How to Draw Your Co-Workers

Leftover goof-off drawings from my time at an East-Coast Animation Abattoir. It's fun to work with cartoonists and animators. Do or say something stupid, and it's bound to be immortalized in pencil or ink. The top drawing is dripping with irony, by the way!

How to Draw a Princess

More goof-off drawings from the same set as earlier (done while avoiding work at my animation job some years ago). My supervisor was a real Disney fan and kept several photocopied Disney model sheets next to his desk. He was also a real straight-arrow, handsome, positive, church youth-leader.... we were natural enemies. These perversions of his model sheets were meant solely to put a burr under his saddle blanket. I don't think he ever noticed them.

More Forbidden Drawings!

From the same collection as below, (special thanks to the MacArthur Foundation for loaning them back to me). I have no recollection of doing this, but rest assured, it was probably meant to annoy someone. It looks vaguely like John Travolta from Battlefield Earth- I didn't see the movie, by the way, as I was told if you viewed it you would become a Scientologist!

How to draw liverspots

Another beaut from my animation "Goof-off-while-at-work" days.

Forbidden Drawings

More drawings done while I should've been working at an animation studio in 2000 (see yesterday's post for the full story). This is Darryl ( name changed to protect the innocent). "Darryl" was a smart guy but had emotional issues. I always thought he'd lose it and run amok someday, so I imagined how many tranquilizer darts it would take to bring him down. This looks just like him from behind- honest!

How to draw at the office

I recently unearthed a cache of forbidden drawings done while working for a small animation studio in New Jersey called Hypnotix, around 2000-01. Working hunched over a lightbox for 10 hours a day can be nerve-wracking. The main concern for an animator is staying "on model", everything has to look consistent- whether it's Daria for MTV or the Deer Avenger. For the entertainment of your fellow animators, and for your own sanity, a small collection of amazingly immature drawings would start to grow beside your drawing board. I'm not proud of it, but if anything during the past year or so, I've tried to be honest. So for the next few days, relax, hold your nose, and enjoy this showcase intended to cheese off my then supervisor .... and his supervisor, etc.

Animated Style

I have yet to hear back from Warner Bros. regarding my character designs for the animated Justice League and their subsequent spin-offs. A simple generic rejection letter is all I ask!

Big Barda

Yep, it's Big Barda, one of my favorite Jack Kirby Fourth World characters. It may have something to do with the dark mane and fiery temper. She's not the first animated/comic character I've been attracted to; a short list would include Jane Jetson, Gwen Stacey (-snif-), Wonder Woman (animated version), and - dare I say it- Kim Possible? I'm not proud of myself.

Lightbox

A spare doodle I did on a break during my animation days. Putting in 8-10 hours a day drawing over a light box can make anyone feel like a machine of sorts. Months spent drawing Daria for an MTV cd-rom game inspired many "Franken-Animator" drawings.

Layout

From the late '90s, a sample from my animation layout portfolio.

Komrade Floursack

Last month I told a bitter-sweet story about life lessons from 2 of my former teachers. I mentioned how animation-instructor Doug Compton had been my living nightmare before wiping the Maya from in front of my eyes and revealing the truths of the universe. The "living nightmare" involved weeks of repeatedly drawing flour sacks. In traditional animation (before them computers did all the work) students would learn to animate form and weight by drawing flour sacks as substitutes for humans. It was thought they most closely resembled the American physique.
None of us realized how difficult this could be. Doug had us draw pages of flour sacks, rejecting them all. He was as disgusted with us as we were with him.
Thankfully, our storyboarding class gave me a chance to vent. I boarded a sequence involving a "Ministry of Animation" where the animators wore Soviet-style uniforms, drawing flour sacks and having them rejected by their cruel Komrade Supervisor. One night while the supervisor is working alone, he is attacked by living flour sacks brandishing an exacto-knife.
My storyboard instructor told me he could hear "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" in his head during the above sequence. While it was a big hit with the rest of my comrade-workers, it didn't earn me many maturity points at the Kubert School.

Committing to a line with Frank & Doug

Between 1995 and 1997, 2 teachers- Frank Stack and Doug Compton completely changed the way I draw. Thank God! Above is an example of the kind of obsessive scribbling I was doing as of '95 ( a friend's sheep and Frank Stack). I thought I was Feliks Topolski.

Underground Comix legend Frank Stack was teaching at the University of Missouri where I worked at the time, and he allowed me to sit in on his figure drawing classes. He would patiently talk to me about the importance of committing to a line while drawing, resisting the urge to sculpt a figure out of thousands of tiny, searching scratches. If one continues to draw using a series of timid 1/8th inch long tic-marks, the result is a fuzzy image that's probably not proportioned very well. I was fussing, not really drawing.

I hardly paid any attention to him. I was clearly a genius and besides, other students thought I "drawed real good!"

By the time I hit the Joe Kubert school in '96, I realized something had to give. I look at most of my figure drawing during that time makes me wonder what kind of rash the models had that coated them with such moss made up of tiny line segments.

By the summer of '96, I was committed to cleaning up my act. I would still search for a good line with pencil, but at least they were honest lines. I was amazed at the improvement. In 2 months, my sketchbooks looked like they belonged to another person.

In '97, I began the animation program at the Kubert School. Our instructor for in-betweening was Doug Compton. He was my living nightmare. He'd worked for Warner Bros., Ralph Bakshi, a lot of big names. He was storyboarding Pinky and the Brain at the time. He was a perfectionist and he wanted us to be too! Imagine! I spent most of my time in his class re-doing assignments and choking back tears of frustration.

A cruel caricature taken during class.

I noticed, however, that when he wasn't eviscerating someone, he was drawing. He never stopped drawing. When I had the chance, I'd pass his desk and watch in amazement as he'd lay down the richest, juiciest lines- fast. It was like the drawing was finished in his head and he was hurrying to catch up. No hesitation. When he drew, he took no prisoners! I learned from Doug what Frank was trying to teach me years earlier! Commit to a line- everyone searches for the right form and shape, but search with a strong, bold line and move on!

Two scans from my animation portfolio in '98 that got me work. Please buy Frank Stack's books available from Fantagraphics Publishers ( I think ) and visit Doug Compton at http://www.karmatoons.com/. Whenever I draw, they're both rattling around in my head!

Daria's Inferno

Sorry about the delay, computer glitches laid me low yesterday. 2000 or so, while working for Hypnotix, technically this is their property. As you can see, this is drawn on the back of an animation exposure sheet. This is during the 6-8 months we spent working on the cd-rom game for MTV called Daria's Inferno. The challenge was staying "on model" using MTV's characters. A former teacher of mine, Frank Suarez, who had worked for MTV (every animator in New York had at one time or another) advised me to sit next to a Xerox machine and cut n paste copies of the model sheets in different positions. Sound advice to all animators. I sought release in sad little drawings of wretched animators suffering under the weight of pencils, etc.