IN MY COFFEE BREAK this morning I watched another You Tube video about animating in Photoshop and here are the results of me trying it out. I’m sure this is going to have a useful end result.
I’d been looking out of the window since this morning thinking that I’d like to do a watercolour of the wood in the mist and later in sunshine but I didn’t manage to get my sketchbook out until 5 pm I’d finished my other work. I dispensed with my usual pen and ink and used 2B pencil for speed. The sharp detail had already disappeared but by sketching quickly rather than drawing carefully, I had time to add some colour, relying one my knowledge where the colours are in my box.
Despite the limitations of this sketch which took little more than five minutes, I still prefer it to my animation!
I’M JUST STARTING to get familiar with a new version of Photoshop and I’m pleased to find that simple animation seems a lot easier than it did with my old version, Photoshop 7, where you had to jump to another program, Image Ready, to save your work as a GIF.
Here’s a first try. Annoyingly repetitive but at least it shows that I’ve understood the basics.
Canimation
Looking towards the M62 from Starbuck's, Birstall.
There’s a chance to see a sample of the work of the next generation of animators at the cinema today in a short promotional film about the Red Bull Canimation competition. Every entry must prominently feature a can of Red Bull. It doesn’t sound like the most subtle form of product placement but the student animations look suitably impressive.
But I now know why I never made it in the animation world; I just don’t look cool enough, like the young hopefuls in this promo. The other essential is to have a film crew with you – whether you’re wandering in the backwoods or walking along the dreary terraced streets of your hometown – to capture the moment when that surprise call comes to inform you that you’ve made it onto the shortlist.
I like the scene where one young chap runs into the house, phone in hand, gasping excitedly ‘Mum! Dad! I’m going to London!’
Link: Canimation – these competition entries make you feel you don’t always need a Pixar-sized studio behind you to produce a presentable animation. I’ve got a long way to go though.
Game of Shadows
It’s good to see so much illustration in the work of these animators, in some of the advertisements and trailers and in the film we’ve come to see, Sherlock Holmes, A Game of Shadows. The clues to the mystery include a series of charcoal sketches on a very specific type of paper, as you’d expect in a Sherlock Holmes story, and the closing credits include 1890s Strand Magazine style versions of characters and scenes from the movie.
In one scene we see some of the hundreds of details that Sherlock observes as he scans a room, looking for a vital clue.
‘What do you see?’ asks his female companion.
‘I see everything . . . that is my curse!’
It’s such a good line that I feel Conan Doyle himself would have been pleased to come up with it, but I don’t remember it from the stories. It does show that Holmes would have made a good illustrator (like Conan Doyle’s father, grandfather and two of his uncles). In The Greek Interpreter Sherlock claims that he is related, through his grandmother, to the Vernets, a family of French painters.
Fiver in the film, copyright Watership Down Productions, 1978.
I’VE WRITTEN before about my time working in the background department on the film version of Watership Down (see 5 November 2002) and included some roughs but here’s some of the actual artwork, which I’ve just found while going through the drawers of my plan chest. It’s drawn with a fine dip pen nib, a Gillot 303 or 1950, in Pelikan Special Brown Indian ink. This technique didn’t lend itself to the production size so I drew it half size and they photographed and printed a full-sized, sepia-toned version on matt paper.
The original drawing is about 5½ x 4 inches. It was an odd experience to see my postcard-sized drawing projected on the cinema screen – along with the animation, the music and the vocal talents of John Hurt and Richard Briers amongst others in that particular scene.
Another background artist added the colour later. No wonder I’m described as ‘Assistant Background Artist’ on the credits. As I’d explained when I took on the job, after working through the autumn on the film in London, I wanted to get back to Yorkshire by springtime to complete work on my first book, A Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield.
Like Cowslip’s Warren, this sketchbook format nature guide was drawn in brown ink using a fine-nibbed dip pen and printed – single colour – in the Pantone equivalent of Special Brown.
SWORD DANCERS or rapier dancers were once part of the Christmas festivities, going from house to house and giving short performances which included a lot of sword-fighting.
The shading on this might look a little different to my normal style. I realised that I’d drawn the swordsmen as left-handed so I’ve flipped the drawing horizontally. Now it looks as if I’ve drawn it with my left hand with most of the lines sloping top left to bottom right.
I did a preliminary little sketch to work out the poses of the dancers but I was happy to launch straight into a cartoon version of a Brown Rat. Notice that we’re back to to right-handed shading for the ground.
I had wild black plums on my ‘to draw’ list, so when we saw some that had fallen onto a grass verge, I selected a few to draw from life, taking a small leafy twig to help put over the idea that these are plums and not, as you might guess at a glance, black party balloons. Once again, I was able to go straight into the final drawing with no rough and no pencil construction lines. This is my preferred option considering that I might need 240 illustrations for the book and more if I decide to up the number of pages from 64 to 96.
The View from the Sofa
12.15 p.m.; There’s a sad tale behind this drawing of a semi-detached house. It looks as if we might have sold Barbara’s mum’s house (Betty died in January) and we’ve popped up there to wait for some relatives who have said they’d like to take the two small sofas.
As I sat on one of the sofas drawing the view across the road I thought of all the Boxing Day parties, all the afternoon tea and Betty’s homemade scones that we’ve enjoyed while sitting here but this is the last drawing I’ll be able to do sitting on one of the sofas looking out my mum-in-law’s front room.
I’M DRAWING a motley crew of folk; ‘an assemblage of odds and ends of people, a rabble’. This rabble has yet to be roused but they’re a sufficiently motley assortment.
I used ArtPen on layout paper, filling in with a Cotman watercolour brush and Calli ink, making up the characters as I went. With no sketched pencil line to follow and no rough to trace I felt as if I had more freedom. The result looks perfectly idiotic, so I quite like it.
The actual size that I’d be printing this would be only an inch or two across, so you’re seeing the widescreen version here.
The Lawn Ranger
11 a.m.: A neighbour’s ginger cat is paying close attention to one particular spot on the lawn, sniffing it with intense interest.
What is it up to?
It turns around and sticks its paw into a hole –
a vole hole – reaching right down, like someone trying to retrieve keys from the back of a sofa.
It reminds me of a friend of my mum & dad’s, Denny from Dovercourt, who once saw a man lying by the side of the road with a look of agony on his face;
“Are you all right? Shall I send for an ambulance?”
“No . . . ugh . . . I’m fine . . . ugh . . . I’m just . . . trying . . . to turn off this stopcock.”
I’M DRAWING a proverbially Thieving Magpie and a boy snaffling pies today and, after a busy day of appointments unrelated to artwork of any description, I’m trying a different approach from my roughs first, then pen and Indian ink final artwork regime; I’m simply doodling these as Barbara and I sit and relax after dinner. I don’t get off to a good start and I think that I might have to draw these two later, but two so-so drawings are better than nothing.
Working this way a drawing takes about as long as some of my roughs. And, as I say, I can still redraw it if necessary, I don’t have to stick with my first attempt.
My drawing of Old Nick himself has turned out about as well as I’d have managed in the studio. The hand and trident are a bit shaky but the the face and figure will do.
His horns have the simplicity that I’m aiming for but my everyday sketchbook lets me down a bit here because the cartridge paper in it isn’t bleed-proof so I can’t get really crisp woodcut style lines.
Drawing a self-important Victorian gentleman wearing spectacles for my next illustration I, not surprisingly, end up with someone resembling Mr Pickwick.
I’ve used a Rotring ArtPen with a fine-nibbed sketch nib filled with ArtPen ink, not my usual Noodler’s, for these drawings and an ArtPen with a larger ‘M’ nib for thickening outlines and filling in. The hatching on Old Nick’s cloak and my Pickwick character’s coat introduces a messy sort of animation to the drawing, which I expect adds a bit of hand-drawn charm, but I’ve got something a little more sharp, graphic and punchy in mind for the images in my book, so I’m going to go back to Pentel BrushPen for the fill-in, or to watercolour brush and black ink.
THERE’S SOMETHING special about a Saturday morning in the studio. I don’t manage it every weekend but it does happen now and then because there is less of a chance of being called away on errands, appointments and deliveries than on a weekday. I feel more relaxed because it’s a bonus session of work on my book. A gift.
A Saturday morning wouldn’t be quite complete without CD Review on Radio 3. As I write this, they’re playing a new recording of Mozart’s Haffner Symphony. Perfect!
First on my list this morning is an illustration of a blazing fire, the sort of blaze you’d get if you were burning wood-shavings. I realise how much I rely on colour because I always reach for the brightest yellow in my palette when I’m drawing flames but here I’m limited to black and white line, I can’t even add a half tone, nor can I stipple to my heart’s content because that would be just like a laborious, hand-drawn half-tone and it would be equally prone to clog up in the printing.
The perspective on the bottom of the casserole needs some attention.
Flames and explosions are a staple of comic strip illustration so I could refer to my copy of the Step-by-Step Guide to Cartooning or to one of the comic strip books on my shelf but really it’s more fun to come up with my own simple home-spun solution rather than copy the best examples. That way I can keep some of the intimacy of the homely Victorian world that I’m building up in the illustrations, even though in this case there are no period details. I don’t want Batman style special effects. This sketchy version of a woodcut should be just fine.
My next subject, a skinny-ribbed person eating a local variety of porridge, prompts me to draw Oliver Twist with a touch of Stan Laurel. His second course could be this potato and onion stew.
The other day, untangling wool was my subject, today it’s picking twigs from a fleece. The people of Victorian Wakefield must have spent a lot of time preparing fleeces for combing and spinning.
News Story
I always dread being in the newspaper. I ramble on to reporters – this week it was the Wakefield Express Horbury reporter Victoria Turton – and then worry that I’m going to sound as rambling and incoherent in the article as I do in real life.
No worries; Victoria has summed up the story about the controversial proposed changes to planning legislation clearly and concisely and the Express photographer has illustrated the concept of concern for a local patch of ordinary, undesignated but much-loved countryside effectively in his picture. I did my bit by preparing a visual aid specially for this photograph; my sketchbook map of the local countryside that could be at risk if the government’s preferred option of ‘presumption in favour of development’ becomes law (see my post from last week; The Undesignated Countryside).
Crumbling Stone
Two more little drawings and that’s enough for a Saturday; a mole and a crumbling block of stone.
I need to start laying out some sample spreads for the book to see how these are going to work on the page of a B format paperback (130mm x 198mm, 5.12 x 7.8 inches).
As you can see in the unfinished figure on the left, I start my figures off as stick-men with a small circle around each joint.
THE VICTORIAN world of my forthcoming book isn’t always so cosy and nostalgic. This morning I’ve got a fight on my hands.
The golden rule about illustrating a fight, according to the advice given by several comic strip artists, is not to show the moment of impact of the fist. It weakens the action. I imagine that the reason for this is that if you show the moment before or after the impact, the viewer has to supply the missing action, making the reading of the cartoon more interactive.
The blow has dislodged the victim's hat while I made the assailant hatless to enable him to be more dynamic. The bowler hat made him look too much like a Dr Watson-type action guy, a goodie.
But in my first pencil rough (above, left) there isn’t enough contact between the two protagonists for the kind of full on, sustained volley of punches that I’m illustrating.
Once again, I can’t avoid a bit of characterisation working its way into my finished pen and ink and Pentel Brush pen wash drawing and I find myself taking sides with the victim. The man who’s just dealt the decisive left-hook looks like a bit of a bruiser to me. I wouldn’t like to meet him in the tavern on a Saturday night.
Weeding
I’m back to the agriculture in my next illustration of hand-weeding a cornfield, then, appropriately, a worker takes a well-earned break for a drink.
Well, yes, he has ended up looking a bit like a pirate. I wanted a change from giving him a hat so I went for a
headscarf, thinking of the heroic labourers in Work by Ford Madox Brown. But I might have to change that.
Frivolous or worse
Now this one really is difficult. I have to draw a woman who is ‘frivolous or worse’. As I have so few female friends who fall into that category I’ve gone for a cross between Nancy from the film version of Oliver! and a coquette from half a century earlier. And, come to think of it, there’s something of the flapper about her too. All the clichés.
It doesn’t work; she looks just a shade too sophisticated for the bawdy frivolity that I had in mind, as if she’s a toff slumming it (in the words of one the songs from Oliver!) rather than the bar being her natural habitat. She’s turned out a bit too much like Helena Bonham Carter hamming it up in one of the louche roles she enjoys so much. But I’m going to have to leave her for now.
I’M TRYING not to agonise about my artwork for my current project – it’s supposed to be fun, remember! – but there are still decisions to be made in getting over a concept with clarity, and perhaps a touch of humour.
I’ve got an illustration of muddy boots to do – what could be simpler? Well, I think my first pen drawing (above, middle) looks too much like crumbly material while my second looks more like porridge than mud!
And then the boots; it’s a Victorian setting so should those be riding boots . . . or would hob-nail working boots look more down to earth? Decisions, decisions!
Perhaps I should refer to the photograph that I took of my own boots in a muddy field in the Rhubarb Triangle, back in my diary for January.
Once again, in this illustration of an unsteady horse, I find myself preferring my pencil sketch (above, left) to my finished pen and ink drawing.
I’ve got at least 100, probably more like 200 of these illustrations to draw, so I’m not going to dwell on any particular illustration. After a while I should develop a ‘house style’ and then, reviewing the whole book, if there are any illustrations that stand out as looking particularly awkward, I can soon redraw them.
IT’S THE WEEKEND, so as a break from my normal work I decided to have a go, once again, at creating a Flash Animation. This rabbit, which would have failed the audition for Watership Down, is from a tutorial on ‘Simple Animation’ in Ivan Hissey and Curtis Tappenden’sThe Professional Step-by-Step Guide to Cartooning.
A year ago, I read right through the Teach Yourself Visually Guide to Flash MX but that has the disadvantage that when you get to Chapter 9, ‘Create Tweened Animations’, they expect you to have picked up the basics. I’m afraid that with Flash, which I use only once or twice a year, I’ve invariably forgotten the basics. The Step-by-Step Guide gives you clear simple instructions in full.
Effects like this Shape Tweening are simple to achieve once you know how. I like the way the Step-by-Step Guide casually mentions a few really useful keystrokes for Flash in the two paragraphs of instructions for shape tweening.
But I’m afraid that’s going to be the end of Flash for me for another six months! What a complex program! Everything seems designed to do what you don’t expect it to do. What finally stumped me was trying to do the simplest of processes, the selection of a sequence of frames in the animation: ‘select frames . . . by clicking and dragging the mouse across the timeline’. In my version of the program, that just drags the first frame along the timeline, leaving a sequence of blank frames. Most discouraging.
I’m not completely illiterate when it comes to computers but Flash does win the prize for the most abstruse and contrary program ever designed. Perhaps it’s too much to expect to run an old program like Flash MX on Windows 7.
I’d been looking out of the window since this morning thinking that I’d like to do a watercolour of the wood in the mist and later in sunshine but I didn’t manage to get my sketchbook out until 5 pm I’d finished my other work. I dispensed with my usual pen and ink and used 2B pencil for speed. The sharp detail had already disappeared but by sketching quickly rather than drawing carefully, I had time to add some colour, relying one my knowledge where the colours are in my box.
