Life Drawing

I have literally a pile of life drawings collected from the past couple weeks, but I won't flood my blog with all of them. Only the really good ones.

The drawing above was the original life drawing from the model.

With these drawings I was trying to redesign the pose in cartoon skin.

And here is the final result. I drew my original character design using the pose from the model.

Below are drawings drawn from The Human Figure. They are a little different from how I usually draw.

With the drawing above I was starting to use a cartoon design again. It's a really good exercise.

Another Picture!

Just one more, trying for something a little more structured.

Harmonix

Here's a little playing around I did using the new Flash program, Harmony.

I like how three-dimensional these look, without any effort on my part. The program just lends itself to that look!

The one above looks like an architectural rendering to me, though a very scary one. It's fun to see art tools that depart completely from traditional media, or rather the ghost of traditional media, since that's what most art programs try to imitate. It's hard to see something like this being more than gimmicky; there's lots of creative possibilities, but getting from point A to point B is far too chaotic at this point for most artists to make use of something like this.

Still, I'd love to see what a more skilled artist than myself might come up with using this program. In particular, I'd like to see someone export some images from Harmony and then make something more coherent with them in Photoshop.

Restaurant Sketch

Went down to Orochon Ramen in Japantown and had some soy sauce ramen. Cassandra had miso ramen. The restaurant had fair prices (for California), and was speedy and delicious, though very noisy.

Anyways, I drew this because Cassandra and I were feeling stressed at how much money one must spend whenever they step out of their apartment in CA:

I've been reading a book called Meditation and Relaxation in Plain English by Bob Sharples. The book recommended repeating the phrase "I don't have to do anything" to help relax yourself. Trying to use that phrase on Cassandra produces mixed results.

Evolution of an Intelligently Designed Concept

I drew picture sporting a very literal interpretation of the title one of this year's Oscar nominations. It was initially scribbled in the margin of an Oscar party pool sheet.

I kind of liked the concept, so I expanded it in my sketchbook, yielding the sketch below.

After scanning the sketch, I spent about two hours inking it. Normally it wouldn't have taken quite so long, but Law and Order: SVU was running in the background.

The next step will be to color it, but it's late and I just wanted to get this much posted. The final version will be posted on my deviantart page when it's done.

Percy the Turtle

Sometimes I draw turtles.

This is Percy, along with another drawing of a moomin-type creature.

I think Percy must have been in the navy.

Hell yes! That's how you punch a fish!

I like the look of a turtle's underside being drawn like muscles. Also, the peg head and limbs. The character looks a bit more like Pen Ward's style than how I usually draw.

Speaking of which, I am in heavy anticipation for the new Adventure Time show. I know many animation folks out there are dreading it, but personally I feel that the pilot had good, strong characters, which is more than many other cartoons start with these days. Typically it takes at least one or two seasons for a show to start to lose its flavor. I think this happens because after a couple seasons the original creator has left the project, assuming they were included in the creative process to begin with.

Kung Fu Panda Recording

I spent part of last Friday attending a record session for Nick's new show, Kung Fu Panda. It was different from the other recordings I visited in that this show is story-based, rather than purely humor based. Different requests were made of the actors, whereas on the other shows the usual request was to "make it funnier!"

There were four voice actors there; three were men and there was one lady, though the lady left before I could get a good picture of her. The actors were:

Max,

Mick,

and Fred.

Mick was interesting because he voices Po, which means that he has to sound like Jack Black while also acting out the character.

Not only did he sound like Jack Black he also kind of looked like him. He made many Jack Black facial expressions, particularly with the eyebrow raises (best representation is the one at the top of this stack). There was one point where he completely blew my mind by doing his impression of Jack Black criticizing Mick's impression of Jack Black.

I didn't get a lot of drawings of Max, unfortunately, because his face was obscured behind a music stand. He did most of the voicing for Mantis, who was the focus of the episode.

Fred made lots of great faces, and was overall very funny. Unfortunately, he didn't have very many lines for his episode, though I cracked up when he voiced a female mantis named Hao.

During the course of the recording there was much discussion about a Migress, which would be a mantis/tigress hybrid. This was my final rendition. It looks like something I would make in Spore (and maybe I will!).

I'd like to revisit one of the other shows and bring my sketchbook along. Nothing makes friends better than drawing someone's picture!