Dish Boy Dave

This picture is a very loose self-portrait, including what is becoming my trade-mark "Big Ears". It also include a new way to draw eyes, a lot more action than I typically depict, and some serious influence from the comic "Blondie". Most importantly though, this drawing shows a clear example of another lesson Mike offered: draw light to start with, and don't be afraid to change things. Big things, even. This character for example started with a much lower stance, but the torso was too long and the legs too short. I showed it to my wife and she couldn't tell me what was happening at all (hopefully it's more obvious now).

And yes, I used to break a lot of dishes when i washed them. Now I wash much much slower, but at least there's no chips or breaks.

Engineer

Okay, so there are, a few things I'm noticing here. New pencil, obviously. It's a Derwent Chestnut water soluble, and it's a lot nicer pencil than the Laurentien pencil crayon I was using. Also the reason it's an engineer is because my Dad bought me the pencil (yes, it's true) and I hoped he would like the subject matter. The engineer is pretty basic. I wanted to try a new shape for the head (bean) and I wanted to focus a lot more on Background, since they TEND to be a little important. Man, I felt like I drew a TON of dials and such, but now it just looks so empty.

a couple of things

a couple of things I've noticed:

Mike really said that I needed to work on form, and this is something I've concienciously done. He also mentioned that 3/4 perspective is simply more interesting to look at than straight-on, and I'm noticing that I've been pretty rigorous in that which surprises me. Then again, he also mentioned that my style reminded him of Anime, which I still think is crazy.

Also, I have been pretty diligent in making time to draw, but not to update this blog. So the stuff I'm uploading now is at least a month old. The other thing I guess is funny that in all my pursuit of "animation", I've neglected to attempt any loops or actual animated scenes since before Christmas.

Happy Sumo

I fell in love with this guy as soon as he hit the paper. And it's not just that lovable face, either. I really feel like I was getting a good sense of form and shape, and letting the shape guide me. I feel like since then I've really struggled with me guiding the shape, having decided ahead of time what a given thing should look like. My best results definitely come when I can avoid this process.

Robot

I'm always trying to draw robots. I guess it's because as a kid I really loved robots, but they're actually really hard to get "down." So I was pretty pumped with this little sphere of a droid. Yes, the head is the guy from Jabba's Palace. So what. I guess I just really like that he looks like he has some real shape to him, like he's actually got depth an not just a drawing trying to look like it. Hurray for form!

Wild West Folk

Okay, so I really can't stand the "sheriff" (I haven't really got a good handle on men's lips), but I really like the wild-west lady. I actually felt like I had some decent Character design going on, as opposed to just doing the same thing over and over again. But then I realized that she looked amazingly similar to a villan in a Samurai Jack episode I just saw. Crap.