I've not been totally satisfied with Harlon's nose. It's the one leftover from what was a very flat, 50s illustration inspired design. Since I've been studying classic animation more and more, trying to give more dimension to my cartoons, this was tripping me up. So I spent the morning doing a few pages of sketches with something a little less flat. Also pushed the eyes a little closer together. This is the current final design (what character in comics or cartoons ever stopped evolving?). Posed for this while translating me into the bunny.

A very self-indulgent page indeed. But if I didn't draw it, it wouldn't get out of my head. So here it is. Fite, Harlon and Tamino are all my children in a way, and their 'worlds' feel like empty sound stages, places where something once took place. Likely, they will eventually mean something only to me. So I visit them and remember the joy they gave me. It's not that I think them shining examples so much as they're mine.

Two more pages.

Two pages of a comic that came from nowhere. Don't know if this is going anywhere and if so, where.

Resized this so it would fit here, also sped it up a little and added a bag so he was shown to be hitting something. If I were doing more with this, I'd change his expression on the second frame as well, but as this is just an exercise, I'll leave it as is. To me, this feels more HB-ish all the time.

EDIT: Threw in another arm movement just because I could.

So here's playing about with the same process as below but with Harlon. I don't like the coldness of the line weights, but that's something I can work on as I did with Lucco. This is getting a lot closer to what I want. Even in the HB 'few drawings as possible' approach, there's room for a lot of expression. In this case, I wanted a little extra something from the ears and will likely try and keep that. As always, it amazes me what the eye will fill in between extreme drawings.

Not a great deal going on artistically as I wait to hear the fate of Tamino at my first choice of publisher. Still trying to get a hold on a process for animating Harlon. I think I'm aiming too high, wanting to do Disney level stuff right out of the gate. I need to aim more at HB. In that light, here's a down and dirty little gif of Lucco jabbing at the bag.

Lousy scan. Did this as a technical exercise. I was right. I did want to paint this. Acrylic on paper.

More playing about with Illustrator, this time with my otter, Lucco. Might want to paint this.

Just a quick Illustrator doodle. I wanted to try using tools I don't usually use, in this case the gradient mesh. I don't think Harlon's design translates well to 3D but it was worth doing.

Been working on things in the background as well as having to get a new computer and get that up to speed with the proper programs and such. Threw this together as some fan art for someone I've been following blog-wise for awhile. I love his abstract work and decided, after a recent post of his, to try my hand at a little something of his. I didn't really grasp his better sense of composition but it was fun to do. His name is Don Shank and should be followed here;

http://www.donshank.blogspot.com/

This is mostly what I did during the 'big snow.' Oh, there was shoveling as well, but mostly this. Illustrator recreation of an old image. The weapon, shield and helmet are historical, I just don't remember from where.

Final t-shirt design and background color of t-shirt done for a friend. The badger is her totem animal and she asked for me to do one in the style of the otters for her. Done and done.

A quickie online icon.

Phone doodle.

EDIT: There. After some messing about with color in the first page, size of character in third and overall size of images in the fourth (as well as the addition of one final little detail) the quartet seems to work a lot better. For me, this is the benefit of working with backgrounds and foregrounds on different sheets and levels. I can keep messing about with the composition. Some might say that I could work it out properly in the first place but sometimes things occur to me later on that would enhance the story or storytelling and to fix the image would require an entire redraw otherwise. So there.

Well, this is it. The uncorrected 'proof' of the last pages of "The City Dreams of Tamino the Cat." It's only been about three years, which was WAY too long. There's some things to fix here, such as the walls being to bright in the first page and the scale being off in the fourth. Still, once those things are fixed, I merely have to do the writing for the last 77 pages and the beast is done.

A couple more weezils done during the little downtime I had this weekend. Just for fun, for a friend.

Quickly thrown together little cartoon for a friend who wandered by today with his old school video gaming stuff in tow. Ink, Illustrator.

A couple of recent images, the first being a poorly cropped painting of my boy Lucco. Cel vinyl and ink on paper. The second is a man/cheetah mix with acrylic and ink on the back of a Ouija board.

Another piece done today. This one a Harlon illustration in ink and watercolor.

New Year's card, though I didn't print and send it. I used to do these year's ago, all centered around the Village at Year's End, a mythical place that existed eternally on the last day of the year in permanent cold and darkness. Inside the buildings, people celebrated in warmth and cheer. Outside, characters like the Ice King and Raven went about their business. Haven't had an idea for one in a really long time. Silas seemed a perfect addition to the village, so this year he gets his chance.

Quickly thrown together double-take using a Yogi bear cartoon as a reference. Sped things up a bit this time around which helps. Also just found out that while I was thinking at 24 fps, DVDs show in 30 fps which messes with my head.

This year's holiday card design. I know it's highly unrealistic; you try wrapping a cat. Happy holidays to any and all that might come by this blog and thanks for looking about.

Second try with the animation, this time using a second's worth of old HB animation as the base. I wanted to see how far I could push this or how far they did. Quite far as it turns out. Looking at various programs online, I find I like the hand drawn look over that of Flash, ToonBoom and the like. This is obviously very rough but one has to learn somehow.

Did a -very- quick and dirty attempt at animating Harlon. This is likely to be the next project when Tamino is done. I really haven't done any animation before (well, a little about 25 years ago) so this is a crude first try. Also, I was using Image Ready, which really isn't what one would want to use for web-toons, which is what I want. Still, there it is.

This is the current quartet. There's a lot going on here, I know but it shows what it needs to show. The last page is the best, I think but I wanted the reader to be lost in the painted city for the first few for a specific reason.

Just finished this before work. It was really complex to color but worth it in the end, I think. As far as I can tell, only eight pages to go for Tamino, which means it will come in at 156 pages. A good, not so round number.

A little something I threw together. Cel vinyl on paper.

This is part of what I worked on all weekend. Top two are the front and back covers of the book I'll be taking to the convention and handing out to potential hire-ers. Second are the front and back covers to the mock up of the Tamino book. These will not be the same as the final, when I'm done with it, but there's enough good stuff in Tamino and it's some of my most recent work, so I thought it best to bring it along. Also, it might look good to have three actual books with me to show that I can see a project through.

Wow, almost two weeks since anything. Well, we had house guests and I've been working on getting things together for CTN-X, otherwise known as 'my big chance.' Heh. Not likely but without trying, there can be no success. This is a design I was asked to do for a friend of mine who has chosen the badger as her totem, or it has chosen her. Eventually, it will be a t-shirt design, likely only for her. Awaiting approval.

One more for the day. This guy thinks he looks cool. Beaver = cool. Sorta.

Free time this morning yielded this guy. He's sort of like a sack of potatoes with a huge mouth. Or a pillowcase.

Last of the beavers for awhile. Got too much else to do.

Punked out beaver #2. Oi!

Hey, another beaver. No good reason. Punk!

Hey, here's two beavers that came from nowhere tonight. Perhaps it was just a need to ink something or to try out two new colors of ink. Whatever. Beavers!

This is pretty much what I would want for size, proportion and costume. That is, IF I were going to continue with this which, of course, I am not.

Probably.

Quick sketch and ink with one of the initial elf designs. Have to work on the body more, get the ratios right. And I have to get back to what I'm really supposed to be doing.

And a quick page of potential elves. Quick sketches but what I think I want to take away from this is the general youth and androgyny of them. Also, since I bought the different colored inks, I might want to draw each race with a different color. Or not.

Another go with the dwarfs. This one is close to the description of Thorin. I was reading the part where they're toiling through the Mirkwood so thought to draw him all bent over. This was dashed out before work. Got to color him next.