Don't Break the (Creative) Chain–January 2020

I learned about this from Jerry Seinfeld.

He had a similar chart for the goal of writing one joke per day.

I've been using these charts for several years for several projects. It's an easy, daily reminder of whether or not I've made the effort to draw. I'll admit, I'm sometimes too generous with my green checkmarks—if I draw for 5 minutes, I count it as a draw day!

It's also a clear way to evaluate and figure out why there are red X marks. I was consistent the first 13 days of the year. Then I was diagnosed with a neurological disorder, focal dystonia of the foot, that's been hindering me since August, 2018. Notice how I used my depression about my condition to not draw.

Not. Good.

Things improved slightly the next week but I have yet to get back into a consistent practice.

Now I have something to aim for in February!

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Designing a Logo–Step 7: The Project Takes a Questionable Turn

The first step of designing a logo was research.

The second step was word associations to brainstorm ideas.

The third step was thumbnail sketches.

The fourth step was designs in black and white.

The fifth step was designs in black and white feedback and revisions.

The sixth step was designs in black and white feedback and revisions part 2.

At this point I was pleased with my work, the way it was being received and the overall relationship with the client. 

But then…the client responded to the second revisions…and things took a turn.

The client showed the designs to other people who expressed reservations. First concern: since many of their congregants work for the Target company, they felt that the labyrinthine logo looked too much like a target.

Hmm…same shape and feel but sufficiently different, yes?

Second concern: the client was put in the uncomfortable position of having to explain the significance of the two logo designs. The client was questioned as to what the designs had to do with the concept of “Living the Love of Christ."

They therefore concluded that they needed to "change direction" (oh. crap.) and make the words “Living the Love of Christ" the basis of the logo.

The client thoughtfully explained what they had in mind for the new direction and included visual references.

Needless to say, I wasn't happy…

…because what they were asking went against everything I had learned and believed about logo design. They were confusing the purpose of a logo with that of a tagline.

I wisely took two days to respond and collect my thoughts. I came up with the most professional yet direct phrasing I could think of. My response was:

My concern is that the purpose of the logo is being misunderstood. A logo is meant to be a simple suggestion or indication that identifies. Its function is not, however, to describe or explain…

Therefore I will not be able to design a new logo based on the direction you want to go. If, however, you and your team see further ways for the current ideas to be adjusted, I can accommodate those changes. Of course I will understand if you decide to proceed with another designer.

Thanks for the opportunity to work with you, it’s been fun!

It's important to note that I was completely willing to walk away from this paying freelance opportunity, an opportunity I got from a former high school classmate!

But I saw that going in the direction they wanted would turn into a hellscape for me trying to accommodate what I felt to be a misguided vision. Nothing good would come out of this for me is I continued.

In the next installment, I'll explain how the client received my response and how we proceeded.

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Moebius's "Arzach" Animated—Page 2, Panel 1

Original Moebius panel from "Arzach."

This first piece of animation went surprisingly quick and easy. Removing Arzach and the pterodactyl from the background and filling in the hole they left required minimal Photoshop work as did creating the moving cloudy sky background.

The next step was a little more complicated.

First, there was a LOT more retouching. Part of the appeal of Moebius's work are the wonderful lines and dots he uses to indicate texture. Recreating those lines and dots was a lesson in patience…and a lot of thinking. Because Moebius always placed texture marks with a purpose and consistency. In the gaps, I had to think about what marks were being used, where they should be and why. A useful exercise.

Second, as my hand turned the page of the book, the panels on the next pages were revealed:

I wanted, however, to start with a blank page and have the effect of the panel frames and animation appearing on the page. So I needed to mask all of the drawings on the next two pages.

It took some Googling to find out how to mask a moving object but after some searching I found the right tutorial and achieved the effect I imagined:

With that done, I could reveal the art on the page as I imagined:


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It's FINALLY Making Sense!

My first two artistic anatomy study guides. Notice the wear on them. I asked my parents to get me "Gray's Anatomy" when I was in high school.

When I was 25-years-old, I rented my first apartment in Brooklyn, NY. It was in Park Slope, roach-infested, had a drug dealer living on the first floor (who liked to vacuum the hall) and was almost broken into one day while I was at work (thank goodness I spent the several-hundreds-of-bucks to install a gate on the fire escape window. Otherwise my few belongings would've been stolen and it would've been my fault for not properly locking the window.)

I'd wake up early every morning (which was scary because…roaches), sit at the counter with "Gray's Anatomy" and the 1957 edition of Fritz Schider's "An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists," trying to learn artistic anatomy so I could pursue my dream of being an animator.

I tried.

And tried.

But trying to remember the Latin names of the muscles and their origins and insertions was impossible.

Now it's almost 26 years later, and finally—FINALLY!—I'm beginning to understand human anatomy.

Why am I just now beginning to understand anatomy? Better resources and instruction.

For years I took classes at the Arts Students League and studied the  books above but it just never came together for me. When I submitted my anatomy class drawings to MTV's "Daria" for an animation job, I got a note back saying I should…learn anatomy! (Yeah, that one was a soul-crusher especially since there was barely any animation in "Daria.")

But once I started learning from online instructors—particularly Stan Prokopenko but also Michael Mentler and Ron Lemen—combined with better books—particularly "Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist" by Stephen Rogers Peck plus Robert Beverly Hale and Thomas Coyle's "Albinus on Anatomy"—things began to click.

Stan Prokopenko (proko.com)

Ron Lemen

Michael Mentler (tsofa.com)

Peck's book has excellent drawings that give a sense of the dimensionality of the bones and muscles; the Albinus book presents the muscles individually to better understand their origins and insertions.

These two books have been essential to me learning artistic anatomy.

These books, especially that on the right, have tremendous insights into how the masters approached drawing the human figure.

An additional important resource has been the internet and 3D images. One of the great things about Proko's anatomy course is that he provides an online, 3D image of the bones and muscles. Being able to see the bones and muscles from any angle allowed me to understand the dimensionality of these things. And understanding that dimensionality helped me draw that object better.

I've also discovered that no one instructor has all of the answers and that combining teachings gives you a more complete understanding of what you're studying. So right now I'm in the process of learning human proportions by combining the teachings of Michael Mentler (whose system of measurement is the same as Robert Beverly Hale's) and Ron Lemen. I like both of their methods; they have similarities and overlap which reinforces my learning.

I'm going to share with you the best of their methods once I'm done learning it myself. I'm confident that if you've had problems understanding human proportions, the method I share with you will be of use. I'm also looking forward to applying the Mentler/Lemen figure proportions to Andrew Loomis's teachings which will make it easier to draw a figure at extreme angles.

From Andrew Loomis's "Figure Drawing for all It's Worth"—I can't wait to deconstruct this!

And THIS!

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Designing a Logo–Step 6: Black and White Logo Feedback and Revisions Pt. 2

The first step of designing a logo was research.

The second step was word associations to brainstorm ideas.

The third step is thumbnail sketches.

The fourth step is designs in black and white.

The fifth step is revising the designs after getting feedback.

More feedback from the client. At this point we all agreed that 2 of the designs simply weren't working so we dropped those entirely. The remaining 2 designs needed some changes in the line quality and the design of some shapes.

Here are the revisions:

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Making Moebius's Arzach Move

I love Moebius's art so much that I wanted to see it move. So last year I started a project animating panels from Moebius's "Arzach."

There have been a few attempts to animate his work but none were that successful nor recent. I also thought it'd be easier to do this than other potential projects.

First, I had to decide how this would look. Was I going to string each panel together to make a seamless story? It became clear that taking that approach would require a lot of retouching with each panel having its edges extended to fill a 16:9 aspect ratio. I didn't want to dedicate that kind of time to Photoshopping.

Instead, I decided to maintain the integrity of Moebius's panels by limiting the movement to inside of those panels, as though you were flipping through a book with moving panels…like the newspapers in Harry Potter:

I started by recording myself turning the pages of the Arzach book using an iPhone 6 Plus. Next, I scanned the pages of the book and retouched each panel in Photoshop.

For the first page, I imagined it fitting the full screen with Arzach and his pterodactyl flying into the frame, the sky slowly moving and the figures stopping in the spot of the original book panel. This required extending the background, which was easy. More difficult was cutting the figures out and filling the hole they left. This was a challenge for the entire project because Moebius used a lot of cross-hatching and the variances of the watercoloring are difficult to mimic.

There was even more retouching on the figures to make the wings, cape and other parts move. I wasn't going for full animation, just the feeling of some movement:

The multiple images in different positions and the background were all imported into After Effects where all the animation, compositing and masking was done.

Despite the challenges, I got the look I wanted:

One of the main reasons for starting this project was to learn how to use After Effects. In future posts, I'll have tutorials explaining how I accomplished certain outcomes.

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Designing a Logo–Step 5: Black and White Logo Feedback and Revisions

The first step of designing a logo was research.

The second step was word associations to brainstorm ideas.

The third step is thumbnail sketches.

The fourth step is designs in black and white.

The next step was processing the client's feedback. Thankfully, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive and, even more importantly, specific. The client commented about the angles of the logos, the crispness of the lines and the movement of the shapes. All great feedback! With the substantial specific feedback, I was able to quickly adjust the logos without having to waste time searching for answers.

After going back and forth with some emails and a phone call, I sent these revised logo designs to the client:

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New Year's Confession: Learning to Draw is BORING!

It's a new year.

For me that means reviewing the goals of past years to see where I've fallen short.

And—WOW!—have I fallen short!

Year after year after year—going back almost TWENTY years!—I've had the SAME goals!

To learn anatomy; to complete several animated shorts; to socialize more; to get fit; blah, blah blah.

But I keep missing these goals, especially the drawing-related goals. So why does that keep happening?

After searching for the answer to that question, I came to an unfortunate answer: learning to draw is BORING!

That's right, I said it! I love drawing but learning to do it well—with the necessary repetitions and the strain on my brain as I desperately try to determine why my drawings are wrong—is BORING!

Gesture drawing is boring.

Drawing drills are boring.

Studying anatomy is REALLY boring!

I'll have one or two weeks of solid practice and then fall off the wagon. WAY off the wagon. Then I'll get back on the wagon only to fall off again. Then I get distracted by something else and before I know it, another year has passed and I've gotten nowhere.

So this time when I was reviewing my 2019 and thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in 2020, I admitted an uncomfortable truth: even though I love drawing, I hate practicing it.

That acknowledgement was HUGE! By saying the truth out loud, I allowed myself to feel and embrace the negative side of pursuing my passion. By embracing that negativity, it forced me to FINALLY find a way around it. And the solution I've come up with is so far working!

I determined that I need to focus on a few areas to improve my figure drawing: gesture, simplifying the torso and pelvis (the primary area of physical movement), figure proportions and drawing drills. The first good decision I made was to limit my focus to only those areas. It helps that I've finally had a breakthrough in understanding the 5 basic forms—cube, cylinder, cone, pyramid and sphere—and have developed the ability to break everything down into those forms. Now, learning to draw the figure is my primary focus.

But studying and practicing those things is boring. In order to overcome the boredom, I realized that I needed to balance it with something FUN that also helps improve my skills. The activity I found to accomplish that is copying.

Copying allows me to spend time with the work by artists whom I want to emulate. I love Moebius's work, so I copy it. I love Harvey Kurtzman and other MAD magazine artists, so I copy them. This is similar to rewarding oneself with a cookie after having eaten some kale. Well…it's actually BETTER than that because copying is healthy for one's drawing abilities while a cookie isn't but…you get my point.

I've only just started this new approach so I can't yet say if it's a success. I'll be documenting my progress here.

But I do know that at the least, drawing has become a lot less boring. 😁