Contrasts: Irv Spence Mouse

UPDATE: I don't know if the feet and arms are good now. This same thing happened to me months ago with the bulldog caricature exercise .
I think I missed the funny factor here and the nose seems to be bad conected.

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UPDATE:


Better?

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Verbal Analysis:
-BIG head compared with little body.
-Little nose compared with the head.
-Little arms and legs.
- Little ears.

Here's my first attempt. What do you think?

Sterrett and Chuck Studies.

I Don't know what attracts me from Sterrett drawings but I think they have lots of appeal.

Verbal Analysis:
- Little head
- "normal"body
- Huge legs and arms.
- Little eyes and nose
- Big Mustache

His head is not oval, has a more organic and imperfect form, more natural. None of his lines are perfectly straight or perfectly curved, tweens are avoids placing one leg in a different position to the other. He use contrast to make his characters more entertaining, but not in a exaggerated way as Tex Avery for example.

Dog:
- Big Head (organic oval)
- little body (organic oval)
- Long legs (organic cylinders)
- Little paws.

The face has a small part of the skull, leaving a large space on the left. Again, he's using organic and imperfect forms, but you can see that these forms are based on basic shapes such as cylinders and ovals. Also here is a use of contrast but not too exaggerated.







I think these are not the exact frames, but they are close enough.

- Little cranium
- Huge jaw

Chuck Jones used the contrast more exaggerated.

- Between the eye and the back of the skull is a large space. Chuck Jones (as Sterrett) occupies part of the skull to place the face, leaving space at the opposite side.
- All parts follow the skull shape, the same with the wrinkles, eyes and cheeks in the jaw.
- Clear and clean silhouette.

This is the same dog from the same cartoon, but here his skull is longer than the previous frame. Now his skull has the same size of his jaw. Is this another cartoonist?
The rest of his body still important differences:

- Big Head.
- Big Chest
- Little Butt
- Long and Skinny legs
- Big Paws.


This rear view of the skull is very interesting.
- The skull is not a perfect egg, is another form with interesting angles that define the face, neck and front of the head.
- The jaw connects perfectly with the skull following form and all the secondary forms (cheeks, lip, wrinkles and nose) follow the shape of the jaw.
- The eye is tricked, because from this angle we could not see the eye.

Bob Clampett Wolf

This drawing is from a great complexity. My copy has a lot of mistakes.

-First, I should have drawn the chair first and then the wolf above, it would be more easy because I was struggling trying to guess the parts that were behind the wolf.
- The line of action was right, the body flows through it.
- The body have to be bigger.
- The hands have to be bigger
- Legs bigger.
-The chair is bigger.
- Head must feel that it is more tucked in between the shoulders. I have to exaggerate the attitude.

Comic Cover Study

Here's my try at this Mickey Mouse Cover.

Howie Post House

I wanted to try some of the Howie Post houses because I'm not good at drawing that kind of things, like props, Backgrounds, etc... elements that is.
I've been reading the Famous Artist Course and they talk a lot about the concepts that John have been taught us. They talk about the FORM, to think about the FORM of the boject while you're drawing, not just the shape but thw whole form and draw even the parts that we cannot see to meake the form solid and well constructed.

I tried some of that at this house. The house has a rectangular and the roof is a cube rotated to fit within the rectangular box. The chimney has a cylindrical shape with two cylindrical tubes. The step of entry is also a rectangular shape and all wood in the house are reduced to this form.

After drawing the roof, I covered it with straw, trying to guess how this material would behave if placed on top of this roof that had already drawn. Having drawn first the roof without the straw helped so much because I had a solid form to dress.

Sad Sack and Roger Ramjet studies

I always have trouble finding new shapes for my drawings. Most of the time I fall in the sphere and pear shapes forms from the 40's so here I tried some Roger Ramjet and Sad Sack because they have another forms in his constructions.

I started with Sad Sack. He actually had a classic construction, an egg for head and a tube for neck. He had great contrasts in his face, like tiny eyes against big ears and nose. The eyes doesn't have the white part, they are lines.
Then I think, What would happen if the features were proportional?
Not much funny, isn't it? So, contrasts are very important in cartoons.

Then I tried some Roger Ramjet characters, these have another type of shapes in his mayor forms.


These are very funny to draw! I had a great time with it, that's something very important I think. In the bottom part, I tried new angles, I think the front came up pretty well, I tried to preserve the asymmetry, the organic and contrasts. I think I failed at the 3/4 angle.


There's some things that these designs have in common, like the great contrasts they have in his mayor forms, the great amount of space inside and outside, the placement of the feet (not in the center), the limited details.

Porky toy construction: downwards

Tomorrow I'll put some observations and I 'll fix my mistakes.

Old poster construction

UPDATE:


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I know I have to reach my "plateau" with Jinx, but I need to perforate more paper so I can flip the drawings. This next week I will.

It seemed a good idea to take one of the posters that John put on his blog the other day and trying to build better characters, caricature a bit and give them more life.
These was my observations from this poster:
Porky:
- the cranium is really big compared to his little jaw.
- Body is little compared to his head.
- little ears
- little nose
- fleshy cheeks
- big eyes but not enough to distract the attention of the skull
- his tie is small
- he has a happy looking.

Daffy:
- big cranium
- big beak
- little eyes but no too little to make it unappealing.
- long and skinny neck
- little body
- skinny arm and little hand.
- he has a happy looking too.

Now, I wanted to give the characters a bit more of their personalities, I made the line of action of Daffy more strong and I changed a little his expression of bland happiness to an expression of "happiness crazy,"Porky instead has an expression of happiness a bit more tender and a line of action less strong than Daffy. I also made the right arm of Daffy more visible, giving more space to the sillhouette of Porky.


This is my attempt. The car sucks, I know, I didn't give it much attention.
I think I could make the cranium of Daffy a little more big and give it smaller eyes for stronger contrast.

Porky Lamp Construction.

ANALYSIS:
- Big head
- eyes separated.
- little snout
- little ear and separated
- little mouth
- cheeks well definided
- no neck

*The jaw is a different form to the skull. The jaw is not attached to the crane by a line, is an independent form that is embedded in the skull and form.

*The back of the skull is longer than the front.

* The skull is not a 100% round is rather oval.

*there are large spaces in the face:
1 .- A large space between the face and the back of the head.
2 .- A large space between the eyes.
3 .- A large space between the face and top of head.

*There's a space under the nose that separates this from the mouth.

* We only see one ear, the left, this is far from the face.

*The left side of the face has much more room than the right side, we see a bit of the right eye and a small part of the cheek.

* The forms that make the face follow the shape of the head. The eyes follow the rounded shape and are positioned at different angles.

* The eyes do not go at the top of the face, they are tucked inside the skull. The left eye has a shadow on the top that indicates this.

* The expression is a smile. THE mouth pushes the cheeks updenoting the mass of flesh that are the cheeks, these are well defined and tied to the shape of the head.

* There is a space between the cheeks and lower jaw that is wider in the left side than the right.

* The lip is thicker on the side that is closer to us. The other side is becoming finer by the perspective and shape of the head.

* The body is pear-shaped, is smaller at the top and widens at the bottom.

*Arms barely see, are on the back of Porky.

*According to the model sheet of Porky, thighs protrude into the body. They are great in the beginning and begin to lose weight to the knee.

* Hardly any leg is too short

*The feet are large and cover a large area but only walk on tiptoe, however the area on which the claims appear to be sufficient.

*It has a great tie which gives the feeling of being bloated. It falls to the side following the shape of the body.

* The shirt is short

This exercise caused many clicks! in my head.

Heartaches Pilot: Layout attempt.

LAST Update:


This is my last drawing after the corrections.

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-Line of action slightly bent
- slightly asimetrical and organic head.
-Big Nose
- Big floppy ears.
- Big Hands.
- Eyes slightly on diferent angles and one on top of each other.
- The eyes have soft corners
- The head have more weight in the bottom.
- The Tail of Spaz is big and heavy, the weight is on the bottom.

- face too streched.
- Needs bigger eyes.
- The fingers holding the tail should be better drawn. We should feel that they are grabbing the tail and it has weight.
- Bigger pointy hand.
- The hand that's holding the tail should have a more slithly bent curve.
- The raising ear should be slightly smaller

Man this is hard!

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I decided to do a more easy pose for study (I'm not prepared for Scribner I think, hehe)

Visual Statement:
- The dog is surprised to find Spaz with that particular smell.

Analysis:
Dog
- Clear Line of action
- Big head, little body.
- Big long ears
- Thin arms
- Big hands
- Big Nose.

The focus of this picture is the dog pointing Spaz butt.

Maybe I have to do a bigger pointing hand and put it bellow the arm that holds the tail.
What do you think John?

Update: Porky study

Level1:Level1_check1:

-Muzzle is in a wrong angle and it should be more down, leaving more space for the eyes.
- Left ear is in a bad position. Adjust the right ear too.
- The knee on the left leg has to be more down.
- Right foot is shorter and thigh a bit longer.
- left forearm is less steep.
- Right arm less steep.

Level1_2:


Level1_check2:

- Adjust left ear.
- Right ear bigger.
- Muzzle a little bigger and solid.
- Bigger hands. Adjust position of right hand.

Level1_3:

Level1_check3:

- Conect better the right part of the cranium with the muzzle.
- ears a little bigger and solid.
- better position on the lip.
- bigger fingers on left hand.
- thicker right arm
- Shorter left thigh
- right foot a little bigger

Level2:

level2_check1:

- finger that sticks out on the left side is bigger.
- right arm sleeve is broader.
- left arm sleeve is broader too and ake the arm more solid and big.

final level:

final level_check1:

Book Revue - Big Bad Wolf study

This is one of my favorite scenes from this cartoon! The animation is incredible! Especially when he swings the axe around and the axe gets right in your face. Looks amazing! Really inspiring stuff!

I got this image from John's blog. I think this was a key pose in the cartoon, but I'm not sure. I still think it was pretty good to copy from.

So here we go! Verbal analysis:

*His snout area really sticks out
*Long torso
*Big wolf feet
*Big bushy tail
*Right arm longer than left arm
*Big foreshortened axe


I tried emphasizing those observations a bit more. Trying to make the pose more expressive than the original.