat nick hippie session with ultra cool cows (or maybe not that cool). Here's my thumbnails I made to sketch out my idea:








Watch out, the hippie cows will be running amok in an animated cartoon coming soon.

Random Preston Blair

Taking a break from work I busted out a random page from my Preston Blair book and started drawing. The ape is too stiff up and down, his chest mass is resting almost directly on top of his lower abs mass, but it should be slightly pushed forward, so I'm losing a lot of that heavy heaving lumox feel from this character. Also, his jowl is slightly lower than Prestons, so I'm losing a bit of that menacing sneer that's in the original. Also his left hand is a little too small. But for a quick sketch it's not too bad.

A Study in Tweed

Naked Tweety bird has always been one of my favorite characters. His big ass head and his super big ass feet with those puppy dog eyes and evil grin. He's like the perfect cartoon character, the Terminator of comedy. After seeing those awesome model sheets John posted on his blog I thought it was time to try out my Tweety.



I started with the model that showed the proportions.


Unfortunately, I still messed up the proportion for the body and made it slightly too long, instead of making it 1/2 I made it 3/4. Pretty much everything was too small. I really had trouble getting the roundness correct on the head, cheeks, and feet.

My 2nd attempt, this time paying closer attention to proportions and curvature:





This time it looks like I came a lot closer on achieving the correct curvature in the lines. The proportions are also spot on in a lot of places, however this is not the case for the scale. Most of the individual components are right on and have the right proportions and curvature, but when everything is put together, all the individual parts are off slightly in scale. So the head lines up almost perfect, or the eyes and eyebrows, or the body, or most of the feet, but they don't line up as a whole.

My third attempt:



Again the same thing is happening. Also, the curvatures are not as correct as in the previous attempt.

After trying to draw Tweety you really appreciate how difficult this seemingly simplistic character is to draw, let alone animate. With so little lines and details it's hard to draw everything perfectly to scale since there really isn't a lot you can reference. Also, copying a line curvature is much harder than I thought, especially really huge ones.

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.