| Quick-and-dirty animated GIF |
[Nov. 30th, 2009|06:11 am] |
I haven't animated in a while, so I wanted to get my bearings back:
Apologies for the slow framerate. |
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| New characters for the Fawkes/Chelsea comic |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|06:04 am] |
I'm currently in the middle of reworking my long-forgotten Chelsea comic. Chelsea doesn't really work as a main character, and I want to avoid falling into the "predator vs. prey" rut. I'm thinking about making Fawkes the "protagonist" of the series, and having different supporting characters (including Chelsea) interact with/pester him.
As for the characters above, regulars of my site (both of you) might remember them from this year-old comic. I'm going to give them larger roles in the new series, mostly as Chelsea's friends. The skunk's name is Melvin O'Darrus* and the rabbit is Stephanie. More info on them in a future post.
*Melvin O'Darrus -> Mel O'Darrus -> Malodorous. Har har. |
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| Characters that didn't make it: Bucky |
[Aug. 24th, 2009|07:34 am] |
Bucky is essentialy a parody of late-80s/early-90s Saturday morning cartoons. He loves skateboarding, pizza, video games, and hanging out with his ethnically diverse friends. He's endlessly cheerful, even when giving the kids safety tips and telling them to "say no to drugs". He lives in a world where every color begins with the word "neon". If he had a cartoon series, all the animation would be done by Glenn Kennedy's studio.
As you can see, Duncan owes a lot of his character design to Bucky (small pear-shaped body, stringy arms and legs with large hands and feet, thin floppy ears, tufted red hair, yellowish fur color, etc.). |
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| Wherein I color stuff from my sketchbook |
[Aug. 17th, 2009|07:50 am] |
Some atrociously off-model fan art of a Japanese kids' cartoon:
And three characters I haven't drawn in ages:
Zorori, Ishishi, and Noshishi are © Yutaka Hara
Guava, Mango, and Banana are by me |
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| Duncan & Kelly - The New and Improved Backstory |
[Aug. 10th, 2009|06:31 am] |
 
I've finally come up with a satisfactory backstory for Duncan & Kelly, and as you can see, I've made a few alterations with their clothing (Kelly now wears a belt, while Duncan now wears pants and a collared shirt).
Duncan Dogbury works as a page at a city library. He likes his job, but he's not very good a physical work. Pressured by his superiors, Duncan decides to get in shape.
He visits a fitness center, where he meets Kelly Catelli, who works there as an instructor. Kelly tries to teach Duncan the basics of getting in shape, but he can never get the hang of it. But that doesn't matter to him; he soon falls in love with Kelly, and his new-found exuberance helps improve his work performance at the library. He makes regular stops at the fitness center to visit her, and eventually works up the nerve to ask her out. And the rest is history. |
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| MS Paint sketches |
[Aug. 3rd, 2009|07:36 am] |
I'm taking a break from comics, so I'll be posting sketches/filler material for a while. I'm also working on a better backstory for Duncan & Kelly, which will probably be the subject of my next Monday update (because honestly, "THEY JUST BUMPED INTO EACH OTHER" is stupid as hell).
Dox Through Time
Of all the characters I'm drawing now, Dox is definitely the oldest. His earliest incarnation was an extra in a series of stupid comics my brother and I drew when we were kids (the less said about them, the better).
The 2001 version (pre-September 11) was part of the horrible political cartoons I drew back then...he would usually be in the corner making some snide remark, like Oliphant's penguin or "Kelly"'s self-insert from The Onion's political cartoons. Needless to say, he didn't last long and I eventually dropped him from my political cartoons all together.
The 2003 and 2005 versions are pretty similar in their blandness--although the '03 one had a stupider haircut and khaki shorts that were more compicated to draw. The 2005 version became a cartoony character, and the butt of several visual gags.
And that leads us to the Dox we all know today. I dropped the large, overlapping eyes in favor of beadier ones (I already have several characters with big eyes, like Duncan, Kelly, Chelsea, etc.), and gave him a more dachshund-ish muzzle and ears.
Gag Drawing: Hanna-Barbera Duncan
Can you tell I've been watching too much Boomerang lately?
One of the fun things about watching old HB shorts (actually, the ONLY fun thing), is trying to figure out which classic animator worked on what shorts. Ken Muse's HB animation is probably the easiest to spot: every character has an "S" shape for a cheek, a top row of teeth with no lines of separation between teeth, crows feet wrinkles whenever he/she closes his/her eyes, etc.
Identifying animators in a HB short may be fun, but I do not recommend it as an animation guide. If you're an aspiring animator and you want to study Ken Muse, it's better to watch his Tom & Jerrys than his Pixie and Dixies. |
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| Fixed June 8 Dox 'nd George comic |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|10:50 pm] |
First I had to fix the text, then I had to resize the picture...Yikes. Hopefully it won't happen again.
Hey remember back on New Year's when I had high hopes for channels like Cartoon Network to change their crummy ways? Boy, was I dumb. |
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