More Enchanted Dolls

This is the second post I've dedicated to Marina Bychkova as she continues to produce some of the most intriguing and beautiful images using her truly enchanted dolls.  Not only are these intricately fashioned figurines that can assume almost any pose but Marina also has an eye for opulent detail making her photography a sophisticated tribute to her creations.  I believe these little beauties would be magical animated in stop-motion.  I'll re-post the Enchanted Dolls site here: http://www.enchanteddoll.com/galleries/index.html

Hank Ketcham Works

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=3175
 Above is a link to the second part on Hank Ketcham's, The Merchant of Dennis the Menace: The Autobiography of Hank Ketcham, posted by Michael Sporn. This part is devoted to Hank's work at Disney. Not only is it a great overview of the carefree and lighthearted early days enjoyed at the studio, it also sheds light on the transition after the strike and how that carefree atmosphere had to vanish under the time clocks and union rules.

 But what I found interesting are the panels I'm posting here showing how Ketcham did his Dennis the Menace strip. His days as an animator seemed to have influenced his choice of using a light-table and working with tracing tissue. I liked that he uses more erasers than pencils, (I struggle with drawing and can empathize), and I like that he mentions what pen and brush he uses. I used to think it was all done with a brush.

Dennis the Menace never had that deep social commentary or melancholy edge that resonated with me like Charles Schulz's Peanuts did. But the graphic artistry and dynamic poses in Denise always thrilled me. I love that missing line that still defined the shape because of all the supporting lines around it. The only example I could find of this is the drawing of Dennis popping out of the TV. Notice the line on the other side of his neck is missing? Ketcham used this graphic device on Dennis' pants where one leg overlapped and many other areas to great effect.

Ketcham remains in my pantheon of great comic artists like Al Capp, Walt Kelly, and Gus Arriloa.

UPDATE:  I did mange to find another example of a line dropping out and the shape still defined by surrounding lines in that last illustration explaining his process.  If you look closely at the jar holding his pens and brushes, the line defining it drops out where it touches the corner of the table top.  Same with the water jar ending before it touches the eraser.  Cool, huh?

Click on image to enlarge

Delano's Painted Circus

This is my latest personal film once again motivated by a wonderful soundtrack.  I had many ambitious ideas for this film, but as you can see I've relied on long camera moves and repeat cycles. It seemed to fit the hypnotic dream mood I wanted to create.  Truthfully the whole thing was a way of using the multiplane feature in the Toon Boom Animate program and the slow movement through planes of paint worked well with it.

This film is also very stylistically different for me, (hopefully all my films have a different feel) .  I've never painted using a palette knife before but my mother-in-law was a pretty gifted artist and we own many of her paintings so I had a ready reference for the look.

Another reason for the palette knife look is I could achieve it digitally.  In the olden days I would have had to paint on glass and space the planes on some kind of track.  There would have been problems with thick paint drying too slowly and lights glaring off the glass sheets, and finding some way to calibrate a camera to move through the scenes.  It made me appreciate the trouble the Disney guys had to go through to film their incredible mulitplane shots.  Speaking of Disney, the lighting effect of the lion was taken from the Pink Elephant on Parade sequence in Dumbo.

Little Nemo's Slumberland and Coney Island

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0nsK1vitMg&feature=related

Above is a link to a fascinating documentary on Coney Island.  Beautiful and horrifying, the story of Luna Park and Dreamland was the birthing place for Little Nemo's adventures in Slumberland, Winsor McCay's fabulous comic strip which ran from 1905 to 1925.  All the lavish architecture and circus atmosphere of  Slumberland was realized in these two parks that thrilled and terrified visitors through out the early 1900's.

If you are unfamiliar with either Coney Island or Little Nemo, they are well worth looking into.  Both are the stuff of dreams.

Halloween Special

Okay the date has been announced for the mystery project I posted about earlier on this blog.  The background design is very nicely done and some use the mutliplane feature to stunning effect.  I enjoyed animating on it and hope you check out "Hoops & Yoyo's Haunted Halloween"!

‘HOOPS&YOYO’S HAUNTED HALLOWEEN’
Hallmark Channel Original Animated Special
Friday, October 26 (7p.m. ET/PT, 6C)

Tiny Art

Sometimes I see things that blow my mind. Here is a guy, Willard Wigan, who sculpts pieces so small they fit into the eye of a needle. He sells these things for unbelievable amounts of money. What blows my mind is that he can do it and that people have the money to buy them.
Check out his gallery and the videos on him here:

 http://www.willard-wigan.com/

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=willard%20wigan%20mbe

Researching a Flim

I've mentioned how difficult it used to be to gather reference material for a project.  I recall my mother, who was a commercial artist as well as doing fine arts, had big boxes of clip-art that she tore from magazines all broken out into categories like "Cars", or "Cats".  Then inside that would be sub-categories like "Cats Running" or "Cars from 1950".  We had a whole row of our home library, (Yes, it used to be common to have a wall of book-shelves in your home), devoted to National Geographic and other books on travel and other countries.  We had the Encyclopedia from A to Z for more research.  I say all this to contrast how easy it is to do a browser search and find anything today on the internet.

Here are a few of the many interesting pictures I found on the internet to inspire my personal film about a magical circus. 

Latest Project

I've been very happily working on a new Holiday Special TV project that's wrapping up soon using Harmony by Toon Boom.  Harmony is pretty amazing and I may have to upgrade my home system from Toon Boom Animate to Toon Boom Pro  because it has many of the same features.  That's how they get you, once you've tried it, you need it.

So what is this project all about?  Gee, I wish I could say but I'm sworn to secrecy until it airs.  If only I could leave a hint...

Personal Film

I haven't had much time to work on my circus film, but I try and grab moments here and there.  This baboon  is not cleaned up or detailed and only the under sketch of what will be a painting done in ArtRage.   I will save the paintings as PNG files and bring them into Toon Boom along with a mulitiplane  background later.

The Zen of Animation and Other Things

I've commented on this site before about how the digital age has changed animation and how some of the procedures have taken away the zen moments; those times when you are mindlessly doing a chore like painting cels, and you find yourself happy and content.  Well, I've been getting up early in the mornings to work on my personal film and I've discovered while re-registering some drawings for a sequence that I was in the moment and at peace.  I've also found pleasure in gathering research for my circus film where once it meant collecting tons of books from libraries and spending lots of cash at bookstores.  Now the net provides me with endless information and sparks ideas from the most diverse places.  I'm happy to be in this moment of time and amazed at how wonderful it really is.  There are way too many images to share but here's one I really like.

Before and After

A friend wanted me to restore a picture for his mother.  I guess that's them at the lake.  I told him there may not be enough information left but I would try my best.  It looks like it's a foggy day but it is better than it was.

Congratulations Bent

The stop-motion special "Jingle All the Way" was accepted into the 2012 Annecy Festival lineup. Congratulations to director Chel White and the team at Bent Image Lab. This was a fun project to work on and another is planned for the Hallmark Channel with pre-production happening now.

3D Movies on Youtube

 I've just discovered that you can watch 3D on Youtube.  Look for the red 3D and by clicking on it Options will open allowing you to watch in anaglyph (red and blue glasses) or other settings.  I like the 'No glasses' approach of free-viewing where you cross your eyes and focus on the image that forms in the middle but many don't.

 I may want to start back into my 3D Flash stuff again.

Look for red 3D

Merry Christmas!

Click on image to enlarge

Reclining Nude Anaglyph

This is the latest of my life drawing conversions. I've done a free-view style of this too but you'll need the colored glasses to see this one.

(click image to enlarge)

Fab Four

I can't believe I haven't posted my completed nod to the greatest band in the world. I had offered posters and Tee-shirts and all kind of products with this image on my Zazzle store but they made me take it off. It's kind of funny because there are all kind of Disney imagery on there and I doubt the sellers are given permission to use them.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

(Caricature of The Beatles by Joel Brinkerhoff)

Jingle

Here's the promo for the Holiday Special I did some animation for. Don't confuse this with the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie of the same name!

Jingle All the Way from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

Anaglyph and Free-view

Its been awhile since I've done any stereo conversions so I dug up an old life drawing of mine and gave it a whack. If you have the blue and red lens glasses, you're all set. If you don't the double image is a free-view style that can be seen in 3D by crossing your eyes and focusing on the image that forms in the middle.

(Click images to enlarge)

Dark Horse

Still learning digital paint. I'm finding caricature to be pretty tough. I think it's become bad portraiture. I don't know.

(Caricature of George Harrison by Joel Brinkerhoff)

"La Joie de Vivre" influencing "Fantasia"

It’s never been mentioned in anything I’ve read about the making of Disney’s “Fantasia”, but was this film influential in any degree? Heinrich Kley is clearly an inspiration and only recently being acknowledged but what about “La Joie de Vivre” (The Joy of Living), by Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin?

Could this 1934 film have inspired the Tchaikovsky Nutcracker sequences of the 1940 film “Fantasia”? To me the sprites of “La Joie de Vivre” looks strikingly like the fairies in Fantasia with their long legs and relationship to nature. The nude bathing scene in particular has all the proportional designs of the fairies and echoes of the ice fairy can be seen in their involvement with the lake. The sprites of “La Joie de Vivre” make flowers grow and dance among leaves. They also disguise themselves as flowers and the Disney’s fairies are introduced emerging from flowers, and have similar interactions with nature. There seems to be many parallel elements to me.

I see “La Joie de Vivre” as a viable springboard to “Fantasia”. It also reminds me graphically of what Lionel Feiniger, (“The Kin-der-kids”) might have looked like animated. I also see some “Yellow Submarine” too.

(Character designs for Fantasia)

Boris Goodenough

I did a preliminary sketch that was all scratchy and some friends like the quality. I worked over the top a little and decided to leave it loose and that this was good enough.

(Caricature of Boris Karloff by Joel Brinkerhoff)

Unka Walt

This came out creepier than Walt ever was.

(digital caricature of Walt Disney by Joel Brinkerhoff)

Mellow Costello

Caricature of Elvis Costello

(digital painting started in Corel Painter and finished in Photoshop by Joel Brinkerhoff)

All You Need is Photoshop

Okay, I've played with Corel Painter and I'm having the same trouble blending as I do with ArtRage. It just seems to swirl the colors around in a very uncontrollable manner. I know many people doing great things with both programs so it must be me. I will need to pick their brains for the proper technique. For Now I will stick with Photoshop.

Digital painting of John Lennon by Joel Brinkerhoff (Click image to enlarge_

Time to look into Corel?

I did this caricature of Tom Waits in Photoshop which doesn't have the control I'm looking for in digital painting. I have ArtRage and have seen impressive work but I just can't use it for blending. I've known about Corel Painter for sometime but only now found I own a copy that came with my Wacom tablet! Time to start playing with Corel Painter.

(click image to enlarge)

Digital VS Old School

I've been exploring the paperless digital graphic art alternatives to old school methodology and am still on the fence about the whole phenomenon. The convenience and flexibility of digital graphics is something I greatly treasure and will probably always rely on for exploratory design work. The actual execution of finished art is something I'm wrestling with. I seem to spend more time digitally trying to mimic what is pretty easy with the old fashioned pen or brush.

The example illustrations shown here are how fluid and varied Jack Davis was able to get his lines simply using a brush. The other two color drawings are mine using a digital paint program and I am not at all satisfied with the line quality. I didn't care much because they were exploratory drawings but I could not let these go as finished art and would have spent a lot of time tweaking line thicknesses.

I work with incredibility talented illustrators and they seem to have adapted pretty well to the digital revolution. I do see them spending a great deal of time laying down and deleting a single stroke until there is something they like. Would it be more efficient working old school? We still need to get that image digitized to be usable today though, don't we?

Brush work by Jack Davis (click on image to enlarge)

Digital designs by Joel Brinkerhoff (click on image to enlarge)

Trot Chart

I made this chart and movie to help me figure out which leg was passing on which side for a show that involved a little dog as its hero. This was really pretty helpful.

Nine frame trot shot on two's. Click on image to enlarge

Old School...

I came across this bit of video documenting the making of Canadian Broadcastings 1978 production, "The Devil and Daniel Mouse". It's a pretty representative example of how animation was done and the incredible amount of work involved.

Of course all that has changed with the digital age. I think there is better control and less waste today but the Zen like quality of old school cartooning is missing.

Back to Stop Motion

Okay, Hallmark has given an air date: Friday, November 25 (8 p.m. ET/PT, 7C) so I can talk about this now.

It's been awhile since I have posted anything about anything. Partly because I took a much needed vacation, and mostly because upon my returned I took an offer to do some stop motion again for a Holiday Special called "Jingle All the Way".
It's very cute and has a lot of heart and I hope it will become a perennial favorite like "Rudolph" but, oh my, I forgot how physical stop motion animation is, and I've been just too tired to do anything else afterward.

The first week had me climbing onto a table top to reach the characters for every frame, (I think it was a shot well over 100 frames too), and the first night I has a massive leg cramp that made me stifle crying out and waking my wife. I've lost five pounds so that's not bad, but I've also lost sleep worrying about how to get shots done.

I've had a chance to work with some new technology that wasn't around before called Dragon Stop Motion which is pretty cool and allows you to plot out your shots with more accuracy. I also have renewed admiration for all the talent involved in a stop-mo production. It takes a fairly sizable crew to light and build sets and keep the puppets in good repair.

It's also humbling to work with the other animators. They're all so talented and young. I asked one of the crew if they had worked on "The PJs" which was a stop motion TV series that ran three seasons. She laughed and said she hadn't been born yet! Man, I'm old.

I'm mostly looking forward to watching this with my grand-kids, (yes, I said grand-kids. I told you I was old.). I also want one of those Jingle Xmas ornaments for my tree!

Hallmarks Jingle Xmas Ornament

The Hallmark Book the Special is based on.


Read more about the production here:http://tv.broadwayworld.com/article/Jingle-All-The-Way-Premires-Exclusively-On-Hallmark-1125-20110727

Northwest Animation Festival

My film "Pop Goes The Weasel" will be showing opening night, Friday, June 3, as part of the Northwest Animation Festival. Please come see it if you're in the area.

Piggy Bank

I'm doing a ceramic bank for a friend. This is the design I came up with. Maybe I'll post the finished sculpt later.

Click on image to enlarge

Pop Goes The Weasel

 This is the finished short done on my home setup.  It's entirely digital and would have been very expensive to do using the traditional way with paper and camera.  I had some difficulties technically but the flexibility really payed off when I thought I was done and noticed Weasel was misspelled!  Going back into the file and rearranging the letters fixed the whole title card without re-shooting.

Just found out 'weasle' is an Old English spelling and would have been okay. Geez... 

Stereoscopic Paintings

Now for some more shameless self promotion!

Clicking the title will take you to an inexpensive paperback collection of  of my stereoscopic paintings that I'm self publishing on Lulu.

These are striking colorful stereoscopic nudes done in free-view style paintings that can be seen in 3D without glasses or special equipment.
Or paste link into browser: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/stereoscopic-paintings/15474411

The Metaphor

It’s been awhile since I’ve mentioned my personal film.  Part of the trouble with a personal film is finding the time to do them, but some people knit or play golf, and I make stupid things like paint or do a short film.  It’s a ‘short’ short film with the title running almost half the screen time but it’s still taking quite some time to do, partly because it’s already done in my head, (and looks so much better in there too).

The film came fully realized as I was listening to royalty free music.  Even then I knew it was a metaphor and would be familiar to almost everyone.  My inner-eye vision of the style and action for the film were dated clichés and the ending a natural conclusion to this line of thought.  It seemed as though this cartoon had been made already, so why do it?  Because it’s the kind of thing I don’t get to do in my day-to-day work as an animator.  I don’t get to draw and I don’t get to do pantomime. That’s enough reason for me and it keeps me from getting into trouble elsewhere.

I’ve got five or six more shots till the startling profound ending.  To Be Continued!...

Laying Pipeline

I am thrilled and challenged by the reality of having essentially a virtual animation studio in my home.  It’s been a cyclical journey for me trying to reach the look of ‘Golden Age’ animation. 

Having worked in traditional animation during the late 70s the amount of resources needed was considerable starting with reams and reams of punched paper.   Factor in the acetate cells, paints, camera, and an area to house all this including workspace and I can’t even imagine the expense.   

Now after 30 some years I have all the tools at my fingertips and no trees were harmed or houses mortgaged.

I'm in the process of making a pipeline for a short personal film and have decided to use an 8GB thumb drive to transfer project files between platforms; a PC with Wacom Tablet, and a Tablet PC with Wacom technology for cleanup animation.   I’m using Flash for quick and dirty animatics and color studies, ArtRage to do final backgrounds and Toon Boom Animate for principal animation.

I did a combination storyboard\animatic that was broken out into scenes using QuickTime Pro so I know my shot lengths and the sound tracks were extracted from each scene.  I made folders for each scene that contains the scene animatic QT, audio file, ArtRage BG file, and ToonBoom work files so everything needed is in it’s own folder.

Here’s a low resolution scene showing the steps from storyboard, to layout and pencil test, to finished color.

What is so great about this is I can go in and make changes even after the fact without having to re-shoot or use more materials!

If you want to do animation, there really isn't any excuse not to now that it's all in the box.

Poor Mans Cintiq

I've been looking for a way of doing paperless animation and have settled on a software.  Now, the difficulty has been drawing with a Wacom Tablet which is okay for a lot of things but not precises enough to do good in-betweens and clean-up.  Everyone uses the 21" Cintiq for this which allows you to draw directly on the screen.  They also make a 12" but the expense has been too much to justify.  After checking into tablet PCs I found the LE1600 by Motion Computing but the cost was still pretty high.  Now after a few years I found a used one on Amazon and  got it for almost nothing!  It has Wacom technology like the Cintiq and is also another computer as opposed to just being a drawing screen!  I've got just the project to run through it!

Hunting Weasels...

Doing some design work for a personal project.

Click on images to enlarge

Animators, Bookmark This Site!

Péter Nagy's new website the Living Lines Library has compiled pencil tests, model sheets, and other things hand drawn related and placed them on an organized site for your enjoyment. The way things are laid out you can easily find what you are looking for.

Click on the title or past this link to find it: http://livlily.blogspot.com/

Retouching Family #2

A friend of the family saw my restoration of our kids done with Photoshop, (it's an earlier posting on this site somewhere), and asked if I could lighten a picture of their grandmother? All they had was a copy of an old newspaper clipping. It was pretty streaky with a herringbone caused by the Benday dot patterns newspapers use to get halftones. There was something that looked like a feather in her hair but it maybe part of that herringbone effect so I downplayed it and left it out. The whole thing should have been repainted but I didn't have the time and the end result is a little ghostly. It's not my best work and I haven't heard back from them yet but it was free so they can't complain too much.

Click on image to enlarge

Balaam and His Donkey

I wanted to do a contemporary retelling of Bible stories to make them relevant today. Something layered that could be enjoyed by a wide range of ages like "Bullwinkle" which worked as satire for the adults and entertainment for youngsters. The style could be easy to replicate using Flash and driven by dialogue allowing the reuse of artwork. I thought it was something I could do alone without help

I can't say this was successful, and I think the poor production qualities like sound and music, plus the recycling of artwork, and the length of the story worked against me.

Anyway here it is for better or worse. And yes, I did all the voices too.