Life With Baby No. 1

Detective Sketch

I've been reading through some Blacksad comics that I got from the Library and they reminded of an old idea I'd had of taking one of my brother's short stories and developing it into some sort of visual medium.

I did a quick sketch of what I thought the main character might look like. It's nothing fancy right now but I wanted to get something out there into the Blogosphere.

Enjoy.

~Chris

Long Time No Post

It's been a while since I posted anything. This past year has been tumultuous with many ups and downs. I'm working on an exciting show that makes me very happy, but I still feel - as I'm sure I will always feel - a deep sense of loss since my brother's suicide.

The show I'm working on is one that I'm sure he would be equally excited about since it was such a large part of our childhood. I am not at liberty to say any further details about it right now however, and certainly not in this format.

Today is Saturday and I was going through my archives of saved artwork - both collected and created. It is my well of inspiration. My idea farm.

I found two images that I created some time ago that I still found to be appealing, so here they are.

~Chris

A Backlog of Transit Sketches

Where Are They Now?

The child actor gone sour.

~Chris

Punched By The Bat

Another one done for the Sketch After Work.

~Chris

Octopus Ass Kicker

Done for a weekly sketch blog, Sketching After Work, that me and some friends at work are contributing to. The theme for this one was "Martial Arts Animal"!

~Chris

Skipping Thumbnails

Yikes, seven months without a post. Well, it's not much but here are some thumbnails I did at work today for a character skipping. I haven't animated a skip in some time, so some action analysis was much needed.

I remember when I was a student and finding reference took some effort - nowadays you can find everything on youtube. I like it, but at the same time I think it makes us less appreciative of the reference because it's so easy to come by...

~Chris

Enthusiastic Photographer

Something possessed me to draw a person enthusiastically taking a picture - Not sure why.

~Chris

HOLY SMOKES DO I EVER LOVE LAUGHS!!

There was an email thread at work here a little while ago, talking about gathering together and watching something funny. One of my co-animator pals replied with an email saying, "HOLY SMOKES DO I EVER LOVE LAUGHS!!". All in Upper Case like that. I was immediately struck with an image, so I quickly hammered it out in Sketchbook and emailed it to him - he liked it.

~Chris

Sunday Sketches

Went Downtown on Sunday to do some drawing at the Central Library. The weather was gorgeous and I couldn't pass it up!

~Chris

Playing Fetch With Loki

Work Doodles

I made a new page of random sketches at work this week. It's a great way to use the downtime that comes with Playblasting my scenes, and any other computer things that suck away the fun and creativity out of the day.

Pencil on paper, and colour in Photoshop. I hope to do more of these.

~Chris

Sketching from the Television

I managed a page of heads while watching The Midsomer Murders (great show!). Green Col-Erase on paper.

~Chris

My Wife's Feet

The Page 100 Project: Pulp

A while ago I stumbled onto something called the Page 100 Project. This is a fun exercise where you turn to page 100 of any novel and adapt it into a comic! I thought to myself, "That sounds like fun!" So I grabbed Charles Bukowski's Pulp off of my shelf and this is what came of it.

~Chris

Those wonderful Operative Words

I tutor people in animation part-time. I have a pupil at the moment and this Saturday we'll be delving into the deep, dark depths of dialogue animation.

I was thinking of how to present some of the ideas and I looked back through my plethora of Animation Mentor newsletters to see what I could find to spark my brain. Way back when, Shawn Kelly wrote a Tips And Tricks article on Operative Words and I was so happy to re-read it and see how simply I could present this tricky, yet simple, and all-important idea.

I decided to illustrate some of the points (for clarity for my pupil's sake) about how, by simply changing the Operative Word, you dramatically change the performance. The real key here is to choose one idea to drive a scene (if the scene is really long you might be able to get away with two ideas).

Here's the first idea (Emphasis on "I"):

The second idea(Emphasis on "Love"):

And finally the third idea(Emphasis on "You"):

When you see them side by side like this, it's obvious that a short line like "I love you" can only have one main idea driving it. Imagine how awkward this would feel if all three of those ideas were included in the same performance? The performance would be way over the top, and it wouldn't even work unless the line was delivered the same manic, slobbering, over-reaching sort of way. I can easily imagine that the girl's expression in the third panel would be a look of utter fear if the guy did all three of those gestures!

~Chris

10 Second Gestures And Commuter Sketches

A while ago I posted about a great, resourceful website called posemaniacs.com, and I've been using the site to do 10 second and 30 second gestures every day for the past week. Posted here are a couple pages of 10 second gestures. I like the 10 second gesture drawing because you have to strip away all the superficial details and just focus on the energy of the pose. I read a quote once that said "Don't draw the Nouns, draw the Verbs" and this is really what gesture drawing is all about. It's not important what the individual pieces of the body look like in a 10 second gesture. What matters is how it feels. And it's the same thing in animation. It's all about the feeling.

The third image in this post is a compilation of some of my favourite Commuter Sketches from the past couple weeks. I have tons of these so I'm hoping to post more in the future. I want to sketch in some different areas though. When you're commuting you're limited to only a very specific range of poses and it starts to get a bit monotonous.

~Chris

My 2010 Animation Showreel

This is my latest animation showreel. You can check out more stuff on my website

~Chris

Posemaniacs

I stumbled onto an awesome website over the weekend called posemaniacs.com and it should become a part of every artist's toolkit. The site offers 30 second poses to draw from, along with a plethora of other choices. I just did 25 gestures this morning and I'm gonna do another 25 tomorrow... and the next day... and the next.

But don't take my word for it. Check it out for yourself. You'll be glad you did.

~Chris