Blog Blobs

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Laura Park

One of the cartoonists I find most exciting at the moment is Laura Park. Her stuff is really cute and funny and reminds me of a cross between Crumb and anime. Her Flickr thing is here. BTW, does anyone else besides me kinda hate Flickr? I find it really awkward to navigate.

Wanted No Master

I'd known for some time that Milt Gross had made a couple of cartoons, but never sought them out for some reason. Man, was I missing out! They're friggin' fantastic!

Wanted No Master (1939)
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Wacky hipsters / More watercolour noodling

If you're ever looking for funny people to draw, there's no place better than the "Street Boners" you'll find here. They're written, BTW, by the dude that used to write the hilarious Do's and Don'ts in Vice Magazine. Lots of wacky hipsters and weirdos and hot chicks.

Used watercolour again on this one. This time I busted out my fancy Series 7 brush. I have to admit that I bought the brush for inking and found it REALLY hard to control. It's a killer watercolour brush though, which kinda makes sense, since that's what they're made for.

Walt Stanchfield

Walt Stanchfield's Drawn to Life books have been available for months now and have been widely praised in animation circles. For what it's worth, I'd like to chip in my own belated two cents on these wonderful books.

A little background: (completely off the top of my head-correct me if I'm wrong about anything) Stanchfield worked at Disney during the golden age. After he retired, he continued to teach weekly life drawing classes to the Disney animators during the "Disney Renaissance." These books (2 volumes) are his collected handouts.

What's presented is a tolal philosophy of cartoon drawing. On one end, Stanchfield prescribes ways of seeing and thinking, even veering occasionally into the realms of spirituality and physcial fitness. On the other, he deals with the nuts and bolts of cartooning-how to tune every line and dot in a drawing to best drive home a feeling or action.

There's a lot of repetition. These were weekly handouts, after all, and Stanchfield never intended to present them as a whole. You also have to consider the fact that from year to year he might be teaching a completely different group of students. But the repetition is not tiresome. He always finds subtly new ways of stating the same points. Personally, I found that the repetition helped things sink in.

Stanchfield's got a really affable writing style that's a joy to read. There's a also a tonne of pictures, mostly student drawings accompanied by critiques and by his own "suggestion drawings." I found these to be hugely enlightening.

Get these books!

Sloppy watercolour experiment / New character (?!)

I got an idea today for a character that's just a hole that appears in things (or people). Hole Morgenson's his name. I know the idea of mobile holes has been exploited, but I don't think anybody's ever made one into a character before. Well, maybe me. Oh and also William Burroughs.

Bought a little watercolour kit a few weeks back and tried it out on this drawing. Happy to report that it doesn't make the india ink run (unlike my markers).

Expect more watercolour in the future, as I continue my quest to eliminate all things digital from my work!

Oorutaichi!

Who are these little jerks?

I came up with the designs/personalities of these guys before I figured out where they live and what they do. Kinda the inverse of the Dreamworks model. Eventually I decided they should be janitorial staff of an office building or something.

Derrick is a timid little man-child that lives under the sink in the janitor's closet. He only comes out at night and lives on food from the office vending machines.

Daan is a domineering/fascistic/volatile little robot that lives with Derrick in the Janitor's closet. His default mood is angry and contemptuous, but he'll occasionally get really amped about something, which is even worse. Luckily he spends all day recharging.

Ed is a lazy layabout who drives around in brown van and plays bass in a shitty cover band.

Tracy has a heart of gold and serious delusions about her talent and intelligence.

Wilf (not pictured) is the decrepit and oblivious security guard. I think he might be Ed's uncle.

I've been posting a lot of scribbly stuff lately but I promise the next post will be something more finished.