giddy up

The ultimate short cut; take one design, color it differently, and VOILA, two character designs done.

Luckily I had a bit of practice drawing horse bodies when I had to draw a bunch of Mythic Centaurs on another project I worked on over a year ago.

Horse Lips

No sound on this lip sync post, I don't want to give away any dialog.

a horse is a horse...

...of course. As I stated before, I did the storyboard before any designs were done. In some cases the final design is worlds apart from what was roughed out in the board, even so far as boarding a character as a male only to have the character be female in the final design. However, in this case, I pretty much just cleaned up the rough scribble in the board without changing anything for this character design.

brontosaurus

She's a big one.

sex change

I haven't designed the horse yet, so he's still rough in the pic on the right. The rough board was done without any designs, no character designs, no BG designs. So what I am doing now is putting all the proper elements in the board, the proper BG's, and the proper characters, designed and posed. As you can see, one of the characters changed to a female in the final design, but she was originally boarded as a male character.

more angel poses

These two characters appear in over 50% of the scenes, so I have a ton of posing to do over the next few weeks. They work really well together for some reason. Just by looking at them, you get the feeling they've been working together as angels for too long.

angels are like zombies

My girlfriend asked me today why I am coloring the angels with green/grayish and purple/grayish skin tones. My answer was "because angels are like zombies...they're both 'undead'."

here she is

Continuing from the previous post; Here's how she finally looks, cleaned and colored, from the front in the top pics, and from a three quarter view in the bottom pic.

hair-do, hair-don't

Approved front
Approved three quarter
Reject 2
Reject 1

I had to scrap the bottom two designs. Reject 1 had to be scrapped because I couldn't get the hair to look right in a front view, so I gave her new a new hair-do seen in Reject 2. I also decided to scrap Reject 2; the hair worked perfectly in a a full rotation, but it changed her character way to much. She looks like she belongs on the cast of Jersey Shore. So I quickly roughed out several other hair styles before settling on the top pics.

bored senseless

you lookin' at me?

This character is too much fun. His expressions are hilarious. I love drawing funny looking expressions. The expression still has to convey all the important information, emotion, eye direction, mood, etc., but is is very important to make it look funny. Sponge Bob, Flap Jack, Ren & Stimpy, all did this superbly.

ha ha ha hee hee hee

emotional rescue

To follow up on the post below; the other advantage of doing the character designs after a rough board, is that I can design the characters with wonderful, exaggerated, highly emoting expressions, because I can see exactly what the reaction shot is about, what a line of dialog is supposed to convey, and what emotions a character has in any given scene. The normal way of doing the designs first and the board second, often leads to designs with generic, bland, or expressionless expressions. And then it is usually up to the board artist to add all the emotion and acting. I'm just doing it in reverse, and using the actual designs in my animation.

working it

This actually turned out to be the most efficient way to work. I did the storyboard before any designs were done, just read the script and started drawing a very rough board. That's the opposite of how it is done on every production I have ever worked on. The board artist always gets a model pack with all the location and character designs before starting on the board. But since I am boarding, designing and animating this myself, I have to be very efficient. The advantage of doing a rough board first, before the designs, is that I can see exactly what BG's are needed and where they can be reused, so I don't waste time on location designs of angles and shots that I will never use. And I can see exactly what characters need to be designed and how much design work to put into the character. I can tell right away if I don't need to draw a profile or back view, or in some cases if I may only need a close up, or a single pose. There is no wasted energy here.

Pete & Bob intro

A simple, yet effective intro. The cool jazzy music was performed by one of the writers/ voice actors/creators of 'Pete and Bob', and part of the comedy team known as 'The Vestibules', Bernard Deniger.