Painted Martian

I decided to polish up my recent sketch of the martian character and present the final piece to the guy who inspired it, Marc Maron of WTF.

I finally had a chance to see him do stand-up live, so it was a perfect chance to hand him the painting in person. The show was great, and I was flattered when, afterwords, he told me he remembered the animation I'd done for him last Christmas.

I printed out a second copy for myself so I could get his autograph. So sneaky.
















Until Next Time.

Hey, Bulldog

Just some character sketches for fun.

Until Next Time.

Tiny Blog Dump

This applies almost daily.

Alligator? Crocodile? Dinosaur? Croc-o-saur? Please stop asking.

Until Next Time.

Eyecon

My Twitter icon was in dire need of an update. Originally I'd chosen a pastel sketch on canvas I made at a sketch jam a few years ago...






I spent so long with this thing I got a little tired of it. It needed fixing. So I fixed it good. I idly doodled variations on the character, which I still liked, and scanned in my favorite...





So, after a back-and-forth painting/design process, I came up with this, which I feel much more satisfied with...








Until next time.

Martian Marc

This is a big one.

I regularly listen to a podcast called 'WTF', hosted by comedian Marc Maron. I'd go as far as to say it's my favorite podcast on the whole darn internet. I love it mainly for its host, Mr. Marc Maron himself. He's got a wonderful rapport with all his guests and I appreciate his perspective on the world and his way with words.

A while back I was listening to an episode that really caught my attention: The beginning features Marc reading off psychological symptoms from a lengthy checklist. What made this bit soar is that he would fire off little improvised reactions to EACH ITEM on that list. It was rapid-fire, witty, and charming. I daydreamed about what it would be like to construct a bit of animation based on that audio.

Fast-forward to a few weeks later, where I've got a sparkling new piece of animation to show you all. I ran with the idea of a character reading off a checklist of conditions and quickly reacting to each one. I took the idea a step further and had him pop to a new environment for every reaction. I wanted to make this feel pretty manic overall, while still anchoring the 'reading' sections so the audience still knows what's going on. So here's how it all came together:

First up, here's the actual piece:




(YouTube is cutting off the right side off this video. To see the full thing, go here)




Here's the initial character comp:







Here's a sampling of the rough pose sketches:







After I chose my favorite poses, I scanned them in, popped them into AfterEffects, and edited them with the dialogue. Here's the final rough pose test:



(Again, to see the full-frame version, go here)


Here are some of the mouth shapes made to match those poses:





A sampling of the different backgrounds I used:

After that was all compiled I popped it back into AfterEffects for some final text/effects work (mainly on the jetpack). Overall it was a lengthy process, but also a very important learning experience. Thanks to my buddies Bob and Ian for giving me so much support and invaluable tips along the way.







Until next time.

How Blue Was My Robot

Here's another small update for ya.

I wanted to make a birthday card, but I forced myself to do it differently. Normally I'd sketch out design variations until it was perfect, scan it in, trace the line art in vector, spend lots of time fooling with the color palette, composition, and techniques, etc.

This time, I made myself just dive in and paint in Photoshop. Needless to say I felt a lot more freedom with this one; like there was no pressure for getting it EXACTLY RIGHT. Dare I say, it was actually fun.

The only challenges I gave myself were to keep it in a very limited color palette and to sneak the phrase "Happy Birthday!" in there.









Until Next Time.

Rocket, Rocket, Rocket, Rocket Scientist

...but she's just like the second law of thermodynamics...



Anyways, I'm back with another piece. This one was made as a gift for a friend's wedding; I wanted to make something personal, since he's an old friend of mine. Bed, Bath and Beyond just wasn't cutting it.

Apropos of nothing, I thought it'd be fun to make him a space-age rocketship looking like it came from some old comic book. You might think it had something to do with the wedding, but...no. It was kinda just for fun.



I started with the sketch, and hoo boy were there a lot of sketches. I had only a vague idea of how this should look, so I played around with different angles for the rocket and exactly how the background should look. My main idea was to feature the rocket in a heroic 'blast-off!' pose, with old comic book-y action lines. Here are just a few...






Eventually, with a lot of sketching and Google image references, I came up with this...





Now there was quite a bit of cleanup work to do. I brought the sketch into Flash where I could clean it up (just solid colored shapes)...








I took the cleaned-up rocket and brought it into Photoshop where I could assemble a rough version of how the details and the background should look...





Through more consultations and advice from co-worker and A-1 helper guy Bob Rissetto I tweaked everything from the colors to the background layout and the details. From there, it was back into Flash to finalize the rocket...


And finally back into Photoshop to lay out all the comic book-y details. Photoshop has an excellent filter that manipulates solid colors into colored dots. Perfect for that comic book style. I was also able to track down a folded paper texture from the internets and use that as an overlay. Most people who saw the final image thought I'd actually folded the paper.


Anyways, after a lot more tweaking with the filters, colors, and background 'light rays', I got to a satisfying place. I looked to old comic books for more ideas, and they inspired me to add a white border, 'page number' (the date they got married, Oct 16th), and text box...



In the end I was able to print this out at 11x17, frame it, and hand it off with a ribbon tied 'round. This whole process actually went much quicker than the Robofish, and I think I like this end product better. It's a good lesson in giving yourself strict time constraints. Then the projects won't just keep crawling off into uncharted territory...








Until Next Time.