For what it's worth, I went through a lot of sketches before I got the style and ratios down to something I thought worked. It's also hard getting the poses from dance videos to work. Seems that animation is ALL about what reads well and not at all about what actually makes sense. I did do a kind of test to see how things might work together and I think it'll work. The question is, if he's more or less a hallucination, whose is he? Digby's? Silas'? Not sure yet. Posting these mostly for my own memory.

 

 Did a couple more of these today. I think I have the character design down as well as some of the rules (most of which have to do with not obscuring body parts, which I have to work on). So now it's time to work on how to integrate them into the rest of the comic and hope that it works as, stylistically, this is the biggest shift so far.

 More work on this guy. I was a little disheartened after looking at yesterday's stuff. It just wasn't working for me and I was second guessing the whole idea. It all came down to the character design. It was too complicated, not iconic enough. I really wanted this to look like the results of a real graffiti artist painting something like Mickey Mouse but also making it their own. So I went back to the source, in this case Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. I have a book on the earliest of Disney characters. Pretty much ALL 'rubber hose' animation characters at this point followed the same rules. Disney's were more iconic than most which is why he kept going. I drew some Zippas, adapting the style but keeping it Zippa as well. At first, I wasn't sold. So I went looking online for images where people had co-opted characters and painted them. That gave me the breakthrough I needed. These, I feel, look like what I wanted. Vectorization really calms down the spray effects in a good way. So I think, with careful application of backgrounds, this little shit can do the song the way I want it done. It's all about selling, which was his thing in Tamino. Also, I'd wear a t-shirt with the top design, no trouble.

Did a bunch of sketching today. This is only some of it. Going to have to do some more tests to see what kind of backgrounds are going to go with this. I think I have some ideas, but we'll see. It has been fun and weird to 'cartoon' again after all the portraits. A little voice in my head says, "Why are you wasting your time with this crap?" Maybe it's right? Don't know. I have let this project sit for too long, though.
 

Hoo boy. My partner gave me a suggestion awhile back and it was one of those flashes that made me nearly gasp. What if the next track wasn't being sung by Ricci but by...Zippa? I had totally forgotten about that little bastard. And you know what? He really would be PERFECT for a song about how artists are selling out, how what they want is only the money and the prestige. There is, or was, some definite friction in the graffiti world when street artists would go 'gallery,' or some, like myself who were never 'street' at all pretending to be as legitimate as those who only stuck to the streets. Thing is, I just had a song sung by a fox and I couldn't see that working. So I plowed ahead with Ricci, trying to make him work. And he almost did.

But this morning, I saw a piece of digital graffiti with Felix the Cat and thought, "that's the kind of iconic look I do want to work into the comic at some point. So I started doodling Zippa in 'rubber hose' style. While I had to change his style a good bit, I think he works. And here, he can act as an alter-ego to Digby, his 'darker' or at least more monetary-focused side. This means I have to add a couple pages at the end of track six, showing Digby painting this guy on the wall then walking away. And when he's done so, Zippa can take over. Maybe sometimes when I'm stuck, pushing forward ISN'T the best idea. And this, I think, would be more fun to draw and a bigger contrast to the previous track. I know, a lot of fluff about nothing, but it makes sense in my head.

 

 Had some time today between loads of laundry and nothing in particular to draw. So I took a sketch I'd worked on before and did another take on it. Things are lopsided on purpose. This was just an exercise to paint something. Yet another self portrait to add to the stack.

 Time and a few color adjustments later, I'm calling this one done. I went back a few times trying to work on the hair and never finding another approach I liked better than what I already had. I darkened the shadow areas, the base hair color and details. I saturated and darkened the sweater details as well. I swear there was an update to AD between starting and finishing this as the layers menu looked different last night to me. All in all, I'm pretty happy with this and the two people outside this blog who've seen it gave me positive feedback. I only hope the recipient likes it, and the model. I am always so anxious about giving art as gifts. I feel like I'm inflicting it on my friends. Luckily, I don't do it very often.

 Had a day off so, among other things, I had a chance to work on this. Another case of frustration, tossing it aside and finding out I like it more than I thought later on. Her hair is a little monumental but as my partner pointed out, her hair IS. I'm particularly happy with the little splash of freckles on her face. Part of this one is seeing it through other peoples' eyes. It's meant to be a gift. She's a lovely person and I want some of that to come through. Will let it sit and come back to it in a couple days just to see.

 When in doubt, give a portrait. Started this tonight, a portrait of my friend Kate. She's a lovely young woman, married to my buddy the Weezil. Last year, they were kind enough to take a portrait of him as a holiday gift. I'm hoping they're that kind again as it's getting harder and harder to find things for people. The two of them were over the other night and I snuck some photos. The ones of her were a bit blurry because of course I can't manage to take decent reference. Still, I found one that had a decent expression though it's going to require that I really figure out -hair-. I've managed to avoid it for a long time, but she has such nice, flowing hair that I can't really see not doing so.

One thing I've learned about my own process is that these drawings are really just undercarriage. They're a guide for something that won't look anything like this down the road. The lines are far more numerous than the finished product will be. As per the current style, I want to keep this to as few colors as possible. Step one. We'll see how it goes.

 Oh yah, this. I was in a mood to draw, to make something so started making this on my new iPad...which I had to return. After 30+ years of Apple equipment, this is the only time I've had to return something based on quality. The pencil would just quit drawing, erasing or otherwise interacting with Procreate. I tried everything I could; using different pencils, different tips, hard restarts and two different kind of restorations and the problem persisted. So I took it back. Luckily, I hadn't erased or traded in my old one yet so I'm still using that. The M2 was nice, don't get me wrong but I honestly don't know if I felt any real difference with what I'm doing. Anyway, tossed out this little doodle which was started on the new one, finished on the old one. A scribble, nothing more.

 Procrastination and tiredness. That's all there's been since last post. I've also been trying to decide exactly how I want the next section to look. I went looking at some dance videos, including an old Paula Abdul video that had animation in it of MC Scat Cat. While that animation was a bit crude and done on 2s, it had poses and attitude that I kind of wanted from Ricci. This version is a good deal bigger than the one in Fite!  but I still wanted him mobile. He kind of reminds me of Ed Asher from the old Mary Tyler Moore show, and that's not a bad thing. I think I got a good kind of flow here and, if I can make the moves feel like they're connected, it'll work. Did some quick tests tonight. Now to work out how the text is going to work. Otherwise, the backgrounds, unlike the last track will be really minimal both to provide contrast and to make this one go a bit more quickly and easily.