Online Video Games

Over the holidays I will be home and that means I will be watching my brothers play online video games. It has become a Christmas tradition. This latest drawing is not meant to illustrate that. It's from a story idea but the young foul-mouthed character in it is all too real. The invention of a headset to use while playing these games means there is an unedited stream of the most awful parts of the English language permeating from your television. What sounds like the voices of young teenage girls are actually younger boys screaming obscenities and racial slurs from the comfort of their unsupervised, vile cesspools from which they were spawned. I imagine there is a study being conducted on the nature of these little miscreants and how it stems from the security of anonymity much like a mob. Thankfully, the recent advancements in muting technology with these games has brought about much needed silence.

Sawin' logs

James Burks has a great illustration here of an elf chopping wood. He seems to be working so hard. It immediately got me thinking of what an elf that wasn't so industrious may be doing. In fact, the opposite of James Burks' drawing. I had to jot it down.

...with my head sewn to the carpet

Great movie.

200 posts.

Woohoo.

dickey.

New storyboard idea

Thru the Looking Glass

A frame from a new set of storyboards that I will hopefully have up on the portfolio website in the next few days. When I met with Scott Morse (see below), he gave me some great advice but also said that I needed a few more sets of boards. Off hand he mentioned something about a kid at a zoo. It was completely just a passing thought about a possible storyline but as soon as I heard it I decided to make it my own. I imagine a kid at a zoo is not the most unique of story ideas. But that reason alone made me want to do it. It's weird how having boundaries can free up ideas. Maybe there's an iPhone app that gives you the random when, where and who's to start a story. If not, there needs to be one. I'll share all profits on the idea 50-50. You just have to make the app.

Orange is the New Black

So here's orange. It doesn't really come through on the scans but it can hurt your eyes when viewing on white paper. I am really enjoying the Prismacolor Premier Brush pens and out of my pack of eight, I've already used up two. This bright orange pen wasn't was bad as I thought but I'm somewhat glad it's brush pen life is in it's death throes. I'm equally afraid of the pure black pen. I like the ability to "build" a darker line that the color pens give. With black it's black... not as forgiving.

These drawings all come from pausing tv/movies. I have noticed how much more it helps to draw this way than getting just a glimpse of a figure from tv and trying to draw it without the pause. I know that's not very popular thinking but I sketched that way for over a year (the glimpse method, no pause)and noticed very little change/improvement in draftmanship. I was making the same mistakes over and over. I've found the "DVR" method really helps. Plus it's fun. I watch a lot of director's commentaries (Star Trek is represented in the above sketches) and will pause the movie whenever I get an angle that I need work on or even just a full shot (head to toe). This in no way takes the place of life drawing but you also can't get more than a split second look at someone running or even walking, for that matter, with the push of a button than in a life session.

Sketching like this has also made me realize how many television dramas are almost all close shots, great for studying the head, not so much for the figure. Reality shows are different. I can only bring myself to watch a few reality shows but have found "Ghosthunters" (also represented above)to have a lot of general standing and sitting poses so don't laugh. But, I admit that if I weren't looking for good sketching poses while watching I may not be able to sit through a full episode. "The Twilight Zone" is great. The goldfish attention span rule isn't being implemented in these older shows and thus the scenes are longer with fewer camera movements. It's a great show with solid story. They don't need to whip the camera around to make things "seem" interesting. Rant, rant, rant.

Talking with Scott Morse

I went to the CTN Animation Expo a couple weeks ago. I got to talk to Scott Morse. He was nothing short of fantastic. He looked thru my portfolio and gave me some advice. That's a pretty big deal considering most of the people there would pay a good amount of money just to get half the time he spent with me. It was also on Sunday (the last day of the event) which means that I was probably the 11,000th person with a portfolio he perused.

I received much more than I expected by way of advice. He even broke out a rectangular pad of paper (perfect storyboard size) and showed me a few quick changes that could really help. Awesome. These are a few of his sketches. They took about 5 seconds a piece and yet communicate better than something I could have put together in an hour. He solved two of the problems I was having in one frame.

So, I hope he doesn't mind me posting a couple of his sketches. I'm glad I got up the nerve to talk to him. It was well worth the price of admission that day.