swishy cow tail

Twenty years ago I tried to draw something like this in Deluxe Paint on my AMIGA computer, but the overlapping motion was too much to wrap my mind around. So this is progress, right?



music: Brandenburg Concerto #6 Mvt. 3 by Bach, performed by the Advent Chamber Orchestra, licensed for this use under the EFF Open Audio License.

with every christmas card I blight

I don't send out actual Christmas cards anymore, but when I send someone a gift I sketch out some quick personalized scribble to attach to it.

Here are a few I cranked out today with the ulterior motive of practicing my generic cartoon character construction:

for my nephew who wants to be a pilot


for my niece who has started learning clarinet




a Boxing Day card for one of my non-Christmas celebrating friends

bouncing ball 2

Ok, here's some actual new animation. The squetchy bouncing ball. I did this all on "twos" (two frames per drawing at 24 frames per second) just to see how that would look. The contact frames look a bit sticky on two's but I think it works.



The strobing isn't as bad as I expected. To investigate that a bit further I did this little turn test on a cone. One is on ones and the other is on twos. Can you tell which is which?



Not a dramatic difference, is it?

squetchy jumping can

A quick warm-up I did a couple of years ago. I thought it would be quick. It took several hours.



That may not look like a big deal in 2D, but it would be a major hassle in 3D to try to rig a cylinder to do all that deforming.

Big mistake I just noticed: the can is bigger at the end than it was at the beginning. I'll do better next time.

hey coach...

A few drawings I made in attempts to coach some people on animations they were doing. Not wildly successful attempts, just attempts.

my sister's birthday

Two quick sketches I made for my sister's birthday card:


"The blackberry crop failed this year..."





"So I'm sending you my peach jam instead!"


I notice I've got the feet in an impossible position in the first drawing. Maybe I'll get it right next year.

stewardess pouring a drink

I brought my sketch pad with me on my flight to Minnesota for Christmas thinking I would get some drawing done on the plane. This gesture is all I got around to, however.


I haven't posted much 2D here recently because I've been consumed by a 3D project which, for better or for worse, is nearing completion.

some Goofy angles

John K continues on with his animation course by having people draw different views of a model of TopCat. I don't have a TopCat sculpture but I do have a Goofy phone...




so I used that as my reference.

The Bosko Bounce

Slight detour from that dry bouncing ball stuff...

Famous animation director John Kricfalusi is leading an online tutorial in which he is endeavoring to teach classic 2D animation by copying examples from Golden Age animation of the 1930's and 40's. It sounds unlikely, but consider that great composers like Bach and Handel learned their stuff by copying note-for-note the works of older masters.

So maybe he's on to something.

Anyway, the first assignment was to do the bounce cycle in a clip from an old Bosko cartoon

Here's my semi cleaned-up effort; I haven't removed all the overlapping lines. This is all hand drawn (and damn, it took a long time to do), no computer "tweening" involved.



(Music created with Voyetra "Dance eJay 2")

The original clip is so foggy that I had to guess at several details. I get the sense that the feet are turning up to expose the sole of the shoe, so I drew it that way but it's just a theory. The sliding of the heels as he lifts his foot... it's in the original, whether they meant it or not, so I did that too rather than try to "correct" it. The major adjustment I made was to make the hips do more of a slow in/slow out at the top of their motion. I think it gives it a bit more weight to swing faster through the bottom of the arc. He still looks like he's hitting a rock at the top, though. I also exaggerated the lagging of the feet as the lift up and down.

I did this in layers so I could study and tweak the motion of each body part separately without having to erase over something that was already working:



By keeping things on layers I could also experiment with offsetting the timing of the body parts. Here the hips have been advanced one frame. I think it gives the head a more bouncy look:



John K says he's waiting for 20 people to do this lesson before he goes on to post lesson #2. I think I'm only the 10th, so there may be some delay. Back to bouncing balls...

update... Bosko in glorious nuanced shades of gray:

a side of dogs

A few more stabs at developing a proper side view of the dog I sketched previously. I haven't really captured it yet.



But I've been reading John Kricfalusi's musings on teaching character animation and he's suggesting starting with a VERY generic rubber hose character, so I may do that rather than try to go with a unique distinctive one.

Pears and hoses, I can draw those maybe.