No Class this Saturday

No class on Saturday April 9th.

Will see you Saturday April 16th.

Silverman! 4.2

The West Coast

NSFW

If video doesn't appear, click here.

See the process here.

Silverman! 4

If I half-ass my work on anything, the results are lame and I lose interest in it because it no longer excites me. I half-assed it on the last one. So I had to think up a new one and not half ass it.

Silverman! 3.1

Some days are harder than others. Today was an especially hard drawing day.

Silverman! 3

Sometimes life happens and I'm not able to complete my normal workload. I still try.

Silverman! 2.3

I couldn't think of any clever gags today so I refined the last one a bit more.

Silverman! 2

I think my goal with these little cartoons is to see how much I can animate in an hour. It forces me to focus on what's important.

Also, I've been getting over a sprained back this week. I like to use ideas from my real life.

Animation in Progress

Done for and was rejected as a possible style option for a gig that I just finished.

What interests me about this was the flatness of the character and use of tones, not lines, to convey depth. I want to complete this, but I have no idea what he's pulling up from the ground.


(if this is hard to see, look at it from an angle...I'd have made it darker, but the effect would be lost).

Animation Pencil Test

Just another for my own amusement and education. Design based on a friend of mine.

Cartoon Studies

After George Scarbo


After Ferdinand Horvath

Class this Saturday

January 8th, 1st class of the new year. See you then.

Animation Saturdays

Practicing animating on 3s and 4s, wondering if I can get cartoonier animation this way as opposed to using computer generated tweens that seem all the rage these days. It's tougher than it sounds.

On 1s (or 24fps), you get 24 drawings per second to make a character move and express himself. The fewer drawings you use, the less a character moves in a second.

And that's fine for illustration. But for animation, the very word implies an artform centered around movement. Of course, animating at 24fps takes more time to do than animating at 6fps because you have more drawings to do. My goal is to balance the realities of limited time and the desire for expressive, cartoony motion.

I think I failed here when it comes to the guy running. Ironically, the car, while having bad perspective towards the end, is fairly vibrant and filled with movement.

It just means that with fewer drawings, each drawing becomes more important.

Babies!

Normally, my gestures are very sexual or violent, as I tend to look at the two things I consider fun to draw and do - sex and UFC fighting. Well, these are some what violent too, but a not sexual at all. Although, they are the result of a good time, I'm sure.




And they're just so cute! I totally recommend watching a documentary titled "Babies." It's available online at Netflix.

Latest Stuff

For a super secret project. Don't tell anyone you saw these.

Drawing Updates

My plan to improve my skills is coming along nicely. I've been at it two months and already I feel the improvement.

Below are some animal and gesture drawings. If you look closely, you can see a "To Do List". While that's not my entire list for the day, it ensures I try to get at least that much done that day. Productivity is important.

Definitely for adults only.

How to make a Cartoon, pt 1

When writing for your own cartoons or even if you are simply storyboarding someone else's script, it helps to have a system for making it. This is not the same as a formula, in the traditional sense.

In the traditional sense, a formula is good for multiple copies of the same thing, with or without slight deviations, such as cars or romantic comedies, or children's movies.

But a system is not the same thing. A system is a procedure that gives order to the creation process while still allowing for invention and innovation. It allows the imagination to run free while still being able to control it for the sake of time and money.

For making cartoons, it all starts with an idea.

1. Ideas

Ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. You may be eating dinner or talking with some friends. It may be a dream. So it's important to keep a pen and paper with you at all times to write your brilliant ideas down. If you're in desperate need for an idea, I'd recommend a brainstorming session. Simply sit down and throw out all your ideas, no matter how crazy and silly they may seem. Do this for an hour or two straight. Then walk away. Come back after a couple hours and see which ideas you like best and/or which ideas you can combine.

2. Ideas vs Premises

For example, lets say you have an idea for a cartoon about trying to stay cool on a hot day. That's a great idea. But is it not a premise. A premise provides just enough detail to ground the story in a situation and allow for specific direction.

The reason "trying to stay cool on a hot day" is an idea and not a premise is because it does not focus your story in any one direction. It could be about a fat guy stuck in a tiny car, or a little boy on a hot summer day, or a camel in a desert.

To make it a premise, you need to ground it and provide a specific direction so the details, jokes, and other elements of the story have something to stick to. A premise is the purpose, the thesis of the story.

A premise answers the questions who, what, when, where, and why.

Once you have an idea, it's important to come up with a premise. One possible premise is "a little boy tries to avoid the heat on a hot summer day".

Even the phrase "tries to avoid heat" works better than "tries to stay cool" because one implies conflict and purpose, and the other implies maintaining a current state of affairs.

3. The Outline

After the premise, you want to find a way to craft the story as quickly as possible in the least amount of time. To do this, we must map out the story and see what is working and what is missing.

We end up with a string of meaningless scenes if it's structure does not provide a way to get from one scene to the next and no amount of clever dialog or cool action scenes can save a fiction movie if it's structure does not hold up.

In terms of story, it helps to think of each turning point in the story as resulting from the previous turning point. That is, it helps to see events in terms of cause and effect. The first event caused the next, and that causes the next, and so on, all the way until it is done, like a chain of dominoes. And like dominoes, a straight path is usually pretty boring.

Lastly, when outlining a premise, it becomes important to know how long the final product will be. When charting a course on a map, you like to know how much time you have. For example, if you have an hour, you might go to that fancy out of the way grocery store. But if you only have a few minutes, you may opt to go the one at the end of your block.

4. Broad strokes vs Details

When outlining, it is best to focus on the broad strokes so that you can get from beginning to end in the most entertaining way possible. If you get stuck on the details before you get to the end, you'll waste a lot of valuable time coming up with ideas that may not gel together.

For the premise "little boy tries to avoid heat on a hot day" a good general outline for a 30 second - 1 minute cartoon might be:

1. It's a hot day
2. Little boy is hot
3. Little boy tries to avoid heat
4. Little boy fails in a funny way
5. Little boy finds solution
6. Solution also fails in a funny way
7. Little boy reacts in a funny way
8. End

It doesn't seem like much, but it provides a chain of cause an effect events that lead from one situation to the next in that short amount of time. And that's exactly what you want. Of course, you may have more details than that. And that's fine. But you don't want to put too many details either. We save that for the next step.

5. The Gag Session (or Actions vs Feelings)

After we have the outline, we move to the gag session. In the gag session, we go through each outline step and brainstorm different ways to illustrate that outline event in order to find the most entertaining way to illustrate that event. Doing so guarantees that we'll end up with an entertaining story.

And I believe that the primary purpose of any story is to entertain. It doesn't matter if that story contains the cure for cancer or the meaning of life. But if the audience is asleep, that story has failed to accomplish anything.

Of course, saying entertainment is the primary purpose is very different from saying entertainment is the sole purpose. And I'm not saying that.

I'll also add that what's entertaining to one person may not be entertaining to another. And that's a good thing. The one person who determines what is most entertaining is the director. And if you are the director, your decisions end up on screen. It is through this decision making process that a cartoon stays personal.

When it comes to cartoons and movies, it becomes important to think visually. It is why cartoonists in the past drew pictures at the gag session instead of using words. It is why during this gag session that I also choose to draw pictures.

But when using words, it is important to think in terms of actions. Actions can be seen. Actions are specific. At this stage, that is what you need. You are figuring out specific visual ways an event can be illustrated.

In respect to the premise of a little boy avoiding the heat, the 3rd and 4th step in the outline requires us to show him trying to avoid the heat and failing in a funny way. One specific way of doing so is showing him lying in the shade, but the sun follows him and obliterates any shadows he may seek cover in.

Or maybe he tries to cover himself in a pile of fallen leaves. Or maybe he digs a hole and sticks his head in the mud, like an ostrich. Or maybe the shadows simply dance around him and elude him. These actions can range from cartoony to realistic.

The way the little boy tries to avoid the heat (and eventually fails) does three things - entertain the audience, describe the boy's character, and reflect the director's preferences. It may serve other purposes as well, such as making a point about society.

The point is, it is through these actions that the director is able to entertain the audience and communicate something at the same time.

However, it is important to not put too many details in this stage either. If you have not noticed, with each new step we add more details. If you have too many details in this step, you leave no room for the details that will be added during the storyboard stage (not to mention the spontaneity and inventiveness required to keep such an intense job fun).

Make no mistake, details will always be added during each following step. And the more details you have early on, the harder it gets fit the details required of each following step into the story. This results in a lack of creativity, which results in boredom, which translates to longer work hours which means a higher cost, which means more people have to pay to see it in order to recover the cost of doing it. And when you sacrifice the creativity of artists early on, that lack of enthusiasm ends up on screen. That means if your audience is bored, you won't sell enough people on your cartoon to recover the cost of making it.

In short, keep details to a bare minimum, only what is needed at each step, while focusing on maximizing it's entertainment value.

When you have figured out all these things, you are ready to begin storyboarding. Knowing these things will help make the storyboarding process go more quickly.

Goal Oriented Learning #2

In the last post, I explained why I think goal oriented learning is superior to doing studies with no end goal of using them later.

For my students, I'm giving the following goal: make your own 30second - 1minute cartoon.

Each month, we will have a different goal to meet, a goal that gets us closer to finishing that cartoon.

Month 1

- Story

Month 2

- Character Design

Month 3

- Background Design

Month 4

- Layouts

Month 5

- Animation

Month 6

- Clean Up

Month 7

- Editing

Month 8

- Sound/Music

Over the course of each month, we will go in depth into learning what it takes to accomplishing that monthly goal.

For example, in the first month, we will learn all about telling a story, from outlines and story structure, reading and watching other great stories and analyzing them, to writing and drawing our own clearly told and easy to enjoy stories.

In order to do that successfully, one also has to learn gesture and quick drawing ability and acting and a whole host of other drawing abilities, abilities that you cannot learn without having the goal of making a storyboard.

And through a constructive feedback loop, we will refine those skills until the student is ready to move on to the next stage.

Learning happens through a process of self-exploration and constructive criticism and experienced guidance.

Students, your goal this coming month is to tell a story. During class, I will show you how to improve your work and what I expect to see the following class. You will work on accomplishing the goals we set on your own time.

Goal Oriented Learning #1

I think the biggest problem with America's schools is not the funding or lack of it. It's not the teachers. It's not the lack of parental involvement. It's not even the students.

It's the system of learning. It's a very segregated way of learning. And while that has it's place, 12 years of it is too much. None of that learning is tied into what to do with that knowledge. That results in a lack of real involvement on the part of the student.

Learning begins with the desire to learn. And why should one care to read about George Washington, the Magna Carte, and chemistry while in high school?

That's not to say I think we should get rid of trigonometry and other difficult math and history courses that seemingly have no effect on paying the rent.

What I am saying is that it's easier to learn something when we have a reason to do so.

The best way to learn Spanish isn't from a book while doing recitals 5x a week. It's to be stuck in Mexico and have our survival depend on it. Learning Spanish then becomes a means to survive and thrive. Either you learn it, or you go jobless, foodless, and friendless.

What schools need are goal oriented learning programs. Learn writing and appreciation for good literature by having the goal of writing a good novel. You'll be forced to analyze structure, grammar, history, current events, essay writing, themes, allegory, and all that other "boring" stuff while knowing why and how to use it.

For the math and science guys, have them build a robot or a missile for the US military to use.

Of course, they can't do such projects in the 1st or 2nd grade.

But when they get to middle school or after they've learned the basics of algebra and sentence structure, maybe in Middle School sometime, they choose a major or education path where they take on a project and go in depth in learning the higher aspects of various disciplines all while accomplishing something worthwhile.

The idea is to give them a single goal where they are forced to teach themselves various disciplines and tie them together. The lessons best learned are the ones we teach ourselves.

And as adults out of school, we've learned more about history, science, and math because of our fascination with those subjects, our desire to learn more about them. Yet we insist on robbing kids of the way we learned the most by using systems of teaching that have very little effect on maintaining their interest...and our own.

Looking back on our lives, would we ever choose to sit through any of our high school classes? I know I wouldn't.

How to draw cityscapes...

...and other complex backgrounds...

I came across an insanely detailed background drawing from Oliver and Company on Animation Backgrounds (a great resource, btw).

At first, I tried drawing it freehand, the same way I would a portrait. That proved difficult, but insightful.

So I decided to draw it in a way I'd never drawn a background before, and I found it extremely valuable to use for complex cityscapes and aerial shots.

I also find writing down my process helps me remember it better later, even if I never look at what I wrote down ever again.

So here it is:

1) Thumbnail/rough it out
2) Draw the ground plane or surface on which the buildings are built on
3) Grid the surface/ground plane
4) Draw boxes for groups of buildings (not for individual buildings yet)
5) Small boxes for groups of small buildings (usually closer to the shore/edge of city)
6) Medium boxes for groups of medium size buildings (usually further into the city and makes up most of the cityscape)
7) Large boxes for large individual buildings and landmarks (usually peppered in between medium size buildings and closer to the city centers, also usually closer together than spread out evenly)
8) Leave empty spaces for parks, streets, and other undeveloped spaces. It also makes the drawing clear to understand
9) Break the the boxes down into small buildings. Space the buildings unevenly so as to achieve a naturalistic looking skyline.
10) Use reference to capture as many landmarks as possible to give the drawing flavor and a sense of time and location.

No Class Today

Sick as a dog. See you next week (9/18).

Gobelins Training Program

Gobelins is world renowned for its animation program. The shorts the students make there look better than anything the professionals in Hollywood have made in the last 50 years, in my humble opinion. Check out their YouTube Channel.

Every time I look at one of their cartoons, it makes me wish I spoke French and was good enough to go there. The last time I watched one of their shorts (about a week ago), I quit wishing and started looking into actually going there.

I discovered that they have an entrance exam, and that to get in, even France's best artists routinely fail 2-3 times before finally passing. And to prepare for their entrance exam, they often undergo the following weekly routine:

Sundays - Human Figure (whole and parts, slow studies)



Mondays - Gestures (whole and parts, quick studies)



Tuesdays - Cartoons (done by much better cartoonists)



Wednesdays - Animals (real life, drawings by far better artists, photos)



Thursdays - Portraits (real life, photos, etc)



Fridays - Environments (photos, real life, etc)



Saturdays - Animation (by far better animators)



I spend an hour every day doing these. And I don't always rely on real life. Like for animals and the human figure, I can copy other, better drawings or photographs. For gestures, I can use movies and TV.

Sometimes these can be better tools for that type of study. Good animal and human drawings reveal the artist's knowledge of underlying anatomy, things the untrained eye can't spot in real life.

For gestures, the ability to pause an action in mid-motion becomes handy.

Also, I do my best to copy exactly. As uber-talented illustrator Robert Fawcett once said, the ability to imagine is directly proportional to the ability to observe.

How to be Excellent

Despite the arrogant title of this post, I hope it proves insightful.

I learned a valuable lesson today: never let your limits decide your content. For example, if you have trouble drawing hands or legs, never think of drawings that don't have hands or legs in them.

Otherwise, you end up with drawings that look like you are avoiding drawing hands and legs.

When it comes to animated cartoons, if you have a month to make a three minute cartoon and it normally takes you three months to make a one minute cartoon, do NOT try to think of ideas that are easy to animate or make in only a month.

Otherwise you end up with ideas and cartoons that look like they were easy to animate in a month.

Instead, think up the best idea you can, assume there are no limits. Work to make it the best idea, destroying every weak aspect about it and replacing and strengthening the idea into a solid finished piece.

And once you have the idea in it's final expressed form (storyboards or an animatic), figure out the quickest way to make it.

That may involve changing camera angles to one that is quicker and easier to draw. It may involve cutting some scenes out to because they take too long to create. At the same time, work your damndest to make the best scenes come alive. Even if you're not sure you're capable of doing them, try. And try again and again until you get it right.

In the end, you will have an idea and a cartoon that is still solid and excellent because you found a way to make it a reality. You'll have forced yourself to get better. You'll have done something you didn't know you could.

If you take the easy way out, if you let your limits determine your ideas, you end up with a limited idea.

If you forget about the limits and think of an excellent idea, an idea worth bleeding and sweating for, the limits you have find a way of disappearing. You find a way of making it a reality within those limits.

New Class Policy

In my classes, I had an unspoken policy that each student received eight classes. It didn't have to be consecutive weeks. Meaning, if a student should up once a month, that student would receive 8 weeks of educating spread out over 8 months.

However, I am now lining up my policies with that of the school I teach at. Meaning each student receives eight consecutive classes from the time he or she starts. If a student misses one class and calls 24hrs ahead of time to notify the instructor, he or she is entitled to one make up class, but any more absences will result in a forfeiture of that week's training. Not calling ahead of time results in a forfeiture of that week's training as well.

No long will students be able to spread out their education over 8 months.

And here is why: people in general and students especially need to practice regularly to retain old information and prepare their mind for new information. Practicing irregularly and sporadically results in forgetting old concepts and having to relearn them, making it impossible to teach new information.

You cannot imagine the frustration I feel re-explaining the same concepts to the same person because the student simply doesn't practice.

If you plan on sporadically dropping in, it is best to save your money and choose the single class option. Signing up for 8 weeks means 8 weeks in a row from now on.

Shape Vs Form

No, it's not a battle for supremacy over your drawing table.

The chart below simply explains the benefits of using shapes or forms.



Try turning abstract shapes and everyday forms into characters.