Wednesday September 22th 2010

[arif]

We are starting this thread early to give members a chance to upload any video or images they want critiqued in Sept 22th seminar. The best format for video clips is .MOV files (MPEG-4 Quicktime videos).
Throughout the week, Dave will try to incorporate as many images and video clips as possible into the live seminar.

The deadline for clips and images to be critiqued in the live seminar is Tuesday Sep 21, 2010 @ 5:00 PM sharp AZ time.

Thanks


Here is the New Link to watch the live Seminar.
http://donbluthanimation.com/_Don_Bl...e_seminar.html
You must be logged into your Don's Club account to see the stream.

Please post ALL questions in this thread.

[Solium]

Hi Mr. Bluth. This is my first post for the seminar. My name is Chris. I'm Known on the boards as Solium.

My goal is to improve my drawing skills so I decided to start from scratch with monkey see monkey do. I am including various fan art and sketches.

Banjo the Woodpile Cat sketches are from the Coloring Book.



Daphne was hand drawn. The Pencils scanned into the computer. I added color and simple background with Photoshop.





My questions:

(1) Other than what I am doing, are there any other tricks or tips you can suggest in improving my drawing skills?

(2) How can I improve my line art consistency and pressure for clean up?

(3) When I draw for some time, I lose patience and my drawings begin to suffer. How can I avoid loosing concentration and laziness?

[akkushisu]

Hello Don and Dave! Seth-2 here with my assignment from Don. Last week, Don instructed me to put together a concept pitch for The Dragon Stone, summing up the story in a single paragraph. I've enclosed the concept along with a few character pictures as well.

The Dragon Stone is an enchanting tale that tells the story of Meseirah, a wicked sorceress who used her magic to charm the king of Flickweed into marrying her. Unfortunately, when the good Prince Alastair returns from exile, Meseirah's reign is challenged and, in her desperation, the sorceress drinks a potion that changes her into a dragon. Though defeated, Meseirah plots her revenge, but her plans abruptly change when she meets a kindly little dragon named Belfrost who urges her to give up her evil schemes and adventure with him. Together with Belfrost and his protector, a sagely but grumpy old dragon named Garrl, Meseirah sets out on a grand adventure full of peril and excitement in search of a place that will make their wishes come true.

This is Meseirah as a dragon. The mirror she's holding here is actually a magic scepter that she can change into various vanity items.


This is Belfrost watching in amazement as the Dragon Stone activates.


Finally, this is Garrl.


To answer Don's question from last week, I create all my backgrounds digitally combining special brushes, textures, and hand-drawn effects. On average, it takes me only a few hours to create a background if I know what I'm going for.

[arif]

here are some drawings .....didnot able to draw much for my fasting time.....

[arif]

more....

[joedorsey]

Hey Don!

I've been inspired this week by Seth and Amanda's work, so I've done some drawings of their characters.

This is Mataio a young dragon playing marbles.



Isabelle is Amanda's fox character that has an appealing sensuality about her.



Pootin is a hellhound that emits fire and blazes when emotion run strong. He is excited when someone says "Do you want a treat?"



Here's Seth's chubby dragon "Cookie" struggling to open up a jar. I was trying to get more straight against curves.

[Phrogger]

(Dave: Please note that this is not a critique request but that the question i am asking appears at the bottom after the visual examples.)

Hi Don,

I am currently taking a course titled "Drawing for Sequential Art." It teaches a methodical, structural type of drawing such as is used in superhero comics. Although I think this type of drawing is useful and will help me improve in several areas, I am frustrated at the lack of resources available to teach cartoon drawing.

Here is an example of an exercise from the class:



I would prefer to push my work in a more simplified, abstract, and expressive direction. Here is an example of my more "cartoony" drawing style:



What exercises or resources would you suggest to learn how to draw in a more cartoon style? I am afraid that the constant reinforcement of the structural style of drawing will keep my drawings stiff and lifeless.

[samuelvictorjones]

Hi Don& Dave, hope alls well!

Q1. Before asking you about what colour Jake should be last week I'd already attempted one colouring in of a frame, to test a new software package I'm learning. I wanted to show Don my initial attempt to colour him in, along with the revised version after Don's advice. I was initially happy with mine, but the one with Don's advice looks so much better, so I'm glad he advised me with this before I coloured more frames!

Please note the background was painted very quickly as a placeholder & is far from my best work!

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/9992/jakecolour.jpg

Does Don feel the second picture demonstrates the colour pallet & contrasts he was looking for?

Q2. I'm trying to develop a work-flow method that I can efficiently work with to produce completed independent animated films once I become good enough. I developed a method of using layers of vectored lines & colour to closely approximate the method of traditional cell inking & painting, tracing over my initial pencil lines with vectors, then painting blocks of colour below, allowing for quick changes of palet in different lighting situations.

Each part of the character, such as each limb, is on a separate virtual cell, so that I only have to redraw the parts that move. This is similar to how limited animation was done with cells but without the unwanted separation lines & uneven colour. The idea is to still hand draw every part that moves with no automatic tweening or such, to give a high quality, full animation feel. Here's a short section of the Jake animation I started to colour. Does Don like the style of the finished vector representation of the pencil art & feel its a satisfactory end result to use for future projects?

http://donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=500

[samuelvictorjones]

3 fairly wordy questions - sorry Dave!

Q1. My Daughter recently asked for a copy of Disney's Cinderella, & I was pleased to see that it had many interesting extra features on the second disc. One of them was a round table discussion at the Tam O Shanter with 9 current disney animators, directors & producers who all at some point worked with the "9 Old Men" who would originally meet there. They related stories of how the 9 old men & Walt himself would rarely praise work directly, only saying "that'll work".

The general thought was that the 9 old men wanted the young animators to be pushed hard & actually exceed the quality of their own classic work, rather than just approximate or match it, in order to progress the art form. I've often read that you wanted in your work to "go back to the quality of the good old Disney features". Do you feel that as a teacher you hope your students will either match, or exceed the work of early Disney, & the work your own studios produced? Or would you encorage to learn from past classic & try to develop new ideas & styles, asthetically different? The trap perhaps being that newer ideas are often more abstract & therefore more suited to limited animation, flash, or CG? Perhas yourself & Disney perfected the traditional 2d atrform?

Q2. Also on the DVD was a feature about the work of Mary Blair, & it's influence on the style of Disney features from Saludo Amigos through to Peter Pan. I confess to have never been quite aware how important colour was to the process of these films until I started thinking about colouring my own, having always previously concentrated on drawing & not wanting to spend time colouring before starting a new one! The colours in the Mary Balir concept artwork shown in the features were very inspiring & I learned a lot from them.

I've noticed in these films the background artwork is far simpler than in films such as Snow White or Pinochio, & is often in a more abstract, modern art style. At some points, there are no backdrops at all, rather flashes of colour to represent moods, such as the sequence when Cinderellas dress is torn by the ugly sister, where each shot has different block reds with no detail. In some ways this can be very effective, but in other ways I miss the quality & realism of the more photorealistic paintings of earlier Disney features. Does Don have any thoughts about the benefits of either style over the other, or how to reach a happy medium?

Q3. Whilst on the subject of colour palettes, I noticed for the first time recntly when watching Land Before Time that Littlefoot doesn't appear to have a fixed colour. Depending on the scene he is different shades of green, brown, grey & purple. This is very subtly done & I had not noticed before, until my daughter, trying to draw a picture along with the movie, pointed it out! Of course this is done mostly as the film is in a totally outdoor setting & reflects the constant changes of environment & light. I wonderred if these colour decisions were also chosen to reflect the mood of the scenes or the feelings of the dinosaur?

[caseyturbos]

Hey Don and Dave!

Hope you both had a wonderful week!
I had a little break from one of my classes so I'm going back and reworking some old 3d lessons in 2d. Anyways I was wondering if you had any feedback, comments, critiques, or help you could give me on either of these ones.

Basic Bouncing Ball
http://donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=502
(on this one my spacing or timing seemed a little off on first bounce back up any tips)
Also I've noticed I have a hard time keeping the same volume from the beginning of the animation to the end. Any best practices you have for working on that? I seem to be going straight through on most of my animation rather than pose to pose would that help?

Sneak Toward the Camera
http://donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=501
On this one it's actually on 3s and I tried inbetweening it but it didn't seem to be as good with the inbetweens included. I've heard that 2s is about as far as you should leave between animations do you think I should rework this?

You mentioned how I seem to be leaning more toward character design, and that along with illustration and concept art seem to be what I'm loving the most. Do you have any suggestions on who I should study or what I should focus on?

Here's the rest of that comic I put up a little bit of last week. Tried to focus more on the silhouette, symbol thought, and feeling that you've been pushing me toward.


Larger Version

and here's this weeks comic.

Larger Version

Lastly you've been saying that I'm not drawing loose enough so I've been watching music videos and drawing the action from those for only as long as the song plays here's a few if you have any thoughts.



Thanks again for all your help! I really hope I can join the workshop next saturday!

Have a wonderful week!

~ Casey