Character Lineup

From a character design assignment. I somewhat like it but I think it can be better, The two characters on the right need to be simplified, and the characters on the left need to be re-invented.

Keepin' it Old School

It's the Easter weekend break, I decided to take Friday off for some personal cartoon work, and it ends up being school related! GAWD...

This season is pretty demanding, The school workload and Canadian winter have pretty much stranded us to the light table for the past 3 months, But I'm often reminded of the good points to being here.

Among them is Johnny Williamson, The guy on the left. I haven't written about him yet, He's one of the best teacher's I've ever had, and probably ever will.
He's not only an excellent animator, He's a genuinely warm person, And he treats each and everyone of us on a personal level. Thats right, All 120+ of us! His ability to give is exceptional.

Another teacher I haven't yet written about is Scott Caple, He's one of the best draftsmen I've ever met, The past class he gave us a demonstration of how he goes about shading his layouts on a separate sheet of tracing paper, I learn a lot from seeing these folks draw!

There's 4 weeks till the end of the term, I'm looking forward to see my family again...There's light at the end of the carpal tunnel, And until then, I gotta go back to my homework.

Oh! Thanks to our pal Pete for coming to this week's cartoon night! We had a lot of fun listening to your so-called "useless trivia" while watching Tex Avery!

see ya later.

Cartoon Night...

...With classic film interludes

Tonight was the first screening,
I shared my favorite Clampett cartoons: The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, Tortoise Wins By A Hare, Tale of Two Kitties, Russian Rhapsody, Draftee Daffey, Baby Bottleneck and others, we wrapped it up with Coal Black, and had a load of laughs! Thanks for comin' guys.

This is an open screening, so everybody at Sheridan is invited: Wednesdays 8-10 (ish) B125.
...I know how tight school is now, that's why I started a fun night!

Plan B

Hey folks, I don't have the license from Dreamworks to sell these (even though I'm convinced they would sell like hotcakes) so I'm gonna resort to plan B and give my pals a plug:

Nick Thornborrow's cool grad film The Foolish Bet is available on-line on his blog! Mitch Kennedy and I had a blast assisting him on the film.

Alessandro Piedimonte: check out the day to day postings of a modern day renaissance artist!

Seo Kim has a very unique style and natural ability, She's currently in first year of Sheridan's animation program, I'm learning a lot from seeing her draw.

Spread the Love

And you'll be free

When Sobchaks attack

Mouth sync
Uploaded by toonamir

Human lip sync
Uploaded by toonamir

Animated GIF with clearer image.

Rough animation: Mouth and body lip sync to John Goodman's dialogue in The Big Lebowski.I lined up the video twice during each file, because the new player tends to lag.
Mark Mayerson made some great specific suggestions, that helped improve the sync and animation, Thanks Mark!

Looking back at this drawing I made last June, There's some changes I'd make to it, like starting the mustache line from the corner of the nose and not from the nostril, which is how I drew him for animation.
A good way to figure out how to improve your drawings is called a "drawer test" as in shoving your drawing in the drawer, and looking back at it with fresh eyes, some details are hard to see while you're absorbed in the making of it.

In the video below, Joel and Ethan Coen discuss the making of The Big Lebowski, from the initial idea, to development for the screen. (Warning: Not for kiddies!)

The basic idea was conceived by taking the narrative style of Raymond Chandler (Author of The Big Sleep) and casting a main character who's least equipped to deal with it- for comical possibilities. I like their thinking! One of my favorite movies.

Influence on cartoons

When I watch films I don't just watch them for fun, I always try to learn from them...Well that's a half lie, because learning from them is also fun!
One of my favorite things to do is "dig in" to cartoon/film history, especially to look into the influence behind my favorites, It's rare, but I'm very pleased when I find it.

John K. has often noted Peter Lorre as one of his favorite actors, The first film I happened to see with him was "The Maltese Falcon", I caught it one night on TCM, and I was hooked from the first minute...That film is totally cut to the chase! They never waste any time! The characters are so strong, and the pace was so tight, it's as if John Huston had me hooked by a fishing rod and pulling me into the TV, I just couldn't sit back in my chair. The scene that most interested me happened in the climax.

When John K. took Steve, kali and I to dinner last summer, we talked about our favorite Film Noir, John's favorite is THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, I mentioned that mine was the MALTESE FALCON...and that I've been meaning to ask him: Near the end of the Film: Peter Lorre snaps at Sydney Greenstreet....and before I could finish my sentence, John completes it: "That's where Ren and Stimpy came from!"

The Maltese Stimpy
Uploaded by toonamir

In his commentary on His favorite cartoon "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" John notes a hilarious scene in it may as well be influenced by the same wonderful film

Wilmer the piggy
Uploaded by toonamir

I like surfing the internet because I often find material that both inspires me and teaches me, As I was putting together the link list, I found Rosemary Clooney's wonderful performance of the song "Blues in the Night"



This was a great discovery because I often heard references to this song in many of Bob Clampett's Cartoons, Notably the banned and brilliant "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs"

Coal Black: Blues in the Night
Uploaded by toonamir

If you'd like to see the complete cartoon in it's original release quality visit Steve at the ASIFA-Hollywood Archive


There's still a ton of stuff to discover, and Blogs can help us get there, so I hope folks such as Will Finn and Pete Emslie will continue commenting with "Useless Trivia"!

By the way, do you need a clue to find out which American cartoon the Miyazaki Lupin episode is based on? I'll give you a hint: It's a Fleischer cartoon from the 1940s.

More insturctional art from John

This post is for Hector:



These were drawn in summer 1999. John started each drawing with a quick silhouette using the side of his pencil (you can identify those lines as being wider and lighter) later adding construction and at last, detail. Showing me how simple objects like Jimmy's tie, and more complicated forms Like George's head can be done in construction. The drawings of Jimmy's hair were done to show how breaking forms down to simple construction can help us visualize them in different angles. I love the tangible quality of these drawings.

Season's greetings!

I started from drawing the sombrero boy, and as I started to have fun, got more ideas. Best Wishes everyone! And now for Canada's most popular Christmas song:

Caricatures

This is how cartoonists show mutual respect, welcome to our tribe.
This includes Mitch, who's always a part of our special klan no matter where in the world's he's goin'!

This Bites

Originally posted on Myspace, Here is a better scan.
Medium: watercolor

Happy Birthday Kaj Pindal!

In the picture above: Alessandro, Amir, Kaj and Ellen Bessen
In the picture below: Alessandro, Kaj and Annie Pindal

Yesterday was Kaj Pindal's 80th birthday tribute at the NFB store in downtown Toronto,
It was a wonderful celebration of Kaj's life and carreer so far, we got to see some of his NFB classics and rare footage of his brilliant animated films from Denmark.
My friend Alessandro Piedimonte contributed to it with very creative ideas: First, to give Kaj the caricature bust he had sculpted of him, and second a birthday card featuring a caricature by Pete Emslie, Alex asked me to help him with the text on the card, and for two weeks it was passed around the college for the students and teachers to sign.
Kaj was really moved, he appreciates creativty, just like Alessandro!

Thanks to Angela Piedimonte for taking the pictures!

Pete's expression assginment

Pete has provided us with models of his characters and assigned us to draw 4 distinctive expressions for each.


As usual, I started with getting the character on model with practice drawings.

Here they are...*drum roll*...

SCARED

SKEPTICAL

LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY

FLIRTATIOUS

I worked really hard on the top ones, they consist of several stages of roughs and cleanup, the latter was drawn once, all on one page, I guess it looks more spontaneous that way.

Tune in next week and see this guy in side splitting action.

FIN.

Baywolf

I went to my blog to see what was new and sank into a long depression when there was no update in site. Then it hit me...I'm the moderator. So I spent the rest of the afternoon coloring this drawing for posting. I drew it before Mayerson's class on Thursday, I haven't drawn anything purely for fun in a long time.
We actually got free tickets to see Baewoulf from one of our teachers, and I was about to go see it with Alex and King in Toronto, but I didn't want to miss the end of Pete's lecture.


The clean-up was done on tracing paper, which provides the creative texture for this scan, I decided not to remove the dirt, since I was going for the rough unshaven manly look, even though he's wearing a bra.

I used a limited pallete, for instance, Baywolf's toenails are the same color as his eyes. I learned a lot about using limited palletes from Nick Thornborrow, he did an excellent job color-styling his short "The Foolish Bet". Art students- I highly recommend apprenticing talented peers.

As for the tagline, I just merged a bunch of movies which I can't tell apart.

Caught on Camera: Pete Emslie Drawing

We've made a 10 minute video of Pete drawing and explaining his creative process

I convinced him that eager beavers world over can learn from his expertise, Nothing is more educational than seeing a pro at work!

Listen up, As Pete draws he explains his process in detail.
We're hosting it on both of our sites, click on the "Zoom" on the bar of the player to view in full sceen.

Video 1- Gesture and Construction

Video 2- Sculpting on paper

Video 3- Line Weight

Special thanks to Mitch Kennedy for his help and tripod!

Trick or Spam?

Late Halloween card, Drawn in Flash