Wednesday Art Post—character designs

Below are drawings that show how I'm working through the process of designing Honey and Luthor. NOTHING in animation is easy and that includes character design. I wanted these characters to look better than Wayne and Petey from "Calls of the Wild" so I'm putting in more effort in how they look. I also want to apply to their designs the lessons I recently learned. The goal is to have something distinct that is also easy to manipulate. That's why I tried to keep the shapes simple.

Honey has some Taraji P. Henson, Jennifer Hudson and Lauryn Hill in her. I'm still working on giving her a decent hair style. I want something short to, again, make it easier to animate.

Luthor's bald—one less area to animate and color!

Basically, I want Honey's face to be soft and round…feminine, while Luthor's is more blocky.

GOAL: to have the finished (for now) facial designs for Honey and Luthor uploaded here by Sunday evening. I say "for now" because as I work on the animatic, their designs will probably evolve. But I like having something solid to work with at this time.

Fighting the Fear Redux

I have a nasty habit of forgetting lessons learned and then having to re-learn them.

As I've been reading, FEAR is probably the single biggest obstacle to human accomplishment and advancement. And what do I keep giving into?

That's right, FEAR!!

Last year when I was working on my film for the Plympton class, I spent one weekend terrified of drawing. I felt that my drawing was so weak that I just didn't want to sit down and continue doing more weak drawings. I finally faced that fear and successfully completed the film.

But I've let that feeling return. Even after all of the studying and drawing I was doing, I still had this nagging voice in my head telling me that I still suck! So, in order to avoid sucking, I dropped drawing altogether.

I haven't drawn anything substantial for approximately one month, as evidenced by my sparse blogging.

That fear of drawing poorly has infected me again. Even though I know that the more I draw, the better I'll become—I've even seen improvements already—it still isn't enough for me. I still can't help feeling that every line I draw should be brilliant! Where did such ridiculous expectations come from?!?!

I have decided to, once again, face the fears and just sit down and DRAW!

I'll be completing the Nicolaides curriculum Schedule 5 by this weekend (look for the posting of the "Done" schedule) and will have some character designs to show you in two days.

See you then! And keep working!

"Adult Toy Story" officially back in production!

As you see, I'm now considering the title "Adult Toy Story" over "Toy vs. Boy." That way I can weasel in on Pixar's "Toy Story" action!  I also considered "Toy Terror" but that's the name of an R.L. Stine book. I'll research if it matters that I use it. Or maybe "Toy Drawer Terror?"

I'll have new character designs up this week. Soooo glad I took the time to improve my drawing knowledge, you'll see how it paid off!