More Precise Rotations

I was animating my Aclysm and Astrophe side-project and having trouble with a head rotation. I had created the character from a 3/4 angle and hadn't done a full rotation because I didn't anticipate doing too much animation; in my head they were just talking and not moving. When I got into the project, this worked for the depressed, lethargic, Astrophe character, but Aclysm is more wiry and energetic and having him not evoke that with body and head movements wasn't going to work for him. I tried doing it on the fly in Toon Boom, but it wasn't looking right; specifically, the head looked like it was being squeezed instead of rotating. It became clear to me that it would be worthwhile to do a full head rotation with a front, side, back, and 3/4 front and back.

Since I already had a 3/4 view, I started with the side and front, but when I finished them, the volumes from the front didn't seem consistent with the 3/4. The center line looked off. I was estimating and eyeballing where parts needed to be and I wasn't happy with that estimation. I thought if I did a top view it might help me to better visualize how the parts of the face related to the front and side. When I finished though, I realized I could precisely determine where parts would be in a 3/4 turn by simply rotating my top view 3/4 then cross referencing that with the side and front views. It was especially helpful in determining how much something would shrink as it got farther away from a viewer.

I applied this trick. Then I realized that I could cross reference a rotated side view with a front view to make a more precise top view. I went back and did that (luckily, it didn't change the 3/4 I had already done). I further applied this trick to an upward 3/4 as well. A common trick for creating back and back 3/4 views is to silhouette the front and 3/4 views respectively and I've done that below.

My rough designs, drawing through the character:

My final, inked results with angles explained:

This character is supposed to be a scraggly, wiry character and I wanted to reflect that somewhat in the design elements. You may notice things don't line up exactly at every single point. That's because either it was a design choice in that I wanted to avoid a tangent or liked the asymmetry of matching elements; I have imperfect strokes and the width varied (again, I like this for the character); or because I was subconsciously making excuses for not fixing minor things.Given that points match up better than I could do without using this method, I'm okay with minor imperfections and I'm confident that they'll never be an issue in a 2D animation or 3D model.

By starting with a front view, then lining a side view up with it, I can extrapolate most of the other angles I need by lining them up with other, sometimes rotated, angles.

Faux-Faux Gradients

File this under stealing like an artist. My infant daughter gets fussy when it's time to eat, but without pressuring her to eat, she won't gain weight. My wife and I discovered that if we play preschool learning videos for her on our cellphones, the animations distract her enough that she'll seemingly eat without thinking about it. We generally play the same videos over and over so it gives me a lot of time to study the animations. Today I was watching what seemed to be textured gradient backgrounds and was inspired to create the following imitation:

Two art obsessions of mine are creating things that look good quickly and creating things that look good entirely in vector when possible. The image above allowed me to do both. I created two simple gradients, one for the grass and one for the sky each with 5 colors; the grass is linear, the sky radial. I then drew 5 lines on the grass near where each of the 5 colors I chose landed. I matched each line's stroke color to the color in the gradient. I then applied built-in Adobe brushes from the Artistic-Charcoal-Pencil brush library. I repositioned and resized the lines to suit my taste; in this case, I wanted it to blend in with either the lighter or darker color just enough to where the texture of the line could start to be visible. I repeated this process with the sky gradient except that I used my own scatter brush and drew ellipses instead of lines.

To better show the process, I've included the image above of my art board without the cropping. The plain gradients are shown to the left and I overlapped the strokes over the artboard. This whole process could be done in a few minutes and gives me a great foundation for a background. Since it's vector, I can resize the art as large as I want without pixelation which comes in handy in animation programs like Harmony and Flash.

New Art and Intellectual Property

Added two new character designs to my gallery. On a lark, I thought it'd be funny to make two cats named Astrophe and Aclysm (i.e.: cataclysm and catastrophe if you're slow) known for having bad luck or causing bad things to happen. I designed them and thought I could make a quick Flash short with them. I'm waiting on my friend, Jon Young, to come over to help me on the audio for it. Thought I could do audio on my own, but discovered I'm clueless about using my compressor/expander, so nope. The second piece is my attempt to make the Ninja Turtles look more like real tortoises. I did that a few months back and didn't get around to posting it. I'm also working on a character called "Psycho Billy" a ghoulish 1950's-Elvis-looking guy, so check back for that.

I noticed I put a copyright logo on the Ninja Turtles piece. I can't copyright that shit. What the hell was I thinking? I'm pretty sure I don't own the Ninja Turtles. That was dumb of me. Since I designed that piece, my attitudes about copyrights have changed anyway. I released Astophe and Aclysm under a Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) license and I plan to do that with any writing and art I do going forward which I intend to keep the rights to. I suspect studios won't buy pieces with that license, so I may not do that for all. I'm still figuring that out.

My attitude on copyright changed for two reasons: One was the arguments against intellectual property, the other was self-promotion. Reading some pieces (i.e.: one piece) by Stephan Kinsella, I was convinced the arguments for intellectual property don't make sense: Information is not scarce, IP intentionally creates a monopoly backed up by the force of law, information can't be possessed as a tangible item, IP requires a central repository to "prove" who owns the information, and IP is the only "property" whose rights expire with time. It's no surprise that over the years, media companies successfully lobbied the U.S. Congress to extend that time, which started at 14 years in 1790 and became (essentially) 120 years by 1998.

As for the second reason, my work isn't being seen as much as I liked, so it didn't make sense to me to limit how it could be shared. It occurred to me that public domain books are repeatedly re-imagined; Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein, Dracula, and Shakespeare's works are regularly made into films and television shows every few years and those characters often appear in derivative works. The art lives on and is exposed to new generations in perpetuity. Compare this to other classics that are copyrighted; certainly it's not impossible to remake them too, and it may not be even difficult for experienced studios with savvy legal teams if the studio thinks it's worth it, but it can't be denied that the legal meandering is an extra burden. On top of that, an overly protective copyright holder can exercise unwanted creative input.

I jokingly tweeted the other day that I would write the sequel promised in the end credits of the 30 year old movie Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension myself. I was curious who owned the rights and did a little digging (i.e.: I spent about 10 minutes reading Wikipedia and Google) and according to an article interviewing writer-director W.D. Richter, MGM owns the rights, but David Begelman, who ran the film's original production company, was known for double dealing. Assuming MGM even wanted to relaunch the franchise, their legal team is concerned they'd invest all this money into it then discover that Begelman sold international rights to someone else. Thus, a cult classic and piece of intellectual property intangibly rests in the filings of a company afraid to do anything with it. It'll probably fade into obscurity as the people who appreciated it die off. When I think about why I got into art, it was because I wanted to leave a mark on the world with my ideas, spark the imagination of kids and kids-at-heart in the same way I was, take a person out of their world momentarily and into mine thus expanding the human experience. It wasn't to have something I worked hard on die off in a legal stalemate.

What about the money? I think if I'm clever enough, I can still make money. For example, a comic I am writing can be sold as limited run paper versions (since people actually collect comics) and free digital downloads for those who miss out. The price and quantity of the limited run would be determined by how much me, the other artists, printers, want and distribution costs involved. Unlike other indy titles, other people could contribute to its promotion by making their own derivative works without requiring my permission.

Blog Shout Outs

Last night, Emery Emery promoted this blog on the Skeptically Yours podcast. Great! Now I have to start updating it more! Actually, I looked at the stats and I didn't get any additional views. Maybe when the show becomes available for download.

On the show, one of the guests scoffed at the idea of additional cost for GMO labeling. Emery retorted something to the effect that this guest was right, fuck these corporations. Maybe it was sarcastic, maybe not. My retort during the break was that, even if you hate these corporations, and I don't hate any business based on its wealth, but even if you did, additional regulations here and there add up. One day you wake up and realize that it costs a ton of money to start a business in your country.

It happens.

Been Busy!

I don't like my blog having such an old post as the highest post and I just put this URL on some resumes I sent out, so it's time for an update!

Lots of family members were in very bad health over the past few months, so I've been in hospitals often.

I started working at E&H Studios since my last post helping out at Ardent Atheist and Skeptically Yours with Emery Emery and Heather Henderson. They're both super nice people, and it's a blast being in studio for their hilarious shows. This is a real treat for me starting as a fan and I look forward to it every week.

I'm likely going to be an executive producer on a documentary film I'm really excited about.

I've been taking classes at UCLA in their Television Writing program. I've been learning a lot and meeting some great industry veterans as well as aspiring writers and producers. I've completed (although it needs punch-up) a spec script for HBO's Silicon Valley and starting on a spec episode of Fox's Gotham. As soon as they're complete and changes are registered with the WGA, I'll share them online. I'm really proud of the stories I came up with on both. The Silicon Valley spec I will be entering into Nickelodeon's writing fellowship which means I have to make any changes to it before the end of the month. After that, there are a few more fellowships to apply to with the big six studios throughout the year.

I'm also putting final touches on a feature script I wrote called DeathWorld. This is coming along really well and I'm really happy about the positive feedback I've been getting on what I've shown so far.

Had to quit taking classes at the Animation Academy for the time being, which is a little sad because I liked the progress I was making, the teacher is great, and it's fun to see the students (many of whom are in High School) coming out of their shell and learning the craft. I made a conscious choice though to focus on writing only for the time being, but I plan on going back after I'm done at UCLA.

That's all for now.

Find me on Twitter

Haven't been updating this blog lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been blogging.... I've been doing it in micro-form! Check out my twitter feed! If you're into the same stuff as me, let's follow each other! twitter.com/ryanmagnon

Lots of Sketches!

I've been busy with drawing. I've started taking classes in character design at the Silver Design Academy along with my classes at the Animation Academy. Doing both at the same time is great. I'm getting double the feedback. The place is really neat. Here's some photos!

Stephen's life art along with Norman Rockwell prints.

Tales from the Crypt cover art! Looks to be original.

I have new sketches! To start off, I wanted to show a new sketch of an old concept I had for the main character in Totally Awesome Dude applying some techniques I learned at the Animation Academy, Silver Design Academy, and the Animation Design Center, who I've not mentioned yet because I took classes there before starting this blog, but I definitely wanted to give a shout out to Andres Alvarez, who runs the courses.

While I see a lot of improvement in my drawing and design skills, this isn't the style I'm going for. Nonetheless, it was fun to try the style out anyway. I noticed after my second pass that the feet are way too small too and, as you can see, I kept going over it to push it out to try and balance the top-heaviness of the whole drawing. At that point, I remembered all three of my instructors telling me to try making thumbnail drawings and I decided to try that, so I'll share that in my next blog.

After the head concepts I made last time, I had to pick one to do a rotation for. I decided on the Bride of Frankenstein.

Next I did some fully body concepts for the characters I designed before. I wanted to try various body sizes for them. In hindsight, I would've like to have tried giving the Frankenstien a bigger body and smaller head for fun... I would've had one with an undersized body, one with a normal body and one with a undersized body.

Charles wanted to see my characters focus on shape more and exaggerate the shapes a little more so I made these two..

I got positive feedback on them, so I used one for my next assignment, a full body rotation.

At the Silver Academy, I had some free time before the class started so I did this character. I was thinking of straight versus curved lines. In particular, I wanted to put straight lines in unusual places. 

One of our exercises was to make a character inspired by a shape given, here's what I came up with!

Did some other great exercises at both classes, but I'm not going to share! I didn't want to reveal too much about the classes for one, and second, they're not as interesting without the instruction that goes with them. Until next time!