Random Drawings?

Why not?

These random sketches really help take the ideas and images swimming around my mind and dump them onto paper. And it's always fun.

Animation Is Hard

     This medium is an intense combination of drawing skill, performance, and knowledge of  physical movement.
     The area I need to improve most is my drawing. Lately, I've been having a hard time with drawing. It's like my well of creativity is empty, and all that I can pull from it is the mud at the bottom. My drawings have been downright ugly and incoherent. Figure drawing classes help to fill up the well for a couple of days, but I'm soon back to the bottom.
     When it comes to performance, I feel talent inside me and can imagine a great performance, but my drawing ability hinders it from coming onto the page.
     The other difficult aspect is the physical motion, the actual animating. It's a crazy thing. To animate believably, you need an uncanny understanding of things moving through space in time that doesn't really exist until the drawings are compiled and played at a certain speed. It boggles my mind, but I feel like I'm getting better.
     A friend and I were talking about enthusiasm yesterday, and how important it is to have it in every piece of work you do. When I'm excited about what I'm doing, ideas and creativity flow like a river and I love everything I draw. But sometimes I just can't get excited, so I produce crappy drawings and in turn become even less enthusiastic about what to draw next. Then I go a week without touching a pencil. I watch lots of cartoons and wish I could be making them, but get frustrated at the thought of trying.
     Then one day I'm at work and a little idea pops into my head. I start to doodle, make a funny picture with a caption that my friends laugh at, and suddenly I'm craving my drawing desk. Ideas are bombarding me and I need to create again.
     My lesson in this is that you have to draw enthusiasm and creativity from other people. Sitting alone, bashing your head against a desk doesn't make better ideas happen. You need to absorb experiences and bounce ideas off of others.
     My drawing, performance, and animation talents will increase with time and practice, but I need to find a group of artists that keep me inspired and excited enough to keep pushing forward.

A Happy Squirrel

And why shouldn't he be? 

  An attempt at a double-bounce walk. I'm somewhat happy with it. Working on the tail right now (Overlap on a bushy tail and a double bounce is quite bewildering).

Funny Business

So, I've been working on this idea for a little while. Mimey here is trying to impress a couple of clowns, for whatever reasons a mime might have to do such a thing.

 

Here's the first bit of animation for the mime. 

For whatever reason, stupid YouTube uploads cut off the last couple of frames, which only show him land.

Any thoughts and critiques are very very welcome.

Soap Box

   I just bought the DVD of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards, and I really liked it. Ever since I learned who he was and what he did, he's been a hero of mine. I also bought his biography, "Unfiltered, The Complete Ralph Bakshi." He was a man that only did films that he wanted to do, and had complete artistic control over everything in his films. No, the animation, effects and sound aren't as tight as in a major studio picture, but that's due to the low budgets he had to work with.
   Before Wizards, Ralph had made quite a few films, all very gritty, violent, sexual, honest, adult-oriented films; he proved that animation is not only kiddie fare, which it has been made out to be. Wizards was his way of showing that he could tell a child-oriented story too, but still have honest, "how the real world is" undertones.
   Now, in the film you will hear a few "swear" words (dammit, hell), see violence and war, and hear one obscure sexual reference that would fly right over any kid's head. Also, one of the main characters, Fairy Queen Elinore, is scantily clothed, constantly revealing full cleavage , erect nipples, and thighs/buttocks.

   Watching this film pointed out to me something that has been bugging me for a long time. This film, if released today would most definitely recieve a PG-13, and maybe even an R rating. But in 1977 it was rated PG, which means parental guidance suggested. Those words are entirely ignored today. PG doesn't mean "Bring your kids! Nothing here will hurt/scare/affect them in any way! In fact, you can sue us if you see something you don't like!" It means as parents you are to decide if this film is something you want your kids to see. If not, don't take them to it. Don't buy it for them. It's that simple. Over-protective professional parents have truly stifled the amount of artistic freedom allowed in media these days, because everyone is afraid to be sued for offending anyone. It's such a huge problem, and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Bakshi did in the 70's. Where's our Bakshi of today?