So I was playing around in photoshop, just trying to remember all the facial proportions and rhythyms and before I knew it this image was formed.  I thought it looked pretty cool and maybe others might find it interesting/useful… or at the very least, it could give somebody nightmare material.  It isn't entirely accurate, but has enough info to remind me of the foundations in the face.  Maybe I'll make up a companion to it showing the planes of the face too.

Here is the first stage of a monkey run I'm working on.  It's nice and loose yet with a focus on volume and motion/arcs.  Done on 3s for the time being.  I'll finesse this a bit more before jumping in and making some nice, detailed drawings.  Then I'll spend some time doing some good inbetweens.  I need lots of practice on that inbetweening.  I always end up with jumping jiggley lines.

Here is the first attempt I've taken at a walk cycle in a long, long time.  I see plenty of issues with it, but most of them come from my sloppy inbetweening.  Overall though I think it is a good step (no pun intending) and I can't wait to get into more personality based walks.

 One thing I want to study after doing this is what happens to the knee when a leg starts bearing the weight on it.  You can see in my animation that I have the body continue down a bit as the leg absorbs the weight, which causes the knee to move forward.  Then the knee changes direction as he pushes off with that same leg.  It gives it a strange feeling that doesn't feel right.  If you know the answer, please let me know in the comments.

Try to copy the images below using proper construction drawing methods to improve your drawing skills.  Then share your results by posting a link in the comments section.

Buckaroo Bugs (1944)

Directed by:
Robert Clampett

Animated by:
Manny Gould
Robert McKimson
Rod Scribner

The Buckaroo Bugs short can be found on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Vol. 5

Download this week's images

Click each image to view it full size
 

So, after such a long break away from animation I thought it would be wise to redo what I've done previously to catch myself up on what I've learned before moving forward.  This time I used the computer to clean things up just a bit.  Below are the results.  Now that I have these out of the way, look for new stuff soon.  My hope is to start in on some walk cycles by next month, in the meantime I still have a few simple, but necessary exercises yet to complete.  The explanations for these assignments can be found in previous posts from the first time I did the assignment, but if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll get back as soon as I can.

Pencil, Paper, a Ruler… a little knowledge of perspective and basic timing and voila!

I'm curious how many of you see a cube rotating counterclockwise, and how many are seeing a strange sort of 3D trapezoid rotating clockwise?

This time in a digital painting.  I'm trying to improve my eye for color, no pun intended.  This painting was from a reference image where I tried my best to match up the colors without any sort of color sampling or other computer trickery.  I feel pretty good about it, I think I came close in my color choices.