a robot...

... made from a cardboard box.

a rocket ship...

... made from a cardboard box!

a submarine...

... made out of a cardboard box!

ancient dolls?

Some characters I was asked to whip up for a pitch. They are loosely based on some ancient statues dug up somewhere in Venezuela, I think.

wrap it up

I threw on a quick bg so that I can move on to the next pic I need to do for this pitch package.

cleaning a sketch

Now THAT looks more like braces!

I know how this feels, I had braces when I was a teenager.

Close up.

Cleaned the small characters. This was easy, mostly I used the drawings I already cleaned from other poses and just tweeked them.

Second, the clean up begins. Next, I have to clean up the characters around the dinosaur and put the braces in the dinosaur's mouth. I prefer cleaning up my sketches using Flash. It is very quick and easy, much easier for me than Illustrator.

First, a rough sketch.

tumble down the stairs

It is going to be a challenge to animate it, but it has to be done. After all, he's a Slinky character. Slinky and stair cases go together like chips and salsa.

Show logo

Retro style! Whether we stick with this as the show's title or not is undecided. Whether we use this logo is undecided. I like it, I will push for it. At the very least, I am using this in the pitch package. If the name and logo change down the line, so be it.

main cast sketch...updated

I made a discovery while cleaning this pic; I want to keep the main character, Bango, with a black outline. All the other characters in the series have colored outlines and lines that are knocked out. Bango is supposed to be lost in a strange world, the only one of his kind, and keeping him as the only one with a black outline helps to convey that even more.

A shot of the main cast of good guys helping up the main character.

poses...updated

Cleaned and colored it. I got rid of her eye lashes. With her new, more girlish body, it wasn't necessary to give her eye lashes to make sure nobody confused her to be a boy.


A few pose sketches. I think she could be fun to animate.

compare

One more little change in the pic above; I fixed her neck and where her arms attach to her body, and got rid of the lines there. Not sure about her colors yet.

I thought she looked too young. So I made a few minor changes to her body.

disgruntled 2

Just a quicky for today.

Toon Boom Studio 4 learning process...part 6

Rigging and anchor points; this is where my biggest mistakes were in the blink I did. There is still much more to figure out regarding anchor points, but I am beginning to understand it. One thing I probably should have done was draw my character in the middle of the field guide, not off in a corner the way I did.

Toon Boom Studio 4 learning process...part 5

Another shot of the Toon Boom interface. I am getting quite comfortable drawing with this program. A Cintiq would really make a huge difference. Without a Cintiq I can not use the brush tool with any proficiency. I am limited to the line tool for now. I am learning quickly about switching from "camera" view to "drawing" view, and learning what my earlier mistakes were when I tried to create a "new drawing" or "cel". There is still so much more to learn! I hit a key by accident this afternoon and it made my drawings lose the dark outline and all the colors to be very muted. I have no idea what key I hit or what it did or how to undo it. I ended up just closing the program and opening it again, and the view was back to normal. Speaking of the keyboard; it takes a few solid hours just to get the keyboard shortcuts made to your own specifications, but it is very important. There is nothing worse than hitting a key and having something unexpected happen because the keyboard shortcut is something other than what you thought it was.

Toon Boom Studio 4 learning process...part 4

Eureka! My first ever Toon Boom Studio 4 animation! It was more difficult than I expected it to be, but I managed to animate a simple blink. This was just an exercise to learn the Toon Boom animation program and interface. The frustrating part is when I animate one thing, like the right eye blink for example; then when I tried to do the exact same thing to the left eye, it wouldn't work. I had no idea if I was doing something slightly different with the left eye that somehow made it not work, or if the program is buggered up. I made a ton of mistakes doing this blink, and that's a good thing, because that is the best way to learn the program; to make mistakes and then figure it out or work around it.

Toon Boom Studio 4 learning process...part 3

Step 4: Having drawn the characters head, I will attempt to animate a simple blink. This required a couple more drawings, one of his eyes closed and the other of his eyebrows. The squash and stretch of his eyes before they close will be animated on the "peg" layers.

Toon Boom Studio 4 learning process...part 2

Step 3: I colored the separated parts, making sure to save this color palette under the characters name, so this is the "BANGO" palette. And "YES"; if you look at the bottom of the screen capture, I was also playing World Of Warcraft.
Step 2: I separated the parts by copying them and then pasting them on to their own columns, making them individual elements, ie. the hat, the eyes, the head.
Step1: I cleaned up the lines by tracing over the imported pencil sketch, making sure to draw through each object. I used the line tool and manipulated the line with the anchor points.

all together now

With a few inbetweens, I connected the 4 walk cycles. All 4 cycles have a different amount of frames. The quick walk is only an 8 frame cycle. The sad walk is a 16 frame cycle. The skipping cycle is 12 frames. The run cycle with his arms stretched out in front of him is a 24 frame cycle, it's the longest one only because he floats when he is at his high point for several frames. Plus it's all on 2's, so the 8 frame cycle is only 4 drawings, the 24 frame cycle is 12 drawings, the 16 frame cycle is 8 drawings, and the 12 frame cycle is 6 drawings. When I clean these up the one thing I will do is really slow down the sad walk. I will double the frames from 16 to 32, to make it a very slow sad walk, like he's really dragging his feet.

The Good Guys

With a colored outline, and a nice size relation. The tall adult, the really short pip squeak, and the 2 mid range kids.

Kayami's new eyes....updated

Just another color scheme. We still have not made a decision on the kind of line to use. I am going to knock out some lines, make some lines colored, and experiment a lot more with the line.
I think the white dots on her eyes are crucial. I can't find any other way to give her eye direction without the white dots. I am still messing around with her colors.
I know these are not the ideal eyes to get expressions out of, but there is very good reason for designing them this way. Her eyes were more expressive in an older version but they were too similar to the main character. He is supposed to be the only "human" character, even though he is a Slinky. All other characters are not human, thus the tail on Kayami here. So I gave her these eyes to make her look more like a designer toy.