New Sites!

So after spending a couple weeks wrapped in code, I've finished redesigning the websites for both For Tax Reasons and Ben Levin Dot Net. They're a bit easier to maneuver and link around, and no more ancient iframes.

I also drew some new banner artwork for my site. I call it A Circle Pit Landscape. Here it is in stages- as I like to present things.




Also, the Teenage Bottlerocket video is up on Youtube. Now you can watch it in sharp HD quality. Thanks goodness, I didn't sit around for months drawing in 5806 x 4158 pixel Photoshop canvas' for so everyone could watch a small chunky compressed version. I sat around for months drawing in 5806 x 4158 pixel Photoshop canvas' for so everyone could watch a sharply compressed version. Oh yeah. So sharp you could cut Gouda on it. Go ahead and put a hunk up to your screen and (as Bravo says) watch what happens.

New Stuff For 2010!

Finally, some new stuff coming out. Firstly, you might have noticed I've got a new blog header. Thank goodness, that other one was old and had not aged well. If you want to see a bigger version, you can check it out on my Flickr photostream.

In a year, I'll probably be sick of this header too. Maybe even a couple months. Hell, I may not like this drawing tomorrow. Man, you know what? This drawing is crappy. I'm scrapping the blog altogether.

Ah, I can't do that. Not while you were halfway through reading this post. Or if you're a bot, skipping straight to the bottom so you can make nonsensical comments about iPhones. So time for the second bit of news.

I finished my Teenage Bottlerocket music video for the song "Bigger Than Kiss"!



It's premiering today on Myspace in the videos section right up there with Three Six Mafia and JD from Le Tigre. What a motley crew.

Really glad to have it done and out for the public to see. Hope people like it. If not, well screw you, I drew it all by myself.

If you still haven't bought the new album, They Came From The Shadows, I highly suggest you do. Got onto a lot of Top of 2009 lists on Punknews.org, and if bearded Lawrence Arms fans like it, it's gotta be good.

I believe that's the last of the leftover projects from 2009, so I'm ready to tackle 2010. Matt and I have some new For Tax Reasons projects planned, most importantly a new Ronin Dojo Community College DX series. So stay tuned to your internet tubes.

Evolution of a Shot

I'm nearing the 7th inning stretch with the Teenage Bottlerocket music video. Thought I'd share some drawings and show the magical metamorphosis of a shot.

We start with the larvae, a detailed storyboard.

It's amazing how much information I can convey, with several deft strokes of the digital brush. Next, the shot wraps itself in a cocoon of sketchy blue lines and enters it's pupa or "rough" stage.

Finally, after hours of pupation*, a clean drawing emerges and thrusts it's gloriously detailed wings to the world.

In the coming days, the shots will fill itself with a rich palette of hues and tones. But these moments of glory are fleeting, for the lifespan of a typical shot of animation in this music video is merely a second. Such is the nature of animation.

Thanks for reading this far, and for letting me stretch that metaphor paper thin. As a show of gratitude, some extra drawings.

* First time ever using that word.†

† Look at me, I'm David Foster Wallace-ing the shit out of this post.¶
¶ I mean that in the nicest way possible. ®
® I'm sorry.

Exposure Therapy

Crowd shots and walk cycles. Two of my least favorite things to animate, and coincidentally, the two shots which have been plaguing me for the past week. They're both for the Teenage Bottlerocket video I'm working on, and I finally finished cleaning them up, and they look pretty coool- so check 'em out.

First out the gait (wamp wamp) is the walk cycle. This was a little tough because it was a 2 point perspective walk. Here's the initial rough test. Matt helped me look it over and figure it out. I didn't approach it with the best geometric planning, but eventually I came out with this.

Here's a quicktime version for better viewing.



Next up is the crowd shot. Oy vey, this took a while to do, but to see it in motion is pretty satisfying.




Surprisingly, it doesn't take too many drawings to create a convincing loop of a jump. The two characters jumping in the back are only 4 drawings. The girl in the front has a little hop and some extra follow-through, so she's 7 drawings.

What it looks like with all the layers on at once

The head nod of the girl with glasses took a little bit to figure out. In the end, it was also only 4 drawings of her moving her head up and down in an even motion. At first, I had her jerking her head up and down, to try and emphasize her nodding to a beat. It looked too much like her boyfriend with the glasses was ramming her from behind, so had to scrap and rework it. I think the final product with looks fairly non-sexual, so I'm happy with it. But the seed has been planted, so maybe now that's all you can see in it.

That's all folks, for now. Sweet dreams until I finish another interesting shot.

Some Sneaky Peekies

Lot's of work going on right now, mostly on stuff that cannot be posted on the internet. However, what I DO have to offer is a sneak peek at the video I'm working on for Teenage Bottlerocket.



It's for the song "Bigger Than Kiss" off their Fat Wreck Chords debut "They Came From The Shadows". Which you should go buy right now.



The album is awesome. All of the songs are rad pop punk jams- there's some love songs, some sci-fi songs, some fast angry shit thrown in there too- it's sweet. I don't know why I'm not writing music reviews for a living. Anyways, if you don't believe my 90's surfer-bro critique, check out the video for the track "Skate Or Die".



My video should be coming out in late November, but I'll have more updates before then, hopefully some tests and colored-in stuff. Until then, catch ya later most excellent blog dudes.

A Hastily Thrown Together, Vaguely Themed Post

"Geology is a study of pressure and time. That's all it really takes, pressure and time. . . that and a goddamn big poster. . ."-- Red, The Shawshank Redemption

So here's a quick post about a couple things I've been working on. This is a rough version of the poster for Carlapalooza 2009. It's a punk show Mr. Chadd Derkins puts on to benefit MS. I drew the poster for the 2007 show and Chadd was nice enough to ask me back.

So for this year I decided to run with the battle theme again. Check it out. Looking a the old poster, I felt like it was a bit flat. I decided this year I should make the angle a bit more dynamic- throw in some perspective. It should be my official motto for 2009- "throw in some perspective". That or "fruit on the bottom". I don't know, I've been eating a lot of yogurt lately.

The project I've been steadily chipping away at is the Teenage Bottlerocket video. (this is my attempt to stick with this post's theme.)

One thing I've learned, while making this video, is it's hard to draw hands holding drumsticks. I don't know why, but it's always looks weird when I do it. I think it's the thumb placement.

It's double-y frustrating when you have trouble drawing hands. Not only are you failing at something so essential and basic, but you have the perfect reference right in front of you and you still can't figure out where a knuckle should go. Baffling.

Something I DO need photo reference for are the dreaded crowd shots.
It's always tough to come up with a bunch of random characters and poses. I usually have to look up some photos from shows and just pick out people from the crowd. Otherwise, I end with these really lame, unimaginative people cluttering up the scene.

Thank goodness for the internet and Flickr though. Because I mean, seriously, how often do you look at a man's crowd shots.

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead

Still getting over the post-Otakon euphoria/withdrawal. I never went to sleep-away camp when I was young...er, but I assume this is the feeling you get when you leave camp. You're back to reality, your same old routine, and don't get to hang around all your camp friends all day who are dressed up like Street Fighter characters. That's what happens at sleep away camp right? I mean, I went to day camp. I just assumed when you went away for more than one night, dressing up was a pre-requisite.

Anyways, several news updates. Firstly, Matt and I have some made some massive For Tax Reasons plans for the upcoming months. We're hoping to release some merch to fill out our very small selection. Planning to have some posters and a new t-shirt design.

We WOULD have had the new shirts for Otakon- BUT I've been struuuuggling with silk screening lately. Everything that could possibly go wrong in the making of these new shirts has gone wrong. I've gone through 4 screens now. But I'm not giving up! I have put TOO much money into this operation and have too many blank American Apparel shirts that aren't my size.

Anyways, we should have new shirts coming up soon.

Secondly, I finally joined the Twitter machine. So if you want to see the random thoughts I have as I sit around animating, follow me: twitter.com/ben_levin

Finally, I'm back to work on the music video for Teenage Bottlerocket. We've switched things up and I'm now doing a video for their upcoming full-length debut release on Fat Wreck Chords "They Came From The Shadows". It'll be dropping September 15th, which means, I cannot reveal details of the super secret new song that's in the video. But I will give you a peek at the storyboards I just finished today. Check it out.

I know, right. Total album spoiler. Ok I'm out, my back hurts.

I've Got A Black Hole In My Mind

I've been working on a music video for the awesome pop punk band, Teenage Bottlerocket, and things are starting to come together. I scanned in some of my work to do a little lip sync test. Check it out.

While making the Ben Weasel music video, I discovered that animating the lip sync for a person singing requires a more than my standard set of 10 mouths I use for speech. Talking is relatively fast, so I can get away with popping between mouth shapes with little notice of the change. However the drawn out movements of singing require a few inbetween's here and there to make everything look smooth. So I draw one AH mouth and then a slightly smaller AH mouth to cushion the mouth movements. Several varying sizes of OO mouths, and so on and so forth.

It's not perfect, but it works ok, and I need to cut all the corners I can when I'm making this thing on my own.

Anyways, here's a head pencil test I did of Ray nodding his head along to the music. There's no music in the clip so you can just imagine him nodding along to anything. Maybe a song, maybe a school presentation you're working on about the Marshall Plan or something. I don't know, go nuts.

Lost In Space

I just roughed out head rotation for Agent Wilkins, a new character in the RDCCDX universe, voiced by Emily Tarver. Usually, I wouldn't make a full set of heads for a secondary character, but she's featured in the next two episodes of Ronin Dojo Community College DX: The Digital Pirates of Dark Water Saga, so she's getting the full treatment. We spare no expense here at the For Tax Reasons Spa, Resort & Drawatorium.

For those of you who don't often read my blog, I'll be pairing these with sets of mouths and eyes to be used for whenever she's on screen, yapping away.And as if I didn't spend enough quality sedentary time at a scribbling around with pencils, I've started working on a music video for the awesome pop punk outfit Teenage Bottlerocket. I'm pretty psyched about it, I've been a fan of TBR since I saw them in Mrs. Jones' basement back in Silver Spring, MD. If you like solid catchy pop punk tune-age, check them out. By the way, that flyer above is old so don't go to the Cake Shop in 8 months and expect that line up.

She's a Dove, She's A Fucking- Robot Rights

Bloodbath Several Blocks From Burger King

I'm going to be animating all today, trying to get this short closer to being done. In the meantime, here's a flyer I'm also working on.

Oh yeah, and if you're in the NYC area, you should check out this show. It's gonna be rad.


Pop Punk Nights & Robot Rights

(That one is weak I know.)