Commercial Animation

I had an idea for a fake commercial, and threw together a quick video with scribbles that took about 5 minutes to draw and audio that took about as long to record & mix.



Here is a more refined character design, kinda going for the early tv animated commercial look.

bunny trails

today I was doodling on a telephone note pad, just idly exploring graphic shapes, and as ideas emerged, I expanded to a larger drawing, and a complete character design eventually resulted. this is that story. All names have been changed to protect the innocent.

While watching Woody Woodpecker cartoons, I had a little spark of an ideas in my brain, and grabbing the nearest scrap of paper, I began to scribble. I started with a couple loose drawings of a wolf biting a large bone, then, wondering what the body would look like, I drew a pair of legs on another paper, and from there, sort of "bunny trailed" along, scrapping the wolf, and re-building the drawing, first with the legs, then a pair of crossed arms, and finally a head. On a larger paper, I traced the separate elements to make a rough estimation of the whole. Seeing the overall effect of these graphic elements, which had been designed for their shapes rather than based on anatomy or even traditional cartoon construction, I then set about figuring out how to construct that graphic shape with actual anatomical features in a more solidly constructed fashion. once this was accomplished to my satisfaction, I traced over this cartoony skeleton the details of fur, eyes, etc.My initial sketch was a definite improvement but this was not satisfactory. The body was pretty much how I wanted it, but I didn't like the way the hands and head looked, so, having scanned this draft, I used photoshop to push the shapes around, moving the neck back to where it would look like it joined the body more naturally, and tilted the head so it better flowed along the line of action of the rest of the body.

This I recreated on a second piece of paper with my pencils, then scanned again so I could blow it up, as the fingers still troubled me due to the small size of the drawing. printing out a larger copy of this third draft, I traced over again, and replaced the fingers until they were acceptable. then i inked and colored the final draft. Whaddya think of the final product? I think it has potential...

just a cool design?

I just KNOW there is someone out there who will try to read more into this than there was WRITTEN into it. Some Pseudo-art Afficianado is probably looking at it right now, saying, "Well, ah, clearly the light-colored hand represents God, and the darker one is Man, who though made in the image of God is stained with sin. The first layer of black is the Darkness of the world, the second set of wavy layers represents the waves of uncertaintly in which we are all drowning, the third layer represents the tangled maze in which we lose our way as we try to find our way out of the darkness. the purple is the power of God that envelopes us when we take his hand..." etc, etc, etc.
The truth is, I just thought I'd make a cool design. think what you like, though I suppose.

My Left...Hand

Often, when looking for something to draw, I just draw the first thing I see that is interesting. My hands are always...well, on hand, so I often draw them. Being Left handed, it is not often that I draw my left hand. It is rather complicated to draw and "pose" at the same time, unless i were to draw it with my right hand (not really a good idea- i've done it twice, and it turned out okay, but not my best). This is a rare example of the results when I take that extra effort. My drawings of my right hand are better.