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.

TimeMachine

i decided to try and expand my art into the 4th dimension. er, that would be time. here is an penciled animation i did this afternoon of a beaver running- a "walk cycle" as the pros would call it- but i'm not a pro, so i'll just call it a beaver running. not bad for a first attempt!