In Which My Train of Thought Waltzes Down the Produce Aisle

I have had some very silly songs stuck in my head for the last 3 days.  But I'll get to that in the earworm section.  First...



Second...

Sketch of Cll'Li jogging along.  Color inverted in Photoshop because it looks cooler that way.

...which I am currently coloring by trying out Photoshop's various brushes.  I'll post when I'm done.

And Finally...

Earworm of the Day: Oh No What We Gonna Do? from the VeggieTales episode "Where's God When I'm S-scared?".  I recommend reading the lyrics too.  I was 3 years old when this came out and my Grandma worked at Berean Book Store, so yeah, our VHS collection was 40% VeggieTales growing up.

Looking at old VeggieTales from a distance of 19 years and a B.A. in Animation?  Well, now I get all the jokes.  And the CG is on par with a 1st year animation class, but the character design and acting (asymmetrical eyes, great voice acting) is very professional, and also just plain hilarious.  I mean, come on, cucumber singing about his lips, peas parodying Monty Python?  How can you not laugh?

--End of Babble--

Coloring Fiend

So yeah, spent most of the day coloring.  Granted, I was coloring original drawings inside a computer for future use in my portfolio; so let it be known that I was in no way slacking off.

I will not be posting progress-reports on the aforementioned colorings, but for the sake of fun, here are the original starting-sketches of both:

EY Dragon with her sketchbook and hamster buddy, Dennis.

Marvin: age 11,  17, and 100

The Marvin 11-17-100, as I've dubbed it, one is just a piece I thought would be cool, but the EY Dragon Portrait is going to become my profile image on deviantART.  I will post the images here when finished.

Which brings me to my next topic.  I decided to color EY Dragon on one of the school's cintiqs, because I'm not going to be using the image for monetary gain, and cintiqs are fun to draw on.  Being summer, the school recently updated the software in the labs, which I kinda knew, but didn't really give much thought to.

Then I opened Photoshop.

No joke, sat there for a solid minute staring at the screen and vaguely wondering why Maya had come up before finally exclaiming, "OMG!  Photoshop's gone graphite!!!"

Yes, Adobe CS6 is now officially in-style with all the other creative software.  The Photoshop interface now matches AfterEffects, Maya, Z-brush, Final Cut, and this blog.  Everything is graphite.  Luckily all the buttons seem to be in their usual places and everything still works the same as it always did.  No surprises 

Except AfterEffects.  It's got selection-preview now.  Adobe developers, you rock!  :D

Earworm of the Day: Watercolour by Pendulum.  Fun fact, this is what I was listening to when I drew the Marvin 11-17-100 sketch.

"Facing the Doppelganger": A Process

Hold on to your hats.  This will be a long entry, but there will be lots and lots of pictures.

So Wednesday I got tired of not having a proper Facebook cover image.  I'd originally planned for a character collage, but it ran into some sizing problems and... in a nutshell, it's been languishing in half-doneness for a few months.

So because I felt like drawing, and inspired partly by the thunderstorm raging outside, I sat down at 9 o'clock at night and drew this:

From left to right: Leah, Beth, Marvin, and an evil shape-shifting space-alien.

The blue colored pencil is a new technique I've been trying lately thanks to a step-by-step process by Kazu Kibuishi who makes the comic Copper.  Here I wasn't utilizing the tactic of inking then removing the blue in photoshop for clean lines.  In fact, I didn't want any outlines at all for this one.  But sketching in good-quality colored pencil is much more fun for me than drawing with graphite, the wax goes down with less effort making a more readable drawing.

I scanned the above image the next morning at about 9am, then brought it into Photoshop.  Another thing I've recently learned is always start with a background color.  I chose a gradient to help my brain wrap around the light and shadows.

Background gradient and original sketch set to "Multiply".

Then I colored the base colors of all the characters and their accessories.  It must be noted this is the first time I've colored my alien character Marvin in his "Earthling" disguise (his fur is dyed black.  His natural fur-color is a garish shade of spring green.)

Character base colors.

Next I added the road surface they're standing on.  I used a speckled brush set to a really big setting to give it some texture.

Road

Then I turned my attention to the background.  I dislike drawing backgrounds, so I try to keep things simple.  For this one I needed a cornfield though, because the scene is part of a larger story and that story happens to be set in the middle of farmland.  But this is a character-focused drawing, so I decided to go easy on myself.

First, I made a corn plant:

Just realized I forgot the ears.  It's corn, trust me.

Then, I duplicated the corn.

Corn.

Then I made three more layers of corn, using rudimentary linear perspective to get the sense of rows (I did use a reference image to estimate the spacing.  I'm from the country, but I'm not that country.)  For each layer I used the Levels tool to make the corn slightly darker and the "Gaussian Blur" filter with a slightly higher setting each time to create depth.

Corn rows.

At this point, I can't remember what order I did things, but the background went something like this:

Sky with stars made using the "star" brush.

Soil gradient, layered under road and sky.

Then I stared adding shadows, which I always make with a layer set to "multiply" and a brush color set to 50% grey, then change layer opacity to taste.  Added to the corn, it made a more dramatic effect.

Shadows added to corn.

Then there was the matter of the distant hedge-rows and horizon line.  This was simply a large speckle brush of a dark green color.  I've hidden the corn so you can see it better.

The name of the game is "Suggestion", not "Detail".

With the background elements in place, I duplicated the original background gradient and brought it between the background and the characters, setting it to "Overlay".  This gives the whole thing a nice dramatic tint.  Note that the characters are on top of the tinting layer, so they are unaffected.

Drama!

Finally, I focus on the characters.  I added the shadows in three passes for each character, that's 12 layers total just for the character's shadows in this piece.  Again, this was done with a layer set to "multiply" and a grey brush color.  The benefit to all these layers is control.  If I change my mind and want a shadow darker or lighter, all I have to do is move a dial rather than erase and re-draw.  By having shadows on a separate layer from the base color, I can lock the base color layer and play with the shadows freely without fear of messing up my earlier steps.

Grounding shadows added.

Character shadows, first pass (aka the lightest shadows)

Character shadow second-pass (darkest shadows) and extra line-work added like mouths and pockets.

Next are the highlights, which I do with a layer set to "Screen" (sort-of the opposite of "Multiply") and a brush set to the background color that I'll be highlighting.  I always mess with the opacity on the highlight layers.  This is where an object becomes either matte or shiny, which was essential for the hairless, putty-like shape-shifter alien.  Other places, like Beth's green shirt have no highlights at all.  The difference is hardly noticeable, but a good highlight will bring out the shadows more and show texture.

Highlights added.

And if you ever wanted to make a transparent character, here's the part where you hide the base color and get something like this:

I know there's a Terminator reference here, but I never watched Terminator.

Last, I added some atmospheric effects.  A yellow-to-transparent gradient set to "Overlay" and 73% opacity gives the effect of oncoming headlights from the left.

Headlight effect.

Another gradient of navy blue set to "Overlay" and 58% gave an extra aura of darkness for the shape-shifter to be emerging from.

Dark and spooky.

I added a grey-scale adjustment layer to check the color contrasts and to any last minute level-altering (adjustment layers filter the image without changing any information on the actual layers.  It can be turned on/off with a single button)

Greyscale check.  Marvin kinda... disappears.  But there's nothing for it.

Then I exported the whole thing as a .jpg image and posted it as my new Facebook cover.  I finished at about 6:30 pm yesterday.  So with the exception of the original sketch, this really was a one-day project.  That's got to be a personal record.

Click for full-sized image.

Earworm of the Day: Tired of Lindsey Stirling yet?  I'm not.  On the Floor Take Three.

Nanobots

Every so often, my brain picks a particularly unusual trail of "what if's" and lands on an idea that would work well in a story.  On rare occasions I hit upon an idea that fills in several plot/world-building holes all in one go.

Today, that was nanobots. 

A typical interaction between Marvin and the scientists who want to study him.
Beth, of course, is not typically in the room.

Nanobots can explain about 5 things about Kenlilians without breaking a sweat.  Especially if they're self-replicating nanobots.  That being said, I'd have to do more research on the subject to see what kind of molecular-level wackiness is already possible.  You never know when truth becomes stranger than fiction.

Also, I just love drawing Beth making crazy facial expressions.  Her relatively recent redesign and a few different drawing classes at school have given me more tools to work with.  Perhaps the biggest for me now is cheek deformations.  Getting a bulge right up to the eye when a lip raises does wonders to bring a character out of the uncanny valley and into likable-talking-animal territory.  I've also been trying to do more with her ears.  Every little subtlety counts.

Earworm of the Day: Ok, I'll confess I still have last week's earworm stuck in my head because I'm using it on a project.  I'm not going to repeat myself, so have another nice earworm-free day.

Calling the Hero Out

One of those moments where I get one silly image in my head and it all cascades from there.

Silly image in question:

You know a Kenlilian is angry when they can stop the local Superman substitute mid-flight.

The local superhero (Eagle), in pursuit of a character running from the law, crashes through a cargo shipment being guarded by a Kenlilian (Cll'li).  After bringing Eagle to ground, this exchange happens:

Cll'li: Fourth time!

Eagle: I'm really sorry--

Cll'li: I come through your town, you come through my stuff.  See is problem here!?!

Eagle: The city will pay you compensation as always--

Cll'li:  No.  You will stop breaking things or I will re-enact the Battle of Li'nk Teor* on your face!

(*The Battle of Li'nk Teor kicked off the beginning of a violent governmental/cultural revolution that occurred on  the Kenlilian home planet.  Incidentally, the first day of battle was the day Cll'li was born.)

Earworm of the Day: I got nothing. Good day.

Drawings Everywhere

Kids these days.  They expect me to be updated on the latest Pokemon.  Well I'm not.  Kid in question replied "Just make some up then".  So I took his advice.

Three mons from my own brain. 

At some point I turned my attention to three Kenlilian cousins.  It's hard to tell them apart without fur-colors to keep them straight.  Perhaps I should color these in.

From left to right: Ve'an (5), Zaav (16), and Gen (10).

After Zaav says something snarky to Gen.  Ve'an's just trying to keep up.

And finally, I must complain about Facebook's "Timeline" thing they're apparently forcing on us.  It's far too visually cluttered for my taste.  A mono-tasker's nightmare.  Ugly as anything.

And yet... they give me this blank space called a "banner".  I simply can't pass up the chance to personalize my virtual space.  Being an artist, a simple photo won't do.  No, I'm plotting out an epic character collage.

Thumbnail of epic character collage

Lemons and lemonade.  Fun will be had.

Earworm of the Day: The Rescue by Adam Cappa  I've mysteriously had this stuck in my head these last few days.

Battle Segments and Tracking Skills

And now for your viewing pleasure, a storyboarded segment of fight scene between the Ninja Order of Animalburg and the O.H.A.  This would also be the first Beth's first face-to-face encounter with the O.H.A. apprentice, Kit.

Blocking with the LGLS is dangerous for everyone but the person blocking.

I also drew this bizarre picture last night.  It's Marvin tracking a scent.  This is not actually what Marvin sees (his vision is a little color-shifted but otherwise functions exactly like ours).  This is an attempted to visually represent how he uses smell.  The red-brown trail in the foreground is the scent of the person he's trying to find.  Everything else (aside from himself) is random environmental stuff.

But mainly it's just a colorful picture.

Earworm of the Day: Always by Erasure -- Aka "The song from Robot Unicorn Attack  Now you'll never get it out of your head!  Mwahahaha!

Aliens, Aardvarks, and Ants. Oh my!

Yes, I have homework, but I also don't want to get too far behind on posts.  Plus I drew a picture yesterday.

If she looks a little goofy, that's kind of intentional.

Also, I finished that animation:

Earworm of the Day: Contact by Falling Up.  Have I been linking to a lot of Falling Up lately?  Yes?  Oh well.

Homework Storm Ahead

I have redesigned Arnie the Acting Aardvark, giving him a more brighter, more cartoony color pallet and a less articulated framework.

He's questioning my decision to put the navigation bar on the right side.

The animation is due on Monday.  Five days from this moment to complete a 29 second clip.  The problem is my 3D thinking brain is driving me towards character moves that don't work with 2D puppets, meaning Arnie will be a composite character: arms ears and body will be 2D puppet, but the face and legs will be hand-animated in Photoshop.

I made a list of steps I'll have to do, made some estimations, and came out to a minimum of 12 hours of work to get it decently completed.  If I can spend an excess of 2hrs per day on the animation, I might, might get it done.  At least I don't have to re-draw every element like Winsor McCay did.

In other news:

Terke Piloting the Di-Zok

Photonegative drawings make nice spaceship pictures.

Earworm of the day: A Guide to Marine Life by Falling Up  I am shocked with myself for having not put that as an earworm sooner.

Smattering

First, an update on the fossa skull:

jaw bone's coming along nicely

Secondly, a smattering of doodles from my sketchbook when I was bored.

The more bored I am, the more detailed the doodles.

An animation will soon be on the way (or at least it better be.  It's for a grade.)

Earworm of the Day: Louise the Lab Rat by The Living Tombstone

The Nature of Randomness

First off, I animated a run-cycle for Marvin last month.  Here it is:

Secondly, Chicago got lots of snow last night, and more flurries are on the way.  I have plans to make a koi fish sculpture if the snow becomes at all packable.

So I've been contemplating the logic of randomness as comedy. When I write out a conversation between two characters, what often gets the most laughs is not what I mulled over for several hours beforehand, but a stray quip that I pulled out of nowhere to fill a hole in the dialogue.  It is not Spitfire's reaction to Lisa being Super Gecko's daughter that's funny, it's the offhand mention of "a union of homicidal librarians".  It's not Roy's witty comeback to an aggressor that stands out, but Fleet's rhetorical question concerning brooms.

So does randomness always create laughs?  I don't believe so.  Take the show Adventure Time.  That show is crazy-random, but it's an adventure show, not a comedy.  I've watched a few episodes and though I was entertained, I don't remember laughing that much.  I think it has to do with the concentration of randomness.  That is, if a show is random continually, then we begin to accept the unexpected as normal for that world.

I have come upon the theory that in order for randomness to be funny, one must first establish a baseline for "regular".  One must have a straight man for the funny guy to play off of, otherwise we'll be unaware that anything's amiss.  Animalburg has it's share of absurdities--super powers, crime-fighting ninja warriors, time travel, space aliens--but all this is just the background.  This is, in fact, the opposite of random, with rules and narrative continuity holding them in a neat structure.  Randomness is found in the one-time gags, the plot-hole fillers, the filler-dialogue, and the moments when I'm stuck for a villain to fight.  It takes a split-second to write and a hand-wave to explain.  You can't plan random, that's what makes it funny.

Earworm of the Day: Background music to The TV Show.  I know I've linked to it before, but the song randomly popped into my head today and it took me a whole 10 minutes to remember where I heard it from (my first guess was a video game).

3D Modeling Standards

I've discovered the school library holds a subscription to 3D World.  I wish I had discovered this sooner.  I became a regular reader back at my community college, and I have missed it since moving to Chicago.  The October issue had a description of TurboSquid's new(ish) Checkmate program and included a short list of what it takes to make a computer model to their standards.  I quickly jotted these down for future reference.  I do not have the skill or the resources to make models for sale at this juncture, but if I establish high-quality habits now it will make things a lot easier further down the line.

Granted, most of the standards are sort of "duh" things.  Like no laminate faces, name everything, and orient your model so it's standing in the "up" direction.  Others standards do take more know-how.  Some I don't understand what they're talking about.  It's all part of the learning process.

In other news, drew this yesterday:

Ancient Kenlilian in his natural habitat

I was trying to figure out why my alien characters were crazy colors, could run fast, and had eyes and nose positioned so far up on their heads.  This was the best explanation I could figure.

Earworm for the day: (oh you're going to hate me for this...) Keyboard Cat.

Quick! Before the Router Dies Again!

So, it turns out that the school library, when it gets to closing time, forgoes any announcement that it's closing time in favor of simply turning out the lights and waiting for students to filter out the door.  It also turns out that the Loop campus closes at 6 pm on Saturdays.  Closes completely.  With red theater barrier across the door and everything.  What's up with that?

I must say that I have gotten none of my personal animation or modeling projects done on account of finals week is 14 days away.  Not to say I haven't been making up stories, because I'm always doing that. Have I introduced Kesikt yet?

Kesikt the Kenlilian.
Not shown: the fact that she's purple.

Normally I would take a moment to describe Kesikt and what makes her tick (trying to piece together her memory after a traumatic brain injury is a big part of what makes her tick these days), but I should really get back to my homework.

Speaking of which:

Eaglets rejoice.  It's raining fish.

That's part of my homework.  The animatic will come soon (at least it better.  It's due Monday).

Earworm of the day:  American Pie by Don McLean (I someday hope to memorize the order of the lyrics on this song.  But not yet.)

Alien Slang and Cartoon Eyes

So I was inventing some slang for my alien characters today, specifically the ones that have some involvement with their planet's military.  This was way more fun than it should've been.  For example, book rookie:  a person who claims they know how to do something solely on the grounds that they read it in the manuel.  Or drilled: to have removed through a process, such as one runs practice drills to replace blind instinct with useful training.

Then it occurred to me that "drill" in the military sense might itself have originated from slang or metaphor, though I'm only speculating.  A quick google search provided an explanation of why the Marines do drills (the marching kind) and a couple of ads for power tools.  Clearly I need more research.

My Design Interfaces class has started using a new mockup tool called HotGloo.  It's a new experience having a tool that can design and test out website functions without being tied to any particular computer, or wait for a hundred libraries to load like an Adobe product.  Not that I have issue with Adobe.  It's how I make things like this: 

I'm currently working on the rest of the picture.  Points for guessing who's eye it is (hint: he has been pictured on this blog before).  It occurred to me that I could do a short tutorial on cartoon eyes, but I don't have a screen-cap program to make a video with.  Any ideas for a solution?

Earworm of the day:  Please Don't Let Me Go by Group 1 Crew

The Importance of Having Backstory

I love making up wacky characters of various kinds.  It's one of my favorite things about writing.  Usually though a good character is something that springs to my mind by accident.  Most of my characters, when I first write them, are incredibly flat and it may take months or years to flesh them out into a person I'd want to write dialogue for.

This holds especially true for my character Beth, who is meant to be the protagonist of the story Animalburg.  I decided that in-story she was 12 years old (my Animalburg characters have human-esque life-spans) so I assumed that she would start the story a little flat, and gain characterization as I wrote.  But I could never put pen to paper.  The character bored me, and one can't write with a boring character.

The other day I got off task and created a truly out-there character named Cylee.  She's an 7 1/2 ft tall space alien with bright green fur.  She was born during a pivotal battle of a revolutionary uprising on her home planet.  She grew up in a world of cultural turmoil.  As an adult she took a job as a grunt on a space cargo-ship.  She's traveled all over the galaxy, picking up snatches of other languages, fashion ideas from other cultures, and married a space-age gunsmith.  Her best friend is an alien that looks like a porcupine dragon.  She has an attitude, shows affection shoving people around (getting various results depending on the size of the recipient), and she knows how to curse in 10 different languages (though she's only conversationally fluent in Kenlilia and Trade-standard).  Needless to say, she's very fun to write, especially when paired against my character Owl who is much smaller than her.  She tends to treat him like a child, much to his annoyance.

Cylee yanking Owl into a stairwell, and out of danger.

And then it hit me what was wrong with Beth:  I had never given her a back-story.  So, to start the thought process, I drew Beth as a three year old.

Now I have to figure out how she went from wearing pink and dragging around a blanket to wearing cargo shorts and aspiring to be a ninja.  This will indeed be fun.

Earworm for the day: Halo by Manic Drive

Kenlilians

I've had a lot of free time lately, and I haven't been as productive as I should be, but at least I have gotten something done. I've been meaning to design some outfits for some of my extraterrestrial characters, the Kenlilians. Their clothing presents some challenges because their legs are built for jumping and running, and therefore pants become a bit of a mobility issue. They get around this by wearing shorts or leaving the knees out. The rest of their clothing is determined by personal preferences and occupation.

Zorkedian is a soldier stationed on an intergalactic war ship. His uniform is pretty basic with the knees and elbows left open for mobility. The gold patch on the shoulder displays his rank of foot soldier (in Kenlilian culture, gold is a pretty average color, like blue for us). He carries a blaster with him at all times. His boots are steel-toed and divided like most kenlilian footwear.

Gen is a mechanic on a cargo ship. He's usually seen wearing a vest that acts as armor against mechanical accidents and has lots of pockets for stashing tools in. His shirt is made of a simple coarse fabric and has a few stains here and there, but it fits well and has more pockets. Arm guards protect his fore-arms while digging around in the interiors of ships and machinery. His pants have an extra flexible patch on the knees that doubles as a knee pad. His boots don't have two lobes (it's difficult for him to find good kenlilian boots) but they're steel-toed and well worn.

Dige is Gen's son. He's small and round in comparison to the adults. He's his father's shadow, always helping him in the shop. He has his own vest like his dad, but everything else on him is a size too big. Sometimes his clothes don't match because he's blind, he just grabs the first shirt and shorts he lays hands on and calls it good. He wears kneepads to protect his knees while crawling inside ships and machinery, and can sometimes be convinced to wear arm guards, but he absolutely refuses to wear shoes. Being able to feel the floor is essential for navigating the corridors of the ship.

Anke is Zorkedian's older brother. He's a cook in the war ship's galley. Over his shirt he wears a smock that is slightly big for him. The smock has pockets for kitchen ware and an extra fold of fabric at the color, used to wipe food splatters off the face. The green name tag and trim labels him as the head chef (kenlilian blood is green, so green is used to denote high rank, much like red for us). His pants have the knees left out and his shoes only cover his toes, held on by straps that wrap around his foot and ankle.

StarJumper

You know you're an animation student when you have a trailer running through your head for a movie that doesn't even exist yet. This happened after working on a Graphic Design assignment involving making a title sequence. I'm relatively familiar with storyboards, so it was only a hop-skip off topic to sketch out a movie trailer. The story is one I call StarJumper. The characters Squiggles (a lizard from earth) and Dige (a dog-like space alien) are riding through the streets of an alien planet on the back of a horse-dinosaur thing called a rodeon. Even being blind doesn't stop Dige from being a back-seat driver.