Here are some more. Much love goes out to my mother, who saved these for me.
Turtle ink on paper, 1983
Super Kitty! Date unkown
Stomping Man (1984?)
Bunny Diptych (1984)
Odd themes going on in these. From stomping on random polaroids on the street, to deadbeat bunny parents. I had a lot on my mind as a child.
I never liked cleaning up my animation. Hey, maybe I shouldn’t do it. I just want a program that gives me a nice clean line: no arbitrary thick-thin, and good sensitivity. Is that too much to ask?
Well, apparently it is! Adobe’s Flash versions never make the pressure sensitive line that you ask for. I have to turn off smoothing all together (to avoid the weird thick-think line madness).
Artists I admire don’t use newer versions of Flash. Augenblick studios still uses Macromedia Flash MX. Acclaimed filmmaker Nina Paley made Sita Sings the Blues in Flash 8. So… Are there any NEW programs that can make a decent line?
Below are two animations I did on the computer. One was cleaned up in Flash, the other was cleaned up in Toon Boom Animate Pro 2.
Flash: Notice the yucky artifacting that shows up at the end. After three tries exporting, I gave up.
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Now for Toon Boom Animate:
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Toon Boom was MUCH better for cleanup. Not only was the line superior, but I could edit each brush stroke. Export had more options, and no artifacts.
I also tried using the open source program Pencil. Oddly enough, the pencil tool was the worst part of the program!
I’m always curious to know what people are using to get their artwork to look “just right” on the computer. Got any tips?
I went to Illinois last week to visit family. The pace is slower than New York, so I had some time to brush up on my watercolors. I made an accidental pun, weird!
My mother gave me her leftover watercolor paper and I started to make use of it. Here’s a warmup:
With the good paper:
I love cicadas. Am I the only one? Here are some studies of one I found on a walk. It had army camouflage pattern.
In case any of you haven’t heard, I’m working on a short film right now. It’s surprisingly hard work, but every moment is a joy. Making a film has forced me to think about what I like about the medium, and what compels me to make films in the first place.
I’m not out of the woods yet, but here are a few character designs I’ve made for the film. The main character changes 26 times throughout the film. Am I nuts?
I was a bookish art school kid in the 90’s. Although I had never written on a wall, I delved into the world of graffiti culture through art books, biographies, and magazine articles. You could say I was a nerd.
My favorite artist from graffiti’s heyday was Rammellzee. I would cut out and save images of his artwork from magazines. Then, in a search of a film title, I put his name in my college thesis film. I was young and naive enough to do this. No animators in my circle knew who he was, so I thought I was scott-free. This done at a time when there was no YouTube, and only a handful of video websites.
Rammellzee did eventually find out about my use of his name. Meeting this man was life changing. He was intense, scary, funny, and brilliant, all at the same time. I knew after spending time with Rammellzee, I would never meet another person like him.
I eventually made a film for Rammellzee; completely digital, using little else than a DV camera, photoshop, and After Effects 5.0. My goal was to make the film feel as much like Rammellzee as possible. It was a motion graphics piece, modeled after the digital production studios I admired at the time.
I regret not saying goodbye to Rammellzee. I was not aware he would leave so soon. He will be missed.
Here is an interview that I believe reveals a bit of Rammellzee’s brilliance:
Finally, Alpha’s Bet:
It’s May, which brings another school year to an end! I had a great time with both of my SVA classes.
Normally, I don’t have time to draw anything for myself during my workshops, but I can squeak one out every now and then. Here is a collage of a few doodles I collected over the spring semester.
I’m grateful to have had the chance to draw a model twice in one week, unlike my once a month regimen This time, I used a charcoal pencil.
Childhood is pretty traumatic, not matter how good it is. It amazes me how afraid people are to make kid’s entertainment “scary”. Kids don’t need much help; they wrote the book on scary!
I dug up some drawings I did when I was about 5 or 6 years old, and a few captured some horrible stuff. Thanks go out to my mother who saved these drawings from when I was a child.
Other kids drawings can be found here.
Ghosty, 1983, graphite on paper.
Fight, 1983, marker on post-it note
If you don’t have an older sibling, this pretty much sums it up
Pop, 1983, graphite on paper.
Starting off the year with some new figure drawings. This model rocked. She did great poses: standing for 5 minutes and flipping off the whole class! Sorry, I’m not posting that one.
