Caricatures pt 2

Gee, I started waffling on a bit in that last post.

First up here's a couple of relics. This first one was done back when I was in college. Obviously "Terminator 2" was the big movie of the year. This particular guy, I think his name was Mike Burns, was just this poor bugger that we all loved to caricature for some reason above everyone else and he popped up in all manner of scenarios. This was my "movie poster" one. I must have had some fun doing the shading. This little epic was done at one of my first jobs out of college (in a copy centre -animation was hard to come by in Perth). Both this and the one above were done from memory, or the person at least close at hand. The ones I did in high school also were done from memory, it's only later that I've become slack and used photo's. The benefit of doing them from memory is that you create more of an impression of the person, what's striking about them at first glance, rather than a more or less accurate representation.

The two older guys here who ran the business were fun and easy targets being older men. The women were tough tho' and from memory, I did some of the work on them discreetly at work. I also went a bit crazy with all of the machinery and details.
Here's a more recent one. This time of my wife's grandfather. This one was done from a photo, again, not the one supplied below -I notice his glasses have changed. I recall that for this one it was quite a good photo. The benefit of using a photo (generally I prefer to have a couple, so you can see what a different angle looks like) is that you can be a bit more accurate, plus not have to worry about freaking the person out by staring at them. Here, at least knowing the person or being familiar with them as well, you can remember the overall impression you get from them and apply that to your drawing too. That's where working from a photo can be a trap, because you are pretty much limited to the angle in the photo, and you mightn't be able to get the right sense of the person from that angle. For example, if someone has a big nose, a front-on photo isn't going to show that like a 3/4 will and your caricature won't capture their best asset.

This probably also explains why these family caricatures are a little "safe". With a public figure, be it a politician or celebrity, they are more easily identified and therefore you can be more extreme in your exaggeration of their features. They're also not going to come back at you and say "Who and what the hell is this?"
Here's the real Neil for comparison.
To look at a completely different approach, check out the work of one of my former Disney colleagues Andries Maritz. I'll also post one of his pics of me in the next post.

Pixar Exhibition

Last night, I went and saw the Pixar-20 years of Animation exhibition that's on at ACMI in Melbourne at the moment. In a nutshell, it was awesome. I'll definitely be going again before it's finished. Basically, they've got on show a lot of the concept art and visual development material from their films. Lots of character concepts, colour keys, background concepts, and sculpted models of the characters. It was great to see the different materials used and scribbled drawing on scraps of paper- drawings that looked like they'd been worked on and not polished pieces of finished art. To see the actual pieces that I've seen in books was a huge treat. In particular I found the Zoetrope that was on display amazing.
I'm also developing quite an appreciation of colour keys.
If you are in Melbourne or can get to Melbourne, I'd highly recommend paying a visit.

Caricatures pt 1

Here's my two cents on Caricatures. I'm gonna spread this one out over about four posts.
I don't them these too often nowadays, generally just when people ask for one, no particular reason, 'cos they're fun, I just don't get around to it. I first got into doing them, back when I was in high school- they were good for a laugh at the teachers or friends and I got a bit of a knack for them and was doing them quite regularly. As far as inspiration goes for a particular style, I can't really name anyone in particular. Mort Drucker from the "Mad" magazine certainly would have been one, but primarily I s'pose it would have been the political cartoonists appearing in the daily paper. I remember my grandparents at one time brought home some caricatures done by a cartoonist they knew to show me, but I don't remember who it was. I imagine there were also a few how-to guides that I looked at as well.
The main gist I gathered from all of these was to exaggerate some prominent feature or features, nail the basic shape of the person's head and keep it to as few lines as possible (it was after all a cartoon and cartoons weren't loaded with linework), and the finishing touch- keep the head big on a little body. Oh, and it was generally a good idea in the end to be able to recognise the person.
The first look you get at a person, something will generally catch your eye- you try and emphasize that. It's their essence. Getting their head shape right is especially helpful with capturing the thing that makes them "them"- it also follows one of the prime animation rules, silhouette value. Line work is a necessity for capturing the person, but I feel that too many lines can make a person look old. It works if that person is old, but it's what I find makes doing caricatures of women especially hard. With women I generally stick to linework for just the main features- eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and bit of a nose. If I add too much more, they start looking old. So those lines have to be very carefully placed.
I've pretty much stuck with these rules and as a rule of thumb, generally don't do super-exaggerated caricatures. People with REALLY big noses, generally don't like having fun made of the fact that they have a really big nose. It all depends on the person and the circumstance. I tend to be fairly kind. It keeps the peace especially when you do them of family members, and of course they'll eventually ask for one.
I'm not going thru the archive to dig up ones from way back just yet but for starters here's one of my parents-in-law that a did a few years back. I'd done one a couple of years before that of my wife's Aunty and she'd loved it. After seeing it, my mother-in-law asked for one, eventually I agreed. This was done from a couple of photos(not the ones below), as we were living in Sydney at the time and they were down in Melbourne. I knew them well enough to be able to more-or-less use the photo's as a guide and not be restricted by the photo angle. Getting the right pose also helps too. This now has a pride of position in their house. The pics below are to show what they really look like, it's just a drawing if you don't know who it's of.

More to follow...

Still more....

I must admit, I have been starting to get a creative block coming up with new characters for this game, and it keeps evolving too, so I have to keep coming up with more stuff. Thankfully production is ramping up and things are having to get signed off.
This critter below had an interesting start. The initial design looked nothing like this, and I was stuck for a new idea. Then this new guy started and drew up some designs and well... I let a few others decide that he wasn't up to scratch. So, this is my reworking of one of his designs. If you can't tell, I had a bit of fun colouring it up in the end. Another critter...

I'll post something else next.

Phew!!!

Wow, that was quite an effort. I've been storyboarding on a new animated TV series, as well as doing my day job at the games company and feeling the strain of doing two jobs. I'm obviously not as young as I used to be, and the full days and long nights spent at the computer and drawing desk without much of a break were starting to build up on me- that must be what burnout feels like. I'd said yes to the storyboarding work months ago, before I started at the games company, and due to production delays it was put off and off. Finally it came about and they said do you still want to do it, sure I said, bit of extra cash will come in handy. Hah hah hah. My wife was starting to think I was a stranger, and my daughter was learning what "daddy going to work" meant and not liking it. It's a strange circumstance pushing yourself to meet a deadline and having a three year old pulling at your arm and wanting you to play with her.
I'm having a rest now, for a couple of weeks. Gotta tend to some other stuff- baby due in ten weeks. I've dug myself a good hole though, the company I've done the boards for love my work and want me to do two more. I did the last one digitally and whilst there was some initial teething problems it worked out quite well and should make the next couple of boards pass through with less stress. Thanks David and Toby for your advice on digital drawing programs.
Here's some more work from "the game", something different at first- a prop, which was a nice change from all of the character work.

Defence of the Disney Sequel

After years of working at Disney (Sydney) and at other places on productions that generally get ragged in the press, it's nice to see an article that gives us some praise. I'm not an overly huge fan of these sequels myself, even though I've worked on a few of them, but the three mentioned in this article were all animated in the Disney Sydney studio and it's refreshing, even if somewhat belated to receive a compliment on the work that was done. The writing wasn't ours, but we worked hard at putting up on the screen the best artwork we could within the time frame allocated, and it was nice to have been a part of the Disney heritage.

Critter Concepts

Very tired and busy at the moment with some freelance storyboard work as well as my day job.
Here's a couple of critters I've designed for "the game".

More thoughts later....

More Monkeys

Here's some more concept work, primarily done for the game brief (pretty-ing up a wordy document with pictures). It looks like I've gotten a bit better with photoshop, but I'm still an amateur compared to some (then again, I've never had to use colour so much in my working life before either).
This first one was part of a flow diagram and was actually drawn completely in photoshop with a wacom tablet. I found it pretty good, especially being able to zoom in on your drawing. The only downfall was when drawing against the curve of your hand or trying for a staright line. I'll be putting that cintiq on my wishlist. This one and the following one were drawn as I have been preferring to do it, pencil on paper and then coloured in photoshop with the wacom. I liked getting the light effect in both of these pictures. It was with these two pictures that brought the "ooh's " and "ahh's" that seemed to indicate my improvement with photoshop.

Monkeys

According to Amy Mebberson, I'm a chicken nut. Well, I'll have her convinced I'm monkey mad soon. Here's a couple of photoshop-coloured up sketches I did for the game brief that I'm working on. This was still early photoshop days for me, so be kind.
I know this first one is the dreaded "Tude" pose, but my hand was forced. I didn't want to do it, but when your charcter is a wise-cracking, smart-arse what can you do. This guy is the older father figure, who's trying to bring him into line.
A computer game with monkeys, what could be more fun?

Pet project character

Here's the main character for my pet project. These were quick clean up drawings that I did from an animation test I did for it a little while back (well, if you ask my old man it was ages ago). They'll need a bit of a rework with a fresh hand but I'm pretty happy with how he looks. Doing the test animation a great way to test the design of a character, you really get to see if the basic shapes of the character work together, hold together after a number of drawings and move in space well. I've never actually animated a character with a moustache before. I figured it would be a bit of fun, especially a bushy one to manipulate with the mouth shapes.
I've got the short film fund info night on Monday, hopefully I'll get to hear what I need. Submissions are due in September.

Pet Project

Here's a couple of Key layouts my little short film project. establishing the setting for a couple of locations. The top one actually has another half to it, to the left, but I neglected to fuss about scanning it and stitching it together. Like all of us who have our little pet projects, I've been kicking this one over for a few years. My father lately has been giving me a prod to get it done- talk about pressure.
I am looking into applying for a film grant, cos I would like to finish it, so we may see this turn into a production blog in the future.

Alien Designs

These guys were for an alien desert bandit concept as part of early development for a game that I'm working on. I tried a couple of variations on the standard alien concept that we were working with and a couple of new variations.


I was reading a book on the great pyramid at the time so I think the arabic influenced dress came into it from there. I also have a fondness for Mayan architecture and that tends to creep in wherever I let it.

Old Stuff

Dusting out the attic.... No, not really. Just some personal stuff to show a couple of examples of my own handiwork I s'pose. This chicken was for a western I was trying to develop. I wanted to play with the idea of a chicken as the hero. It took a while to arrive at this design and I like it, I was just not that confident in my own ability as a writer. One day. This critter was a miscellaneous design for something and was never used. Well, he was actually, but the whole sequence in which he appeared was cut. He was fun to design and animate, and I think shows my fondness for the Warners type characters.
This dog was created to be a new logo for the "Working Dog" company just before they were about to release "The Dish". They ended up going for a more realistic blue heeler, which again I animated and they decided against using. They wanted a real dog to do a pile of stuff you probably couldn't get it to do in 15 seconds.

More Wild Things

Here's the rest of the Wild Things. Is it just me or does this guy above bear a bit of a resemblance to William Shakspeare? The Rooster was quite hard to do, cos you only see him in profile in the book.
As I worked through these, you start to pick up inconsistencies in the illustrations. I found myself having to pick the most appealing parts of what I required and then work it into the overall model and try and make it consistent.
I love the feet on the bull- they'd have to be the defining touch.

Drawing Princesses

You would think as an Animator (or an artist of any type for that matter) that being able to draw compentantly would be a great buzz for your kids- that you could draw anything they ask of you. Even though I've been drawing rapid fire Thomas the tank engines and Dorothy the dinosaurs on my daughters "MagnaDoodle" for a while now and keeping her quite content with those, I learnt the hard way tonight, that such is not necessarily the case. My (almost) three year old daughter is mad over prinesses at the moment, especially the Disney ones. Mummy bravely attempted one this afternoon (which she wants buried forever) and right before bedtime, Madi asked if I could draw her a princess. Sitting next to her on her bed with pad and pencil in hand I asked "who would you like me to draw?", "Cinderelly" she replied. "Ha" Mummy laughed- if only Madi was about 18 months older, she would have been in her element as I was animated Cinderella herself on our last Picture "Cinderella 3" at Disney Sydney before it shut down. I quickly drew down a few lines (not the one pictured below) and well..... Madi went all quiet, wouldn't look at the picture and snuggled into Mummy very upset and "shy". I don't think she was expecting it to actually look like Cinderella, and was taken aback. It was a bit funny and sad at the same time.
Mummy was proud of her effort- "at least I didn't make her cry"

A couple of Wild Things

Here's a crack at doing a turnaround Model sheet for a couple of the "Wild Things" characters. I left off the cross hatching. They were a little tough to do 'cos when you really start to analyse the drawings in the book there's a bit of variation between the pictures and things change depending on the pose. This process forces you to set rules and uniformity. They were a lot of fun to do. On a side point it was interesting reading in the "Art of Sendak" book that this classic was created in roughly six months.

Word gets out!!

Wow! I got a mention on Aaron Simpson's great site "Cold Hard Flash" about my work on "Dogstar". I was wondering why views to my Flash reel had jumped up so much in a day. It obviously doesn't take long for the word to get around.
You can check out more on "Dogstar" here and here.

Apocolyptic Hero

More work, super hero stuff - not really my cup of tea. I think most of us had the cliche super hero drawings beaten out of us when we were teenagers. Here I had to create an apocolyptic hero who initially was a security guard hunting down zombies. I'm not really that enamoured with the pose -he's recoiling from shooting at a lunging zombie.The brief then changed to a soldier type dude complete with body armour and mammoth gun. The painterly effect wasn't well received. It was a photo-realistic pic they were after. Again, another crack at photoshop. I need to get the blends working better. After producing line drawings for so long, it's a little weird using colour.

Flash animation "Dogstar"

Here's a collection of scenes I animated in Flash for the upcoming series "Dogstar".
The scene of Gemma (the green cat like character) doing the haka is my favourite.

Wild Things

How's this for a big call? In my first day of my new job I'm asked to do a screen shot concept sketch for a game based on the classic Maurice Sendak book "Where the Wild Things Are". It was a bit daunting, I remember this book from I was a kid - it was always out at the library. I've been familiar with his work on this and several other books, but never been one to study him rigourously so I was quite pleasantly surprised at how nice it was to draw in his style - not that I should have been. This was also my first major shot at colouring something up in Photoshop too. The linework was done pencil on paper and then scanned in.

Weary Donkey

A little while ago, a friend asked me to draw this picture of a donkey for a script pitch he and his wife were working on. Whilst he is an animator, he freely admitted to not being able to draw a horse and thought of me (which brings up another point - that us artists and possibly in particular animators were the people our friends used to turn to when we were kids to draw to back end of a horse). He had to look tired and a bit beaten up, but sympathetic too. In typical fashion, they wanted it in about a days turnaround, and they wanted it to look like a turn of the (19th) Century illustration and I immediately thought of T.S. Sullivant. Funnily enough I didn't even think to look at the Donkey out of Shrek for reference, but after a couple of quick roughs and emails back and forth this is what I came up with. It was suprisingly difficult to find a Sullivant picture of a horse - loads of hippo's. This Zebra was my closest bet.
This horse was hiding from me.
These guys helped with the look of the line style.

Bridge

One of the great things about digital cameras is that you can now take photos of anything and not have to be worried about film processing and printing costs - you can take photos solely for curiosity's sake.
Once before, I had seen this old trestle rail bridge and was fascinated by its visual image in this green paddock. It just sits there spanning this great section of low pasture near Orbost looking very cool. I had to get a photo. I'm not sure whether it's the architectural fascination in me or that it just calls to the artist in me. I think as artists we're attracted to things with great design. I have a painting that features some typography on a wall in Spain, and the pull of that image too is strong. I'm gonna finish now before I start sounding like a wanker.

Merimbula holiday

A couple of weeks ago we had a weeks holiday to Merimbula on the NSW southern coast. We went with three other groups of friends and their kids as well. Despite the fact that I had been off work for a while it was a nice chance to get away and have a bit of a holiday. It was a lovely week and the weather was great, not to hot. The most suprising thing for us living in drought ravaged Melbourne was the green countryside - we'd almost forgotten what it looked like and were tempted to dig up a patch and bring back with us.
The warm weather gave us plenty of good opportunites to go swimming. Madi, doing very well with her swimming lessons was keen every chance she could get to head to the pool. This time she managed to drag Mummy in. With her floaty ring, her confidence has grown enormously. She's quite happy now to go it alone and doesn't require Mummy or Daddy to hold on.
We also discovered on another day out that we have a budding golfer. She was quite taken with the mini golf and on this particular day wanted more return trips. Later on other days, any time she saw that giveaway giant golf ball, she wanted to have a go.
Picnic on the beach, enjoying running in the water. Lots of big splashes!!

I've had a bit of a headache

Sorry for the absenteeism but I'm back now. About six months ago I was diagnosed with a brain tumour. It was on my Pituitary gland to be specific. Well I had surgery, and the wonderful doctors pulled this large growth about the size of a golf ball out thru my nose (I don't think it was quite Arnie style a la "Total Recall"). After a substantial period of recovery, and some wonderful extra time spent with my family, I'm back up on my feet. Well, I have been for a little while now, but just slack getting back to my blog. But, I will endeavour to post more.
Work finished up on "Dogstar" barely before I was able to return to work, and I then spent the glorious job hunting period of pre- and post-Christmas looking for work before landing myself a job at a computer game company.
Thanks to Aaron Davies for his above sympathies.