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.