Boulet's Watercoloring Technique

If there's something I would've paid money to know is the specific thinking and approach that Boulet uses for his watercolors.

I LOVE this stuff! It has such a beauty, richness and depth to it.

Boulet has posted numerous time-lapse videos of himself painting but it's not possible to see exactly how he does it. I must not have been the only one wondering because he's finally posted a video that not only explains the various types of water-based paints but summarizes his approach to "l'aquarelle" with the succinct term "La Gougoutte" or "L'il Drop."

This is "the secret" to Boulet's watercoloring success for FREE! AND the video has an English translation!

I tried this approach recently while painting my webisodes and it helped tremendously.

If you've struggled with watercoloring and are interested in a doable method, I recommend you watch Boulet's video.

Major Project Pivot

I've had my eye flare up with chronic conjunctivitis (pink eye.) I've had trouble sleeping. I've felt anxious and stressed.

All because of my concerns about completing Adult Toy Story in a timely manner.

I recently came to the conclusion that despite my best efforts, completing ATS in less than TWO years was simply not going to happen. Now that I recently turned 46-years-old, I can't justify waiting that long to get my work out into the world.

So I decided to pivot.

Once the pivot decision was made, the stress and anxiety subsided. The pivot felt right.

I have a tough dual goal: to get work out into the world and to improve my drawing, animating and storytelling skills.

Accomplishing this goal has been a multi-year challenge. I accept and embrace this challenge. But at the same time, I need to be realistic and smart about it.

After some self-assessment and re-evaluating, I decided that I do not presently have the skills to animate ATS quickly and the lack of progress was depressing me.

I DID realize that I can quickly do an animatic. So it's not full animation but it's not entirely static either.

All I needed was a short story and I found one in the public domain. It's called "The Repairman" by Harry Harrison. I divided this story into 18 episodes and each episode is divided into scenes. Each scene requires drawing, painting, animation, audio and compositing after I've storyboarded the entire episode.

This is still a LOT of work BUT it's going significantly faster than the work on the film.

Page 1 of Ep.01 storyboard

I'm calling this switch from the film to the webisodes a "pivot" rather than "quitting" because I'm leaving the film temporarily. I love ATS and WILL complete it. I just can't complete it now so it makes sense to work on something I can complete now. As long as I'm working on any project, I'm improving my skills, learning more about Toon Boom Animate Pro and getting closer to fulfilling my vision as I see it.

Coming soon: a rough version of some of Episode 1!

Learning to Ink with Crow Quill Pens

Falling in love with John J. Boulet’s work inspired me to make my own web comic. To set it apart stylistically, I decided I’d ink it with a crow quill pen (the best way to get a variety of line widths) and color it with watercolor. But how to start?

First, I researched what the pros do. The old Famous Artists Course said to use a Gillott 170 and 290 nibs so I bought those first. Then I discovered a recommendation from Dave Sim’s book “Cerebus Guide to Self Publishing”. In it he explains in detail how to use a crow quill pen and specifically that a Hunt 102 nib was used for Cerebus. So I bought that, too!

Second, after buying the nibs (and the appropriate pen handles and waterproof ink), I downloaded practice exercises for the pen found from an Internet search. From what I’ve learned, using a crow quill pen is like anything else…a matter of practice.

Surprisingly, drawing all of these lines with the three different nibs isn’t monotonous. I enjoy the sensation of drawing with it and look forward to using these wonderful tools to enhance and set apart my comics.

Gary Vaynerchuk on Passion, Patience and Persistence

This was way back in 2008 but in case you missed it or have never seen it, take a look.

Watch Vaynerchuk do his thing HERE. (WARNING: naughty words are used. If you're sensitive to that type of thing, you're missing out on a lot in life.)

Steam Effect in Toon Boom Animate Pro

While working on the scene 28 of Adult Toy Story, I realized that it would be a nice touch to have some steam floating around. After all, Honey’s deeply involved in her shower so of course there’d be steam!

Since this is an effect, I wanted the easiest way to do it. After looking into the Toon Boom Animate Pro templates, I didn’t find exactly for what I was looking.

A quick Internet search turned up a Flash tutorial. I assumed that since Flash and Animate Pro are similar that I could apply the approach. But it still didn’t give me the results I imagined. 

The next best thing I found was a Photoshop tutorial. This was quick and worked as I imagined. Here’s what I did:

1. Before starting, I thought about the look I wanted and how best to achieve it. I’ve learned from past mistakes to not rush into any creative activity without knowing what I want.

2. I determined that the fastest and most effective approach would be to create one file. In Animate Pro, it would be on its own layer that would move upwards, animated in the program by simply establishing its start and end keyframes.

3. Once I knew how I was going to create this effect, I created a file in Photoshop whose width matched my film’s and enough height to allow for upward movement.

4. I set my foreground and background colors to the defaults, black and white.

5. I chose the Cloud filter.

6. I made the file into a layer and deleted the white.

7. I changed the opacity.

8. Done!

This file was then imported into Animate Pro and put on a layer at the top so it floats over everything else in the scene. I then clicked on the starting frame in the Timeline; placed the art at a starting point and keyframed it; clicked on the ending frame in the Timeline; dragged the art to its ending position and keyframed that.

I played the movement and made adjustments for timing until I liked it. Here’s the scene with just the various effects:

Shoutout Sunday: Simon Stålenhag

This Sunday I want to give thanks to Simon Stålenhag.

Stålenhag is an artist based in the countryside of Stockholm, Sweden. He has worked on films, commercials, book covers and video games. His paintings are simply extraordinary.

What makes Stålenhag s work so wonderful and exceptional is the imagination on display. He is clearly influenced by his countryside environment which often figures in his pieces. What sets his work apart is the juxtaposition of the countryside and familiar situations against robots and dinosaurs. Each picture captures a moment that encourages your own imagination to determine what happened before and after that moment. Every time I look at a Stålenhag painting, I can’t help but start imagining entire stories. His work is mesmerizing. Period.

Thrill your imagination with Stålenhag's art gallery site or his Tumblr page.

The Amazing Middle Comic Beginning VI

Final, scaled up thumbnails for overall layout and early measurements. After some research about web comics, the prevailing idea is that one's web comics should be a standard size to make it easier for them to be published in book form.

This is the final layout for the comic titled "What the Hell Happened?" although Paddington's position will change (per the note on the left under "SWAP")  to improve the composition's flow.

Shoutout Sunday: Rad Sechrist

This Sunday I want to say thanks to Rad Sechrist.

Sechrist is an animation storyboard artist/character designer who has worked at several major animation studios. He has drawn comics and has taught storyboarding and drawing and currently has online instruction courses.

If you’re studying anatomy, I recommend you look at the archives at Sechrist’s site. He has many easy-to-read, color-coded anatomy diagrams that are incredibly informative. I lost count of how many how-to diagrams and posts I’ve downloaded and saved from Sechrist’s site, primarily from his early posts. He studies, dissects and then presents information in easy to digest bites. He’s a one-man drawing education.

I like that he shows his thought process, methods and approaches to studying
This is some incredibly helpful stuff.

Visit Rad’s blog here and his online school here.

The Amazing Middle Comic Beginning V

Thumbnails for panels and overall layout for the comic including the Henry Reed section:

Shoutout Sunday: Robh Ruppel

This Sunday I want to recognize Robh Ruppel.

Ruppel is a concept artist and production designer for games and animated films in addition to being a teacher.

I discovered Ruppel at one of my favorite blogs, Muddy Colors. This review of Ruppel's "Graphic LA" sold me on the book immediately. And the book does not disappoint.

Ruppel has a simple approach—breaking images down into basic shapes and values—that's anything but simple to execute. Ruppel's considerable skills are on display in Graphic LA. Combined with the incredible paintings and step-by-step tutorials are short yet informative bits of text.

I haven't yet fully applied Ruppel's methods but I'm confident that once I dedicate the time to his teachings, my painting will dramatically improve.

Check out Graphic LA and Ruppel's other work.

The Amazing Middle Comic Beginning IV

Sketches for The Great Brain and SOS Bobomobile portions of the comic:

 

Shoutout Sunday: Aaron Blaise

This Sunday I want to thank Aaron Blaise.

Aaron Blaise is a former Disney animator, supervising animator and co-director of "Brother Bear", an animal-lover (see pic above), a painter and an all-around inspiring artist.

Aaron Blaise

Blaise's YouTube channel is full of informative lessons. His site Creature Art Teacher offers a variety of courses. I just happened to catch a sale and spent the mere $49 for his Complete Animation Course (honestly, even if it were still priced at $129, I would've bought it. He's that good.)

I'm looking forward to downloading the 26 course files and starting the course about which I'll post.

Until then, check our Aaron Blaise's sites. You're likely to find something useful.

James Gurney Explores Stylistic Evolution

James Gurney's Gurney Journey is a site I visit every day. The creator of Dinotopia always has valuable advice, information and introductions to exceptional artists.

I especially liked this "Stylistic Evolution" post because it supports an argument I often make about artists.

Early Klimt.

Late Klimt (This happens to be one of my all-time favorite paintings. Ever.)

My position is that one cannot be a good abstract artist until one has learned to be a good representational artist. With all due respect, I find it impossible to respect many contemporary artist who have a specific style that shows no underlying foundation of having learned basic principles.

I also see this lack of foundational skills in many of the most popular web comics.

I understand being in a hurry to get your work out and to use shortcuts. I'm middle-aged and 20 years behind my peers skills-wise and career-wise. Technically, I don't have a lot of time to complete projects and get discovered by the world. Taking shortcuts sounds like a great idea. But I've taken those shortcuts and instead of being a help, they've hindered me significantly. So now I'm willing to take the time to learn the basics so that once I am ready to share my work with the world, it will be worthy of the world's attention.

As Steve Martin said, "Be so good that they can't ignore you."

Words for all of us, especially artists, to live by.

The Amazing Middle Comic Beginning III

Sketches for the Paddington portion of the comic:

Thumbnails searching for expression and figure placement.

The final pencil for the comic's Paddington panel.

Shoutout Sunday: John K.

This Sunday I want to give thanks to: John K.

John Kricfalusi with Ren and Stimpy.

During my years in the wilderness of trying to improve my drawing and animation skills, I came upon the light.

That light was John K's blog.

John K., the creator of "Ren and Stimpy" and a Bakshi's Mighty Mouse animator, shared a small yet significant piece of advice that changed my entire way of approaching animation drawing.

He said that the best way to learn how to do animation drawing is to study the original version of Preston Blair's "How to Animate Film Cartoons."

This blew me away because I had that book…since I was a kid! I kept it all of these years thinking that it was a cute relic from my childhood. Even as a kid I dismissed it as…for kids.

Turns out I was wrong and that I was sitting on an animation education gold mine. It was John K. who opened my eyes to the value of this book.

John K. created his own animation school complete with lessons, some of which are based on the Blair book. As someone who was flailing around, unsure what I should be learning and how to learn it, John K. was a god send. If you want to improve your cartoon drawing, follow his curriculum. You'll be surprised at what you didn't know and with deliberate practice, your skills will definitely improve.

Drawing Instruction Part II: What DID Work

Previously I talked about the art instruction books and methods that didn't work for me from George Bridgman, Will Eisner and Frank Reilly.

Thankfully, there was some instruction that did work for me.

1. Andrew Loomis:

Andrew Loomis's "Successful Drawing."

Andrew Loomis's "Creative Illustration."

Andrew Loomis's "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth."

Andrew Loomis's "Fun with a Pencil."

Andrew Loomis's "Drawing the Head and Hands."

Among all of my drawing instruction books, Andrew Loomis's are my favorites (I have an additional favorite contemporary drawing instructor, Stan Prokopenko, but I'll get to him later in this post.)

Loomis's methods are either completely clear or they take a little bit of figuring out but they're never muddy or impossible. Even when I struggle to understand the reason for all of the lines in a diagram (see this post about Loomis's perspective instruction), it can be figured out. And when you figure out what Loomis meant, you've gained knowledge and skill. I have five of Loomis's books and I've read through all of them and learned important lessons from them all. Time spent with Loomis is value added to your drawing knowledge and skill.

The last time I checked, all of Loomis's books were available free online as pdfs. This was important because Loomis's family objected to reprinting the books due to the nudity (yeah, can you imagine!) That, however, may have recently changed and some or all of the books may now be available for purchase. I urge you to investigate this and add Loomis to your drawing instruction library.

2. Burne Hogarth:

Burne Hogarth's "Dynamic Anatomy."

Burne Hogarth's "Dynamic Figure Drawing."

Burne Hogarth's "Dynamic Hands."

Burne Hogarth's "Drawing the Human Head."

Burne Hogarth's "Dynamic Light and Shade."

In addition to Loomis, most of my understanding of how to draw the human head was learned from Burne Hogarth. Like Loomis, I have five Hogarth books in my collection; there was a sixth (Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery) but I found it surprisingly unhelpful and convoluted that I got rid of it. Admittedly, I don't find the Light and Shade book helpful either and I may not keep it much longer.

Having said that, I've found the remaining four Hogarth books helpful. The common criticism of Hogarth is that his drawings show all of the muscles contracting at the same time thereby giving a distorted view of the figure. I understand that criticism but from a novice's learning perspective, seeing all of the muscles bulging can help in understanding their locations and functions, like looking at a bodybuilding magazine. In addition to his drawings and diagrams was his useful textual instruction. Hogarth explained things clearly and was essential to helping me learn the various bodily proportions.

If you want to explore Hogarth, consider the head, anatomy and figure drawing books in particular.

3. Glenn Vilppu:

Glenn Vilppu is essential for the beginner. He starts you "easy" with drawing basic forms—spheres, cubes and cylinders. I initially thought those lessons were too rudimentary and I didn't give them the proper attention. I was SO wrong! I learned that EVERYTHING we draw is essentially a sphere, cube, cylinder, cone or a combination of those forms. EVERYTHING. If you can draw those forms, you can literally draw anything.

Vilppu's drawing manual also starts with gesture drawing and explains why it's an essential skill. All of the lessons are clearly explained and accompanied with beautiful examples of his own work.

Do yourself a favor a get a copy of Vilppu's drawing manual. If you follow his instruction, you'll see an improvement in your work in a few weeks.

4. Famous Artists Course:

I pity the fool who dismisses the Famous Artists Course lessons as "old-fashioned." Drawing principles NEVER go out of style!

I discovered the FAC accidentally during a frenzied period of downloading any and every drawing instruction source I could find online. The Famous Artists School was (and is again) a correspondence course created in 1948 by a group of famous artists including Al Dorne and Norman Rockwell. The course is 24 lessons (the cartooning course is 12), designed so that you complete one lesson per week including the assignments. I got very lucky with these courses because I was able to download, for free, both the illustration and the cartooning courses in their entirety. They overlap slightly and both are jam-packed with clearly-explained, useful instruction.

It was through this course that I learned that there are standard types of folds, that they have names and occur under particular circumstances. None of that was in the Hogarth drapery book which is probably why I got rid of it. That's just one of too-many-to-name lessons in these courses.

Again, it's possible that the free downloads of these courses have been wiped from the internet because the school has become active again. But if you have a few hundred dollars and are dedicated to taking your drawing to the next level, I recommend investing in one or several of these courses. Keep in mind that I'm referring to the classic, 1950's course that was taught by some of the greatest illustrators of the day. If there's a modern course, I'd suggest reviewing it and researching the instructors before purchasing to ensure that you're getting the best quality.

5. Stan Prokopenko: Last but not by any means least…

Stan Prokopenko

I canNOT say enough great things about this guy!

A few years ago I was struggling to draw the head at different angles. I Googled "drawing head at angles" and the first link to come up was to Proko's (now old) site. What I discovered was THE clearest, most concise, most helpful explanation on how to draw the head at any angle THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN! EVER! THEN OR NOW! Thus began my platonic, drawing-fueled love affair with Proko.

Proko is not only an exceptional fine artist, he's a born instructor. After sampling all of his free instructional videos (which include generous amounts of humor!), I decided to pay for his figure drawing fundamentals course. It wasn't expensive and the investment paid off hugely. Every week Proko provided both standard and premium content that stepped the student from gesture to shading. Included were critiques and photo reference. Proko has the ability to distill each lesson down to the essentials in an accessible way.

So of course when Proko offered an anatomy course, I jumped on it! I was still struggling to get even the most basic handle on anatomy and I felt that if anyone could help me have a breakthrough, it'd be Proko. This course moves slower than the previous—the lessons aren't on a strict weekly schedule—but that seems necessary for the complexity of the subject and of the assignments. Now I don't feel so badly about not grasping anatomy after all of these years; it really isn't easy. I haven't been following the course as faithfully as the last since I'm working on improving other skills. But I download the lesson materials as soon as they're available and follow the activity on the Facebook group. Once the course is final, I'll dedicate time to it. From what I've seen of it so far, the modest investment I made is well worth it.

If you're struggling with ANY aspect of human figure drawing, do yourself a favor and go to Proko's site. Watch his videos and consider purchasing a course. I KNOW he'll help you draw better!

These five sources of drawing instruction, combined with daily practice (THE essential ingredient to improvement), are the reason I'm seeing an improvement in my drawing for the first time IN MY LIFE! I've been struggling FOR YEARS to gain basic skills and move to the next level. Only in the last two years have I genuinely improved and I have the instruction described above to thank for that improvement.