Rough Drawings from a Person Who Does What Is Roughly Considered Drawing

Here are some rough pieces of Ronin Dojo Community College DX artwork I've been working on. Thought I'd share them with the interwebs.

These first couple might be used for posters. I was attempting to work in some interesting angles; trying to emulate the classic epic, anime ensemble pose. I had to keep pushing myself to make the gestures feel kinetic and alive. Still don't think I pushed it far enough.

More fun with perspective and faking a fish eye lens type effect. In this one, you can see an unmasked version of David, the mysterious third nerd from IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR.

A more standard use of perspective with this one. Unlike photography and live action, cartoons don't have that inherent sense of depth. You have to go out of your way to build up that sense of space and reality. If someone had battered me over the head with the rules of perspective starting when I was like five- maybe I'd have mastered it by now.

While working on these, I was paging through Rad Sechrist's blog, along with the Art Center blog he contributes to. Lot of great tips and inspiration up there. Definitely check it out if you're an animator, illustrator or if you like ducks in steam punk looking suits.

I'll try to be a little Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance here, and say that it's a good thing that I'm 27 and still learning about drawing and animation. Embarrassing, but good.

Going Digital Saves You The Pain of Trashing Stuff

Phew, it feels good to be back on the ol' internet. For a couple months I was on a little work hiatus. As in a hiatus from being on the internet because of work. Not to be confused with a hiatus from working, or the 1954 B-Movie Hiatus From The Black Lagoon.

So now that I have nothing going, what better to do than blog.

I took a little break and went back home to Maryland. My parents requested I clear out some of the mess I've accumulated in the basement storage room, or they'd call whoever cleans up the houses on Hoarders. During my digging and crying, I ran across a couple boxes worth of animation.

This represents only a fraction of For Tax Reasons' work. I think some of IM IN UR MANGER is in there, the heads from the G.O.P. P.S.A.'s, and part of my Got My Number music video.

It's almost as tall as Marley! And would be even taller if Matt and I didn't cut so many corners when we animate. Of course, if we didn't cut any corners, we'd probably only have two shorts online.

I kept a few of the drawings, but threw most of them into the recycling bin. They're all scanned and saved on various hard drives; pretty pointless to keep around. Even if I became ridiculously famous in some bizarre twist of fate, nobody would ever want the majority of these drawings. Since Matt and I work with so many layers and libraries, they're mostly bodies without heads and random arms:


The only way someone would EVER want those drawings is if I become a crazy eccentric billionaire- and after I die Sotheby's auctions off my state and includes them in some 2 for 1 deal with a real live genetically engineered Centaur. Only then would somebody MAYBE want those drawings. Fancy auctions do 2 for 1 deals, right?

As you can see, I work hard to validate my decisions to toss anything.