Fat Bats

to whom it may concern:
Anonymous comments are definitely gay.

In other news, I went to New York this tuesday, and on the road i drew some crazy sketches- and yes, someone ELSE was driving.

here's a raw sample of a page of my sketches, demonstrating what my drawings look like when i try to make pictures while traveling at rapid speeds on cement highways.
Here is a close-up of the fat Batman drawing.
And here are a couple cleaned-up drawings with a similar theme.

A Christmas greeting....

My your pots be filled this holiday season!

You're the man, Hole.

I just finished making a 5-second animated logo for my video productions. I had the design in mind for a while, and just got around to putting it all together.

Here is the original sketch of the design, which was no bigger than maybe 3"x 2".
I scanned it, blew it up to 8.5 x 10, redrew (partly traced) and scanned it. Then I tweaked it in a vector-based program, then souped it up in photoshop and added a pavement texture beneath it. Then I created each frame in photoshop, moving the lid and turning it, and finally, I assembled it all into a short animation. There are a few minor tweaks I need to make to the final animation, and I still have to record a couple sound effects, but it's pretty much in the can.

BG Keen

I painted the background for my 11-second animation project this afternoon. So now i just have to start animating.

Squirrelly Snackage

i had another idea that i'd like to animate, a much shorter project than the park bench scene- a mere 269 frames, as opposed to...well, i hadn't calculated yet just how long the park bench bit would run, but it is only getting bigger as more ideas come up, so i'm setting it to the side to let it develop, while i focus on this short bit involving a squirrel who finds some sour candies in a trash can and tries some.

The idea actually began as an audio clip that i recorded the other day when i was just playing around with a mic and a sound editor. This morning i started drawing ideas of how i pictured the scene occuring.

Here is the background layout- very simple and to the point; a trash can for the squirrel to root through, plenty of negative space for the squirrel to stand in so he reads clearly in the frame, and a tree that frames the scene, tying it all together.
And here are a couple key poses i scribbled out to get a better idea of what i want.

1.) Rooting through the garbage while humming to himself
2.) triumphantly downing a mouthful of sour candy
3.) the flavor starts to kick in
4.) the first of several crazy takes as he begins to gag- this is the least crazy...they will get absolutely insane- i hope!
Obviously there's more to it, but i don't want to give the whole thing away yet. Instead, here's a sheet of some of the drawings i did to feel out where i want to take the cartoon.

And here is the audio clip that started the insanity-

Benchmark

This is me, playing with my park bench background painting, putting in different characters and coloring them on the comp to see how they look. some, better than others.

Crow has "Toupee" for the bald man's humiliation.

The squirrel is about to explode with excitement from the rabbit's nutty gift.

and the turtle is probably going to be accosted for vagrancy.

Now we're talkin' turkey

here is a character i drew based on one my younger brother (age:14) created. I really didn't take any time on the flames or the logs or pot, and the hand holding the brush is pretty sloppy draftsmanship, but i still like the character...

Turtle Napper

here are more of my recent drawings from my sketchbooks...

New Markers

okay, so i haven't done any more work on my animation yet, but i did get some new markers today, and i've been trying them out for a little while. first i went through a couple of my sketchbooks looking for old pencil sketches to ink,
then i ran out of good ones, so I scribbled out a new drawing in pencil then inked it with a couple different sized pens, just experimenting a bit with thick-and-thin's.

next~~~

The novel is done...sans editing, which i may begin in january.
The animation project can reccommence.
A new project emerges from nowhere.

I have begun to work on a design for another wood-carving: a pinewood derby car that is shaped like a roasted flying pig, with apple firmly between its lips. i sketched a basic idea down, and will begin assembling the thing whenever the mood strikes me.

~the carpenterial Jerk

BG- it stands for BackGround, not the Brothers Gibb

Mission accomplished!
no, the novel isn't done yet. But since i got ahead a little last night, when i got up this morning, I had time to work on my background painting for the animated scene I am working on. And now it's finished! That means it's time for the real work to begin. Here is a look at the background, with some old drawings of my characters colored to get an idea how they will look against the BG.


This is a palette of colors i gathered to use in choosing the paint colors for the BG. I got them by finding a bunch of pretty photos online and pulling out patches of color so i could see what went into the specific color schemes of each photo that made it so appealing.


Then i went with a combo of these colors that i chose from these by scribbling out some different ideas over my layout drawing in photoshop.


These are some sketches i did to try and finalize the construction of the characters, particularly the crow, who i find especially troublesome to draw from certain angles.


I can't decide yet whether i want to go with the version of the turtle below or the one in the first picture, where the top of his head just rises above the top of his eyes. I'm leaning toward this one.

Oh, well, back to the novel. I still have another 22600-ish words to go.

~the Jerk

Novel Notes

Every day i wake up at 3 and after getting showered, dressed, and chowing down, i go to work at the warehouse. glamourous, i know. for 8 hours or more i drive around stacking cases on skids to ship to our customers. This job is a relatively mindless activity, giving me plenty of time to think about what to write in my NaNoWriMo Novel. Whenever an idea comes to me, for a scene, character, situation, or bit of dialogue, i jot down a couple quick phrases to remind me of that idea later, so when i sit down to start writing at 1 am when i get home, i have some ideas to work on. Of course, to anyone else, the notes look like complete nonsense. My boss saw the notes the other day where i left them sitting on my pallet jack, and he looked at them with a puzzled expression on his face. "pretty crazy...slap...kiss..." he said, reading aloud, "what are these notes you have written down here?"
i responded with a deadpan bluntness, "I'm writing a novel this month." As he looked at me quizzically, i went on, "i write down ideas when i think of them, driving around the warehouse."
I could see he was trying to make sense of those notes he read. "What is it ABOUT?"
"i don't know." i said- a half-truth- i know what it is about, but until i finish writing it on Nov. 30th and then go through and edit it so it all makes sense, summarizing an unfinished work such as the one i'm working on does it a disservice; for now, just consider it a meandering trip by a cartoonist (me) to hollywood to sell a story for an animated feature, only to find out how ridiculous hollywood is, and go home to do the story my own way. It's much more than that, with little subplots and the story takes sidetracks as i stop to meet all sorts of strange and interesting people along the way; there is satire of many different things, not just hollywood- there is the fast food worker's subculture, a behind-the-scenes look at what probably goes on in Airport security, as well as some personal commentary on different things that are important to me. There is comedy, adventure (a little), and even romance to be found and maybe lost... so come back in a month and i will have the whole thing posted online for you to read- after i edit it and cut out all the boring stuff. For now, see if you can decypher some of my notes!

Here is a compilation of all my notes from this month so far (the numbers are just from keeping track of how fast i was picking pieces for the orders):


These are the notes i wrote down today (er, yesterday? last night? how does that work on 2nd shift?):

have fun guessing! now i gotta go- it's getting... early (5:56 am) and i haven't written any of today's 2,000+ words yet because i've been spending all night watching the new Looney Tunes Golden Collection (volume 4)!

~the Jerk

NaNoWriMo, yo!

it seems extremely unlikely that i will be getting much work done on my animated scene this month; not only is it the busiest month of the whole year at work, but i have started on my entry in the National Novel Writing Month project, a commitment that will doubtless require a large chunk of my free time. I'm a little behind right now, with only 4,000 words done as of 4:48 am on the 8th(and i only started on the 6th), but if i can just do 2,100 words a day for the remainder of November, i should be able to reach the goal of 50,000 by the 11:59 pm of 30th.

Parked on the Bench

I have decided upon my next project- a full scene of animation, with a bit of dialogue, painted background, and the whole nine yards. I was going to call it "speaking of the weather," but that title was taken back in '37 by Warner's director Frank Tashlin.

I took a bit of dialogue I had come up with a while ago, and built a small scene around it using my Crow and Turtle characters (those aren't their names, just their species- I haven't decided what to name them yet, or even if such apellations are necessary).
I already have the whole scene planned out- I drew my "Storyboards" on strips of scrap paper I had lying around- 11" x 1.25". The drawings are little more than (and often less than) thumbnail sketches, but it was helpful to get down on paper everything that I want to get into the scene.
More to come as i progress on this project!

~The Jerk

P.S. Here is an object of possible interest- a while ago when I created the turtle character, and found it difficult to drawing him from different angles, I sculpted a small 3d model out of wood and painted it, to give me an idea of how he would look from any angle. As I don't have a digital camera, here are some pictureso got by laying the model on my scanner bed.