I've been focusing a lot on human characters lately, 
I think what connects people with animals is that they show pure emotion. Since they have no sense of consciousness, they don't disguise their reaction to suit the situation. That's the tough part about seeing a hurt animal, their expression of pain is pure, they never "hold it in".
Drew this a year ago for my Sheridan portfolio, The pose is taken from Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire. I've posted other drawings of the Frobster character in the August archives.
Kaj Pindal and yours truly
Screenshots from "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" Animation by Kaj, Direction by Derek Lamb.
Last week, we were assigned to copy frames from “North by Northwest” held on screen for 15 seconds. These drawings are taken from the climax of the “Crop sprayin’ where there ain’t no crops” airplane chase, Cary Grant throws himself in front of a truck to escape the airplane. I like the teacher’s note on the middle frame. Made me chuckle. I got an A.
Last Thursday we had a visit from
He animated “Tales of Rat Fink” all by himself. I haven’t heard of the film before,
but now that I’ve seen it, I highly recommend it.
“Tales of Rat Fink” is a part animated/ part live-action biography of pop culture icon Ed Roth.
Ed isn’t a household name, but his influence is phenomenal.
He revolutionized the world of Hot Rods and created the graphic T-shirt (“before him they were just underwear!”) He’s best known for designing the character of Rat Fink: A grotesque monster resembling Mickey Mouse… after a nuclear shower.
This is a classic fun-to-learn documentary, giving the deserving recognition to this pop culture icon. If your stuck for inspiration, or just looking for movie night ideas, think fink!
Photo courtesy of Reg Hartt
I received my first bill from Canadian phone company Fido (which uses dogs for it's ad campaigns) and I thought I’d give their slogan a bit of a twist.
Yankee Irving, now re-titled “Everyone’s Hero” is a project I worked on during summer 2004. My job was to take original character design sketches, and map them out for 3d modeling. I drew diagrams called “orthographic character views”, “orthographies” for short. Orthographies are a spread of a single character in front, side and back views, drawn in a position suitable for rigging. It’s kind of like a model sheet/character roatation, but more strict and technical. Our team did orthographies for every character in the film, the 3d modelers used them as a guide for building the characters you see on screen.
I designed these characters for my Sheridan portfolio. I was always inspired by how the Looney Tunes directors used animals for caricature. My favorites are Babbit and Catstello in Bob Clampett's A Tale of Two Kitties, and The HoneyMousers by Bob McKimson. Frobster is based on Alfred Hitchcock, Marlon Brando and Sydney Greenstreet.
They added something new, though: clips from classic Tex Avery cartoons played to the tunes of Sixpence’s Kiss Me, during the main characters’ first kiss...
Tex Avery is known for his outstanding sense of humor, but I don't think he'd take it lightly.
"If you think about leaving me like this, you can look for a new job, START INKING!"
Inspired by Brock's excellent ''Columbo'' post, I attempted at another TV detective from the same era.
No comic artist rules gestalt like Harvey Kurtzman, What is gestalt? It’s a German word, referring to how people look at things. There’s a whole bunch of methods to make a page easy to read, and draw attention.
This panel is a great example. At first glance it looks too detailed, but at second glance, you get to follow the planned rhythm, and it gets very easy and fun to read. First you focus on the title “Bat Boy and Rubin” and then the two figures at the center. They’re surrounded by white (reflecting light) and drawn in black (absorbing light). The ass kicked villains follow a curve indicated by bat-boy’s punch swing. At the end, all links us to Wally Wood’s signature, at the bottom right part of the image. Wally’s done some of his most amazing work in the early days of Mad Magazine, the days when founder Harvey Kurtzman, drew “blueprints” or rough layouts, for each artist to follow.
Here’s another treat, “Little Annie Fanny” is a comic Kurtzman did for Hugh Hefner, With Mad colleagues Will Elder, Jack Davis and Superman creators Siegel and Shuster. Before Playboy, Hefner was trying out as a cartoonist too. It was his idea to have it fully painted. And by the way, Al Jaffee has a famous take on Playboy’s “Centerfold”. Color prints were very costly at the time, and since mad always “worked in the opposite direction” the “Fold In” was born!
