Off Color - John Carter - Part 2

      After some very careful delineation and a tweak of the perspective on the background city, I finally have an inked version of the drawing. Next I shall finally dive into the coloring process with some alternative color schemes.

Off Color - John Carter - Part 1

        Okay, the long ago promised John Carter of Mars art and coloring experiment is finally making some progress.

        Things have been slowed down due to (A: Lack of talent, and (B: Lack of time.

        My first two efforts to create a decent John Carter drawing fell remarkably short of the mark. Clunky compositions, weak black spotting, questionable anatomy, the whole nine yards. However, after hunkering down and making a third effort, I have something decent to work with. Not great, but at least decent. Here's the thumbnail, rough, and (almost) final pencils for the drawing.

Thumbnail                                 Rough   

Pencils

        I'm not completely happy with the perspective on the city in the distance, so I will be tweaking that before going to the inking phase. 

        When the inks are done I will post them before going to color.

Of Apes and Men

If you are a Planet of the Apes fan, (and who the heck isn’t), here’s something nifty you should check out, Timeline of the Planet of the Apes, and the recently released Lexicon of the Planet of the Apes.

More fun than a barrel of... well, you know...

            These two tomes of delicious Apey goodness were written by a rather mad genius named Rich Handley. Rich, who can only be described as an extreme Planet of the Apes fan, has compiled the definitive timeline of all things Apes, and a compendium of all the remaining elements of the Apes sagas. It encompasses all the movies, TV series, comic books and assorted ephemera that have borne the name. It’s a daunting task, to be sure, and one that has been performed with great precision and unmatched dedication by the industrious Mr. Handley.

            But the most fun thing for me is, I’m kinda in the books! As part of a short lived Canadian comic book publishing company called Mr. Comics, (AKA Metallic Rose), I wrote and drew a short, five-page backup story for issue #4 of their mini-series Revolution On the Planet of the Apes, edited by Toronto comics maven Ty Templeton.

            And such is Rich Handley’s obsession for minutiae and unassailable accuracy that he has included my little story and its characters in both books. Hell, the dude even includes references to a story I roughed out for the comic, which was rejected in favor of the published story! How delightfully compulsive is that? But Rich didn’t stop there. He shared the roughs of that unpublished story with a UK periodical named Simian Scrolls, who liked it so much they published it in issue #16 of their magazine.

Thanks for helping that story see the light of day Rich.

            Rich Handley first became obsessed with all things Ape after viewing all the Apes movies during a week-long afternoon film festival on ABC in the late ‘70’s. As a precocious ten year old with an already overdeveloped love of movies, he was doomed from the moment the first gorilla appeared on screen.

            Shortly after the millennium ticked over, Rich began a website featuring a rudimentary version of his Apes timeline entitled “The Hasslein Curve”. Science fiction writer Ed Gross approached Rich about turning his web site into a book. Unfortunately, after compiling the timeline, Ed Gross was unable to follow through on the publishing. Rich then teamed up with his good friend Paul Giachetti, and the diligent duo deftly decided to publish the book themselves. And thank goodness they did, because this stuff is just indispensable for any self respecting Apes aficionado.

            Rich currently lives on Long Island with his wife Jill, their two kids Emily and Joshua and their skittish cat Newton. Rich is busy working on some new books, including two Apes novels with co-writer Drew Gaska and some other top secret stuff.

            Check out Hasslein books at the URL below, or be forever banished to the Forbidden Zone.

http://www.hassleinbooks.com/

            And, since this is my blog, I’ve included my own little Apes stories, published and unpublished, for your enjoyment and edification.

The unpublished story.

The published story.

Book 'Em Danno!

Over the last year I purchased three books on drawing and painting, which I thought I’d casually review.

The first is the Classical Drawing Atelier by Juliette Aristides, based on an actual atelier course she runs in Seattle Washington. It’s a lovely volume, lushly illustrated with stunning, classical style drawings from the past and present. The book seeks to recreate the atelier approach to art instruction, in which an experienced master takes on a small number of apprentices and passes on his knowledge through life drawing and painting. Many of my favorite illustrators, like Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth were trained in this way in the latter part of the 19^th and early part of the 20^th century.

The book is beautifully designed and covers the fundamentals of drawing in chapters entitled ‘Design’, ‘Line’, ‘Form’, ‘Value’, etc. While the chapters are by necessity compact, the information in each is essential and there is little superfluous text.

The book has inspired my first new year’s resolution, to get myself back into a life drawing class in 2011. There is a companion volume on painting, which I also intend to purchase in the coming year. 

Highly recommended.

The next book on the list is the most disappointing.

The Fantasy Drawing Workshop is by fantasy illustrator John Howe, who famously worked on the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. The volume purports to lead the reader through ten step-by-step “projects” but really amounts to nothing more than ten drawing demonstrations by the illustrator. I love Howe's work, but I'm not too keen on this particular book.

It seems to be aimed at a fairly inexperienced student, after the popular “For Dummies” series of instructional books, and includes some very beginner-level basics like choosing and sharpening a pencil. This is fine by me. After all, beginners need help too. Unfortunately, the drawings in question seem rather clunky, uninspired and unfinished. It appears as though the artist, perhaps, thought better of the whole project and was then unable to escape a contractual commitment. The few drawings in the book reproduced from the artists sketchbook are of a much higher quality than those presented in the demonstrations.

Sadly, I can’t recommend the book, even for a beginner. Very disappointing. Money would be better spent on one of the many collections of the artist's more finished pieces.

Not recommended.

My favorite of the lot is Imaginative Realism by Dinotopia  creator James Gurney. The subtitle is “How to Paint What Doesn’t Exist”, and it lives up to this promise completely.

Gurney takes us on a detailed journey through his techniques, beginning with thumbnail layouts and color roughs, then on to charcoal comprehensives, posing models, creating maquettes of characters and environments and the whole creative shebang. The entire process is explicitly designed to afford believable verisimilitude in fantasy and science fiction subject matter, and upon seeing Gurney's convincing, classical style illustrations in their nascent and completed forms, one is generally convinced.

The process is broken down into easily digestible bites, and is endlessly re-readable and informative.

Excellent book, highly recommended.

Comics Samples

         These are some of my most recent comics sample pages, featuring Nick Fury and The Black Widow. Though I feel they are the best I've ever done, there was still an overwhelming ambivalence on the part of those editors who perused them. I wonder if my age is a factor, since I'm well past my "best before" date as comic book artists go.

         Or, maybe I just suck.

         You be the judge.

Arts and Crafts

Rockwell speaks to me.

I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about what elevates something from the pedestrian to the sublime. What is the difference between something that is merely well crafted and entertaining, and something that is ART?

            This is not an area of study that rests easily within the limited space of my diminutive brain-pan.

Picasso does not.

            It doesn’t help that my tastes run more toward the popular and less toward that which is traditionally, or generally, considered art. The truth is, whatever the unique thread of creative logic that lead him there, I will never appreciate the work of Pablo Picasso as much as the work of Norman Rockwell. I will never prefer the writing of Charles Dickens to that of Orson Scott Card.

            I know. What can I say? I’m a rube.

            Don’t get me wrong, I have read, absorbed and even enjoyed much of the work of Dickens, and have come to appreciate, on an intellectual, and visceral level, the paintings of Picasso. But, ultimately they simply don’t engage me in the same way. There are dozens of mitigating factors, of course. Picasso’s style is challenging and Dickens’s writing is a somewhat dated product of its era.

Weak excuses, I suppose.

I certainly value what more esoteric artists have added to the world, but a Frank Frazetta painting or good pulp adventure yarn still engages me more thoroughly.

            Why?

            Maybe I’m just a farm boy, whose taste is in his mouth.

            Or maybe I’m a simpleton whose taste is in his ass.

            Both assertions might be true.

            However, there is one thing I know for certain. I don’t appreciate anything that doesn’t stem from a deep understanding of the craft. By craft, I mean the nuts and bolts of the medium.

A short history of Picasso's artistic development
displays his early mastery of the craft.

In painting, that’s anatomy, perspective, color, composition, and other fundamentals. In Picasso’s case, he was rigorously trained in these fundamentals, and then made an intellectual and creative choice to eschew those basics. That I can appreciate. Certain other individuals, who have been widely heralded as great artists, lack these skills completely.

That I cannot abide.

This shows no understanding
 of craft whatsoever.

I can see the great skill and craft utilized by comic book artist Dave Stevens as readily as I can see it in the work of Rembrandt, and I can fully appreciate both.

But, Dave transports me away from the mundane, and I guess that’s the key.

Maybe the question is why I need to be transported away. Why do I crave escapism more than intellectual or aesthetic stimulation?

Perhaps it stems from my frustration and disillusionment with the world and my life as it is, or perhaps from an unfulfilled adolescent need for the magical, I don’t know. But whether it’s little “a” art, or big “A” art, you’d better have your craft figured out, or I will dismiss you as unworthy.

And this is where I find myself. Working on my own crafts of writing and drawing, and trying, perhaps in futility, to master and transcend those fundamentals, whatever my subject matter.

Wish me luck.

The Death of Hope

Most of my life has been dedicated to storytelling of one kind or another. I’ve had my finger in a lot of creative pies, including animation, live-action film, theatre, comics, prose, improv and sketch comedy. I love them all, of course, and I’ve focused more exclusively on one or another at different times in my life.

The one I love the most, and the one that really broke my heart, is animation.

When I was in my teens, I had three great interests; writing, drawing and acting.

The Rescuers is one of Disney Studios
most underrated post-Walt Films

One fateful night, I took a date to see Disney’s The Rescuers. About twenty minutes into the film I finally managed to get my arm on my date’s shoulder, and was able to concentrate on the screen for a bit. That’s when a few important ideas began to filter into my dense teenaged brain. Somebody had to draw this stuff! They drew characters, and made them act, and told stories! It was like an explosion in my brain. Everything I dug rolled into one amazing medium.

After high school I attended the exceptional animation course at Sheridan College in Oakville. I really threw myself into that course, worked very hard, and dreamed of working for Disney one day.

But, as we all know, reality and dreams seldom correspond perfectly.

I came into animation in the early 1980’s, which was a very bad time. It was a sort of perfect storm of negative energy for the animation business.

I also made a few incredibly poor choices.

First, some truly evil ad executive realized that you could create a series of animated advertisements based on toys and run it as a TV series. Shows like He-Man, Transformers, Pound Puppies and Care Bears exploded onto the Saturday morning programming schedules. Second, some frugal financial genius discovered that you could farm out your actual animation to Korea and Taiwan and cut your bottom line significantly.

Mok, beautifully animated for Rock and Rule by Robin Budd

Thirdly, for many years Toronto’s Nelvana Studios had been making wonderful, animated TV specials. But, after the failure of their feature film, Rock and Rule, they fell on hard times, and decided to do a bunch of “toy shows”. The first was Strawberry Shortcake. I had done some in-betweening at Atkinson Film Arts in Ottawa, but I needed work badly. I did an animation test and a layout test for Nelvana. I guess my animation test wasn’t too spectacular. (I didn’t find Strawberry Shortcake very inspiring.) However, they liked my layout test and offered me work in that department.

Here’s where I made a very bad decision.

I said yes.

While working in layout, I was doing nothing to improve my limited animation skills. I liked the money and the freedom that came with it, and like any young man, I wanted to prove to my parents that I could make a living. So I spent a lot of years working on toy shows, mostly Care Bears, which can really stomp on a guy’s love for the medium. Later I got fed up with layout, but by that time all the actual animation was being done overseas. There were very few opportunities left for animators in North America. To escape layout I flipped over into storyboarding, and did that for a few more years. Storyboarding has served me well, but by that time, I’d forgotten everything I knew about animating.

So near, and
yet, so far.

I had a few decent opportunities, like a brief stint with Bluth-Sullivan Studios in Dublin. Unfortunately, my ability to make good choices failed me again, and I foolishly left the job for all the wrong reasons. I had a tantalizing close call where I almost got to work on the original Bruce Timm designed Batman series with a Toronto company called Lightbox. Unfortunately they couldn’t work out a deal with Warner Brothers, and I was left high and dry. Later, I worked with one of my heroes, Ren and Stimpy creator John Cricfalusi on The Ripping Friends. I thought this might be a turning point in my animation career, but the show came off badly and John was... well... let's say, challenging to work with.

That was pretty much the last nail in the coffin of my hopes for animation. By then animation was primarily being produced by young business school graduates rather than by people who learned the medium in the trenches, and computer animation was taking over from classical animation. Sadly, I have no digital animation skills whatsoever.

After 15 plus years in the business I had never worked on anything I was proud of, or thought was any good, or wanted to show to anyone. I gave up, focused my creative energies on other forms like comic books, improv and sketch comedy, and let the dream die.

But, I sill love the animation medium, which I think is one of the most expressive, adaptable and engaging in the world.