WELL LAH DE DAH

This is an excerise I do where I'll watch a classic cartoon, pause it, and copy the poses. But instead of just copying the character, I'll use my own character and try to match the pose. Does this excersize actually do anything for your drawing abilities...? I dunno, I just like doing it.

It's from a Tom and Jerry cartoon, "Cat Fishing" the best Tom and Jerry I've ever seen, the only good Tom and Jerry I've ever seen. I hate tom and jerry's, they're super boring. But I saw this one and loved it, and then I found out one of the lead animators was Michael Lah, Tex Avery's right hand man, and my favorite animator of all times. He animated the bests scenes too.




So, not too many posts ago I proclaimed Tex Avery's MGM cartoons are the greatest cartoons ever made. Well I was wrong again, kind of. I recently saw a few cartoons Avery did for Walter Lantz, after leaving MGM. One of them in specific, a chilly willy cartoon entitled "The Legend of Rockabye point", is one of the single funniest cartoons I've ever seen.

The budget for the cartoon was lower than those he produced at MGM, and is evident with 1. More recycled BG's than usual (for a Tex cartoon) and 2. More holds than usual (for a Tex cartoon). But that's not a bad thing, in fact, this is how limited animation should look.

CREATIONISM

This is a little piece I did, I thought it was a funny idea. I did it all in flash, and actually put it together pretty quickly. I call it "The Creation of Bloo". I think it's pretty obvious what work of art this is based off of, and if you don't know, well then you're probably blind. Which is weird because I don't know how you'd be reading this post?

BIRD LOVERS

This is a t-shirt design I did for a contest being held on behalf of Jason Mraz to design new merchandise for his web-store.

BIG FOOT AND GNOME

Finally, after posts of speculation, the truth is revealed... Here's a little logo I threw together. I did it fast just because I wanted something to put on our storyboard templates, you know, to make it look more "official", and the logo just kinda stuck. I'm sure we'll tweak it later, but, just thought I'd put it up.


Also, this character above has nothing to do with Big Foot and Gnome, just an old character I'd thought I'd post. I like it.

TEX MESSAGING

So I'm obsessed with Tex Avery cartoons. Not his WB ones, but his MGM cartoons. A buddy of mine gave me a copy of the Avery Collection (which was originally on laser disc I think), and has every cartoon he did at MGM.

Prior to seeing the Avery Collection, I had been fixated on WB cartoons (I tend to go through phases), and was convinced that they were the greatest cartoons ever made specifically the Road Runner/Coyote series... I was wrong. I can't believe how incredible Tex's MGM cartoons are. I have been watching them non-stop for about 2 months now, and they have yet to get old. They are the most entertaining and captivating pieces of cinema I have ever seen. After watching only the 1st disc of a five disc set, Tex Avery had completely changed my perception of what animation should be.

I think today his genius may be somewhat overlooked. A lot of the gags you see in his cartoons were so radical and groundbreaking at the time. I'm sure when people first saw his cartoons they thought "what the hell is he on?". However, over the years, people have repeatedly stolen Avery gags and executed them with less than perfect timing, poor staging, and unappealing drawings. It's gotten to a point where Avery gags are standard in most cartoons, the completely original and innovative jokes he created have broken into a realm of normalcy, I think maybe even subconsiously (spelling?) . We now KNOW for a fact that when a male character sees a sexy character his eyes pop out of his head. I mean, Avery came up with at over 60 years ago, and since then, no one has come up with a new "take". Why not!? The only shows I actually see trying are Spongebob and Chowder (Which is absolutly brilliant). Chowder is pushing the envelope on gags more than any show since Spongebob. Chowder also has what appears to be a specific vision which creator Carl Grenblatt (also a Spongebob board artist (and an emmy winning board artist to some)) executes without flaw. I feel like there are probably a lot of people saying "what the hell is he on?" right now, however when 5 or 6 shows come out copying the style and sense of humor of Chowder it will become a standard. On a side note, (not that this post hasn't already taken one... or two), What kind of logic do we use today where whenever someone comes up with something original and creative we say "what the hell is he/she on?". Why is the only way someone can be creative through the use of halucinagens?
Anyways, in closing, Tex Avery is single greatest animation director of all time, "Hick Chick" by Avery is the best animated short of all time, "The Three Little Pups" by Avery is the best looking animated short of all time, and you should watch Chowder on Cartoon Network.

If you read that whole thing... cool, and thanks.
Oh yeah, here are some Avery model sheets I copied.

TOP SECRETER DEVELPOMENT WORK

These are some concept sketches of the other main character... you don't win anything for guessing what he is. He didn't change too much through out the whole development process, which could be a bad thing, but the final version is pretty hillarious.


Potential Squirells. Now I'm not saying there are squirells in the project, but if there are, these are them... potentially.
Some additional Big Foot concepts and shapes. I forgot how many of these I did, there are about 4 more pages as well.
I like the one that looks like a cactus.

TOP SECRET PROJECT- DEVELOPMENT WORK

This is some development work I've been doing for a super top-secret project I'm working on with a friend of mine, Joey G. We're both really excited about the project, and hopefully I'll have quite a bit of artwork to continually post as we press onward.

I tried to start pretty much with just shapes, exploring all kinds of possibilities (Very much inspired by the work of Shane Prigmore and Shannon Tindle.) These are concept designs for one of the main characters, can anybody guess what he is? (The final design is not included on either page).

DODGEBALL

These are some rough sketches I did of my puppy Dodger, aka Dodgeball, aka Beaster. He's an akita, and big and pretty old, so he lies around a lot which makes it easy to do gesture drawings.



The beast himself;