Latest Animatic Segment—Angry Toys!

This may well be my favorite moment in the film:

I'm 78% done with the animatic! We're gettin' reallll close!

Latest Animatic Segment—Luthor's Realization

Sorry, I promised some more scenes over a week ago!

Here it is:

Clean Animatic 69% Done!

With a new-found intensity, I'm now 69% done with the clean animatic. By the end of day on Sat. 8/13, I intend to be ONE WEEK ahead of schedule to complete this by Aug. 31.

It's too late tonight for me to make a video of some of the new scenes but I'll get that to you soon.

Latest Animatic Segment—Luthor Laughs at His Joint

Making progress! Completing these scenes means "Adult Toy Story's" clean animatic is now 60% done! Per my schedule of work quotas, I'm one day behind for my schedule to complete this animatic by August 31. I don't care WHAT it takes, this animatic WILL be done by that day!

Artistic Anatomy Part 3: Brow & Forehead Planes

We learned the bones of the front of the skull. We learned the muscles of the brow and forehead. The final aspect to learn is the planes.

First, some information about the image below. This model is known as the "Asaro head," conceived by the painter, teacher and writer John Asaro.

Full Asaro original model head.

Booklet that comes with purchase of Asaro original model.

Comparing this model side-by-side with the skull model FINALLY made me begin to understand the planes of the head. That's why, in addition to recommending that you buy a skeleton, I also recommend that you buy (or make your own) model of the planes of the head. Having these three-dimensional objects available to touch, light and closely examine will make learning to draw infinitely easier. I bought my Asaro head—original model—from Planes of the Head for $98 (free shipping!) which comes with a booklet presumably illustrated by Asaro. There's a variety of other models offered, too.

Onward to the planes. Here's a closeup of the model's brow & forehead planes:

Closeup of Asaro head's brow & forehead planes.

Brow & forehead planes colorized for emphasis.

Notice how they conform to the curves and landmarks we studied on the skull. If you project the angular planes onto the curved skull, it would look something like this:

Corresponding area of planes on skull.

See how clear this is when you put all of the elements together!

A quick review:

Bones

Muscles

Planes

Hopefully I'm making this information clearer for you and not confusing! Keep in mind that I'm NOT an expert in this area, but simply learning as you are while hopefully providing some insights I've picked up along the way.


Next: the eye & nose muscles.

Artistic Anatomy Part 2: Brow & Forehead Muscles

Now that we know the bones of the front of the skull, let's learn some muscles!

First, a quote from Andrew Loomis's Drawing the Head and Hands, p. 45 (a book I highly recommend. Downloadable pdf's of all of Loomis's books can be found here.)—"I do not see any material advantage to the artist in knowing the names of all the muscles and bones of the head, but it is of great importance to him to know where they are, where they attach and what they do."

I couldn't disagree more! If it's important to know where they are, where they attach and what they do, then you need to know what to call them. Muscle names often reveal information about where they are, where they attach and what they do so knowing their names is hugely beneficial.

Second, an awesome online resource for facial anatomy and expressions is Victoria Contreras Flores's ARTNATOMY/ARTNATOMIA (Spain, 2005) at www.artnatomia.net. This site is hugely helpful; it allows you to see the results of the contracting of each muscle. You MUST check it out!

The two muscles for this lesson, with accompanying images, are:

Corrugator
L. rugare—to wrinkle
origin: inner part of superciliary arch
insertion: medial skin of the brow
action: pulls skin of the eyebrows together causing vertical wrinkles on the forehead

Frontalis (Epicranius, frontal belly)

G. —epi, upon + kranion, skull

origin: cranial aponeurosis [a flat sheet or ribbon of tendonlike material that anchors a muscle or connects it with the part that the muscle moves]

insertion: skin of the brow

action: pulls skin of the eyebrows up, skin of the forehead down creating horizontal wrinkles across the forehead

Here's a page from Scott McCloud's "Making Comics" (highly recommended) that describes the corrugator, the frontalis and all of the other important expression-making muscles. I've colorized the two muscles on this page as I did on the skulls:

Page from Scott McCloud's "Making Comics."

Once you've learned these two muscles you'll be ready for the next lesson: planes of the forehead.

Is this information making sense? Do you find it helpful? Would you like to add to it or ask a question? Please post your comments!

Artistic Anatomy Part 1: Frontal Skull Bones

Hopefully convinced you that in order to understand the planes of the head we need to first understand the skull then the muscles.

Here's a front view of the skull with the bones labelled:

Note: the best way to distinguish yourself from other artists is to have a solid command of artistic anatomy (a goal I'm still working towards!) To that end, investing in a replica skeleton (the skull of mine is in the photo above) would greatly contribute to your learning. You can't touch nor examine closely a photo or illustration especially since most from the internet are low resolution. This is the skeleton I bought in 1997 for $349 from Evolution in New York City (notice that it's now $269; I paid $80 more and had to physically drag it home on the commuter train!) Despite not using the skeleton as consistently as I should have all these years, I guarantee that studying anatomy is infinitely easier by having a model to look and touch. See the bones in 3D makes them easier to understand and communicate on a 2D surface.

Back to the skull: as you do daily drawings of the front of the skull, memorize the names and locations of the individual bones. We'll start to build on that knowledge in the next post: muscles of the brow and forehead.

Would this post have been better in some way? Do you feel you're learning anything? Post a comment!

Until next time, happy drawing/studying!

The BIG SECRET Revealed!

So here's the big secret: you canNOT understand the planes of the head until you throughly understand the skull and facial muscles.

Not a big revelation?

Then why are so many amateur artists online venting their frustrations and confusion about not understanding the planes of the head? They, like me, approached this topic incorrectly: we separated the planes from the skull and muscles. This separation abstracted the knowledge; the planes ended up having no relationship to a real human head and became impossible to remember. On the other hand, when studying the planes while keeping the skull and muscles in mind, they suddenly made complete sense!

I searched numerous sources for this skull–muscle–planes connection—Reilly, Fixler, Loomis, Vilppu, Bridgman and the Famous Artists Course—but found nothing that clearly explained to me how all of the elements worked together.

Finally, I stumbled upon Jeff Jackson's blog, the first clear explanation I could find. Here he diagrams the skull, muscles and planes; his step-by-step instructional PDF on drawing the planes is also helpful and I recommend that you download both.

Following Jackson's example, I decided to break down every step of this topic into even smaller, more manageable steps. This method is helping me and I'm confident it will help you.

Next post: learning the bones of the front of skull.

Would you like to see improvements in these lessons? Tell me about it by posting a comment!

More Planes of the Head…PLUS!

Learning the planes of the head is hard.

I'll make it easy!

Follow my upcoming series of posts and you'll learn not only the planes of the head but about artistic anatomy, too!

I'll also tell you THE BIG SECRET to learning and understanding the planes of the head.

That will be revealed tomorrow!

The Brain & Caricatures

Photo: Joshua Anderson; caricature: Court Jones

I just read a fascinating article in Wired magazine about how the human brain recognizes faces and, by extension, caricatures. There are some helpful bits about how and why caricatures appeal and why we're able to recognize the subjects. Read the article here.

Progress continues!

Below are the latest, new scenes:

The progress chart has been updated, too! I'm now 56% completed with the clean animatic.

How's your project coming?

Latest Animatic—071111

Here's the latest. At this point, a couple of things towards the end need some minor tweaks but aside from that, I think it's good to go!

Clean Animatic—Scenes 1-32

Based on the feedback I received from my Muse (thanks, sweetie!) I revised the Luthor-reacts-to-sound segment. It was suggested to me that Luthor's reaction to the sound (the animatic in this previous post) was too extreme. I was thankful for that input because now, looking at it again, the reaction does seem extreme (or is it just really cartoony?) A new Luthor reaction is below:

Clean Animatic—Scenes 1-43

Here's the animatic to date:

Clean Animatic Progress—47% Done!

Updated the progress chart at left to the 47% mark.

I've set a new goal of SUNDAY, JULY 31, 2011 to complete this clean animatic. I'm confident the goal can be met.

Tomorrow I'll post the animatic to date!

LPPM, P.C.—Hug Your Cat Day Cartoon

This one came easily, like the Earth Day cartoon.

Thumbnails:

For the final, I decided to forego the dog paw "fingers" holding the memo. I just wasn't convinced that it would read as a dog's paws holding the paper. Better to remove it than to confuse or miscommunicate!

Final:

Clean Animatic—Scene 6

It's been awhile but I HAVE been working on the film! In fact, as of this evening, I have completed 22% of the clean animatic (with some exceptions regarding the sound effects and temp music.) I always enjoy updating my progress chart. :)

Here's a scene I spent a lot of time getting right. I wanted it to be playful and fun. I'm OK if the full playfulness doesn't come through in the animatic; I'll have it there in the final animation. For now I just wanted to convey the intensity of the moment. Should it be done differently?

LPPM, P.C.—Blame Someone Else Day Cartoon

Thumbnail of entire gag

Thumbnails of the man's position.

Another page of thumbnails of the man's position.

And another page of thumbnails of the man's position.

Inking of main elements.

Final cartoon.

Labrador, Portie, Poodle & Mutt, Attorneys at Law—Earth Day Cartoon

Here are the thumbnail and final for the LPPM, P.C. Earth Day cartoon. This one was very quick and easy. First, I knew exactly what I wanted—the popular image for earth day are hands holding an earth. So it wasn't hard to make the leap from that to a paw and a hand. Also, I like the image of other species participating in Earth Day. It's their planet, too!

Second, I knew I could get a stock illustration and then draw a quick paw.

Voila!

Thumbnail

Final (stock illustration combined with custom illustration.)

Toon Boom Storyboard Pro Clean Animatic—Scene 6

First, I'm now calling this version of my animatic "clean" instead of "final." I changed the name simply because I realized that it's technically not the final version of the animatic. This is a cleaner version of the rough animatic I completed for my viewing only. Now I'm working on neater version that will be good enough to show other people in order to get feedback. The final version will be the one that includes any changes made based on the feedback I get.

Second, I am pleased to present scene 6! I have now completed 7% of the clean animatic (I've updated the chart at right.) I'm becoming increasingly adept at using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro 2 and the Bamboo tablet; so much so that I've stopped missing pencil and paper, at least for the animatic step. Tell me what you think of the video, thanks!

Final Animatic—Scene 5 Pan

Using Storyboard Pro 2, a Wacom Bamboo tablet and a Blue Microphones Snowflake mic, I completed scene 5 of my final animatic. This scene is a pan from the opening credits, up the wall of a building to a window which introduces us to our main characters, Honey and Luthor.

The music is temporary but the sound effects are, at this point, for the final version. The hand hitting the window sound was recorded by me the microphone. I just plugged the mic into my laptop via its USB connector, held it near a window and smacked my hand against the window. Voila, a sound effect is born!

13 Words of Wisdom from Milton Glaser—Part 2

There's so much to learn from "To Inform & Delight: The Work of Milton Glaser" that I broke it down into two posts. Here are 13 more words of wisdom from Glaser:

1. Glaser liked the idea of the title for his book to be "Drawing is Thinking."

2. The truth is , I've been looking for a definition for what art is all my life without fully understanding exactly what it encompasses. But in the course of doing a speech, I looked up several references to what art was and I found one by Horace, who was a critic and poet back in Roman times and he had this great line, "The purpose of art is to inform and delight," and I thought, wow, it can't get much better than that.

3. Ernst H. Gombrich said, "There is no art, only artists." What he meant is that what art is becomes defined generationally; everybody redefines what art is because there's no there there. It is what society determines at any moment in history and the great enemy of art is the institutionalization of belief, like style or like taste. Once that crystallization of belief happens—OK, I got it now!—that becomes a limitation.

4. What I've always hated in my life is the parochialization of art, making it a special activity unrelated to other activities. It finally ends up being an instrument for social enhancement and not what it really is which is an expression of a fundamental instinct of the species.

5. Artists basically create the commonalities, the symbolism, so people feel as though they have some relationship to one another. When people don't feel they have that relationship, they kill each other. That role of providing common ground is absolutely essential to civilization.

6. Withholding, not giving everything, is one of the secrets of design.

7. Stephen Heller, all-around graphics guru, re: Glaser's approach: it's not about design as service, it's about design as cultural value.

8. [When you teach], you teach a way of perceiving the world.

9. No matter what your work, that complete commitment is transformative; it makes you different when you completely commit to what you're doing.

10. I realized [after visiting Italy] that history wasn't the enemy, that you can use anything as raw material to make something. That was a great transformation for me.

11. Be on the side of the light.

Milton Glaser photo by Sam Haskins.

12. Glaser promotes a humanistic philosophy.

13. In NYC, you have these extraordinary strands of differences existing simultaneously and in some curious way, advantageously, towards all of the people who live here. There really is nothing like it. NYC does the job that America's supposed to do. It really takes everybody and, not only accepts them, responds to them. The city is enormously accommodating.

13 Words of Wisdom from Milton Glaser—Part 1

 "To Inform & Delight: The Work of Milton Glaser" is a fascinating, thought-provoking and incredibly educational documentary. This first-person interview with Milton Glaser is a treat and is a must-view for any artist working in any discipline. Here are the first 13 words of wisdom from the great man and from those who learned at his feet:

1. The core value was always the act of making things and the transformation of an idea that you hold in your mind that becomes real or material. That to me still is the glory of any creative activity.

2. Ralph Caplan, design writer: impressed with Glaser's mixture of talent, play and intelligence

3. I think the idea of movement and the rhythmic response has something to do with the way you draw, the way you make things.

4. Trying to create the same emotional response in graphics that music has on people.

5. Brookie Maxwell, artist and former Glaser student: when you think of the Dylan poster, that really speaks to a generation. That wasn't his generation but he was able to understand what was happening and see what was happening and make work about in response to what was happening. That's very unusual. I see the same thing in the poster for "Angels in America." To take the raw pain of a generation of gay men who were all dying and transform it into a piece of art.

6. I explain to students in terms of understanding communication that the creation of a puzzle is one of the tools that you have to make people understand things. When they activate the mind to try to figure things out the likelihood is that they'll remember it and respond to it more than if they're told something directly.

Re: the simplicity behind the designing of the "I ♥ NY" logo: "I" is a word. The heart is a symbol for a feeling and "NY" are initials for a place.

I've made nothing on "I ♥ NY" ever. There have been no cash rewards as a consequence of doing it. On the other hand, it really make me feel very, very proud to have taken part in that shift in the city's consciousness from being indifferent to itself to realizing we love this place. 

7. Walter Bernard, New York Magazines first Art Director re: the magazine: our mantra was, "be on the reader's side."

8. Interested in work that doesn't exactly look like it was designed, looks like it just happened. Likes that people have to work to understand what you're showing them.

9. Thinking and making things mostly I do in the country; assembling things and refining things we do here [in his NYC office.] One is solitary, the other needs interaction.

10. Works that are preconceived tend to go dead, inert…the work that responds to the peculiarities of the moment tend to be more energized.

11. You realize that everything's related its opposite—if there's light, you have to have darkness; truth, there has to be lies. Everything is defined by its opposite. They both require exploration.

12. So much of my work depends on drawing. I think of drawing as my essential resource, that that's where my understanding of form comes from.

13. I am a great believer in drawing as a way to understand the world.

11 Things to Think About from "Comic Book Confidential"

"Comic Book Confidential" clearly beats "Caveman: V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop" as the weakest artist documentary I've seen to date. "Caveman's" primary shortcoming is its lack in first-person content thereby rendering it weak. "Comic Book" has the actual artists and does little with them except have most of them read the panels from their books! There's lots of graphics and music but comparably little from the artists themselves which is a huge shame considering the impressive list of contributors: Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby, Frank Miller, Art Spiegelman, Jaime Hernandez, Harvey Pekar, William Gaines, Jr., Al Feldstein, Stan Lee, Dan O'Neill, Shary Flenniken, Bill Griffith, Sue Coe and Charles Burns. 

As I said before, despite a documentary's shortcomings, one can still get something of value from it. Here are 11 thoughts I pulled from this film:

1. Eisner: finally, there was a medium that allowed a man with ineptitudes in both fields [writing and drawing] and put them together and come out with an eptitude.

I can deal in two levels, writing and acting. It has a completeness to it.

2. Gaines: people went crazy for the Marx Brothers because had never seen anything like it. That's how MAD [magazine] was received.

3. Kurtzman: I knew exactly what I wanted and did exactly what I wanted so it came out all right.

4. Lee: we tried to have the people talk like real people, to define the characters and have them stay in character, to have stories that, while imaginative, still had some realism, some believability so the readers could relate to and believe in the stories.

5. O'Neill: crawl out there and disrupt the body politic, scramble it.

Re: Disney's lawsuit against him—We started with a hopeless condition. If you're going down in flames, hit something big.

6. Flenniken: able to talk about extreme subjects because the style of the art is innocent and accessible.

7. Griffith: someone has to stand outside the whole thing and look at it and tell you what's going on. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

8. Coe: Art is about hearing information and passing it on, making it accessible to other people. Comics is an inexpensive way to do this. They [corporations? government?] can't control that so much.

9. Burns: [wanted to create a] more personal, internalized horror rather than a physical; a mental horror.

10. Spiegelman re: "Maus": the metaphor was meant to be shucked like a snake skin.

11. Miller: what trying to do recently [the 1980's] is to take the stuff of the old comics and do it in a way that's worth reading for me.

Whatever stories I write have to do with what's going on around me. 1980's America is a silly, frightening place, often silly and frightening at the same time. I hope "The Dark Knight" is silly and frightening at the same time.

13 Things to Think About from "Caveman: V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop"

The documentary "Caveman: V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop" is—among all of the artist documentaries I've watched and despite its best efforts—the weakest. The excessive music, especially at the beginning, almost convinced me to stop watching. The biggest drawback is that the artist himself is not interviewed. Hamlin passed away in 1993 and the DVD was released in 2008. Without his presence, the next best option would have been  Hamlin's writings, assuming he had any, which would have given insight into his methods and thinking. Another alternative would have been to interview his contemporaries or people he worked with or associated with in his early years.

Since these documentary staples are absent, the primary interviews are with Hamlin's daughter, Teddy DeWalt; the successor with whom Hamlin worked, David Graue; and Graue's successor, Jack Bender. Their recollections are vivid but limited in comparison to what could have been. 

Surprisingly, the best part of this DVD is one of the extras, Will Eisner's 2001 Comic Con interview. He talked about both Alley Oop and sequential art in general.

Despite the film's shortcomings, I did learn more about the Alley Oop strip than I otherwise would have known. It is possible, moreover, to pull some kernel of truth or inspiration even from a mediocre documentary.  Here are 13 things to think about:

1. Teddy DeWalt re: Hamlin: his standard comment to most young people was, "If a day came when you had to eat or draw, but you could only choose one and you chose to eat, you probably wouldn't have the drive to go on drawing for a lifetime's work."

2. DeWalt re: Hamlin's retirement: he woke up to real life. He had been before—by his own admission—entirely immersed in a fantasy world, in the world of Alley Oop and all those cartoon characters. They were more real to him than his family was or the people around him. He lived them, he ate with them, they talked to him, he dreamed about them.

3. Will Eisner: comics is a literary art form capable of dealing with subject matter deeper than gags and superheroes.

4. To Eisner's memory, "Alley Oop was the first thinking strip, others were gags and jokes. It went beyond Gertie the Dinosaur; it brought us into a prehistoric world. It showed his research, [research] didn't appear prior to that in other strips.

5. Eisner's influences were Popeye, Terry and the Pirates and Krazy Kat. They all showed physical energy without really physically moving. Incredible humor predicated on misuse of the English language.

6. Re: The Spirit—humor's more universal in understanding than a straight, severely told story.

7. "Costumed characters" was the original name for superheroes. The humor came from the action. Eisner was constantly looking for believability because he was telling slice-of-life stories. Most of his ideas came from a Monday morning newspaper story.

8. "Humor is exaggeration. It depends heavily on the reader's perspective."

9. "My ambition was to write a short story [7 page Spirit comics] every day."

10. His experimentation was a result of and the reward for creating novelty. He was in constant pursuit of reader attention.

11. "The early superheroes were done by interchangeable artists over time. The publishers owned everything; the creators had no equity in their work. The daily strip cartoonists hand an identity. Everyone knew who drew what. The name associated with the strip helped sell it to papers. Daily strips became a daily connection, a part of one's life."

12. "You can't grow a strip once it's sold to the paper. It has to continue as it was from the beginning." [Eisner tired of this and gave up on a daily The Spirit 4-panel strip.]

13. "I saw Alley Oop as a young man as an Anderson [Hans Christian Anderson?] story. Continuing children's story; something friendly about that. It wasn't going anywhere; didn't expect it to reach a climax at any point. Just wanted it to be there and see what Alley Oop would do next. It wasn't like the typical adventure strip that reached a climax, where the villain was going to be caught and all was going to be well. Alley Oop was like visiting an ongoing world. Knew he would get out of his dangers and the reader was amused at how he did it. Something neverending bout that strip that didn't appear in others."

7 Artist Documentaries to Definitely Watch

Watching these 7 artist documentaries will be so inspiring that you'll want to start creating while right in the middle of watching. If you have seen some or all of them, I suggest you watch them again. The nuggets of knowledge shared by these people is worth multiple viewings.


1. "The Line King"

2. "Icons: Frank Miller"

3. "Crumb"

4. "Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics"—see my former post.

5. "The Pixar Story"—see my former post.

6. "Waking Sleeping Beauty"—see my former post.

7. "Frazetta: Painting with Fire"—see my former post.

I will be watching two others in the near future—"Comic Book Confidential" and "Cavemen: V.T. Hamlin & Alley Oop"—and will share in future posts any helpful ideas from those documentaries.

Genre vs. Medium

This issue keeps coming up so I thought I'd throw my opinion in.

Genre: a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content,

technique, or the like

Medium: the material or technique with which an artist works

This CartoonBrew discussion debated the issue and includes a quote from Brad Bird who strongly believes that animation is a medium, not a genre.

Film is the medium through which the genres of westerns, comedies, dramas, fantasy, sci-fi and horror are produced.

Some commentors, however, made an interesting argument: that animation is definitely not a genre, but is a medium within a medium. I think I'm in that camp, too. Especially since there's so many types of animation—stop motion, CG, hand-drawn—it seems most accurate to acknowledge that the medium of film includes animation and the medium of animation subdivides into various methods.

Here are some more discussions of genre vs. medium:

http://www.animationnation.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=012926;p=

http://motiondesign.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/motion-design-animation-mode-vs-genre/

Keep in mind that some genres are better suited for certain mediums. For example, although I love Japanese animation, I often find myself bored by their feature-length films. Even "Metropolis," which I think is great, put me to sleep BOTH times I saw it in the theater! I was, however, at least able to stay awake during most of it without wishing it would end. On the other hand, films like "Millennium Actress," "Tokyo Godfathers," "Paprika," "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" and "Tekkon Kinkreet," despite their artistic qualities, seemed interminable. I couldn't figure out why.

Then I realized that the Japanese use the medium of animation for any story, not just for stories best suited for that medium. All of the films I mentioned above would have been better served as live-action films. I believe that there's no reason to tell a story in animation unless the medium can enhance the story, like "The Incredibles."

The same is true for novels, plays and movies; some stories work best as novels or as plays or as movies. There are some stories that work well in more than one of these mediums but I think those are rare. I thought "Lord of the Rings" was one of the worst and most boring books I'd ever read but I liked the movies. "Tender Mercies" was, to me, a dull movie; when I learned it began as a play, it suddenly made sense. Plays are about language; movies are about visuals. This is why so many plays transferred to the screen seem claustrophobic and dull; often you can tell that "action" was added to increase the visual interest. With "Tender Mercies," there were numerous shots of Texas vistas but it wasn't sufficient to enhance a small, non-cinematic story.

Basically, choose the best medium within which to create your work.