I’ve never asked for guest strips or have really understood them. I’ve always said, as a reader, that if a creator needs a break I will wait practically forever for them to get back to it (I’ve read a lot of independent comics, after all).
Anthony Naylor, of Tone Cartoons at www.tonecartoons.co.uk took the time to surprise me with a guest comic without any pleading on my part. I was a bit overwhelmed by this and had a goofy smile on my face for the rest of the night.
Now I get it, at least as a creator. There’s nothing more flattering than a cartoonist you respect drawing something you’ve created. My education is in animation, so I’ve drawn a lot from model sheets, but this is an entirely different experience.
Enjoy this, but, uh, don’t enjoy it so much that you don’t want me to do the strip anymore. And check out Anthony’s cartoons. There’s more than a few that I have permanently etched in my brain.
I found these while clearing junk off my computer. Imagine the above drawings eight feet high and on the side of a building. They were used in some commercials, too.
Now, the reality behind those drawings is that I was given no time to make them. They were needed immediately and all I had was copy paper, a felt tip pen, a scanner and Photoshop.
It will never cease to amaze me that the stuff of mine that I spend a lot of time on never gets seen and the stuff I make very quickly winds up on the sides of buildings or in the paper. I think when I have a load of time to work on something, the mental blocks that sabotage a project have time to kick in.
I found this on the computer that I use for my advertising work. This was “doodled” in Adobe Illustrator with a mouse. It’s really just me warping shapes together.
I was probably talking on the phone. I think it looks kind of neat!
It was six years ago when we told my (now deceased) mother that we were getting married. It was a sweet moment. Mom started crying. Rachel started crying. I was stuffing my face with the item pictured above.
Ok, since I tried to write out my thoughts on popular animation during a break on a busy workday, I thought I would add some more. Then I’ll shut up.
I guess that the biggest turn off, for me, with current feature animation character design is that they look like puppets.
I have no beef with puppets or with animation that looks like little action figures have come to life. In fact, I think Wallace and Gromit is pure genius.
What I’m missing is the alternate reality that 2D provided.
In the above picture we have a comparison of a Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck screen shot and plush toys of the same characters. Below that is a Buzz Lightyear screenshot and a Buzz toy. Seeing Bugs Bunny in 3D is jarring and does not take you into his cartoon world. Seeing Buzz in 3D is normal and no big deal. It’s just cool to hold the toy from the movie.
Watching cartoons in 2D is watching life in a dimension different from the one you currently occupy. I always felt like I escaped into a different world with different rules than my own. For me, Bugs Bunny doesn’t work in three dimensions. He shouldn’t, because he was never designed that way.
I miss that. When I watch a new animated feature, I can’t escape the thought that I’m watching really cool sculptures and puppets. That’s not always what I want.
Again, I’m in the minority and I realize that things change. I am happy that so many good animated movies are being made.
I’ll say this until I actually do it, but I need to buy a real camera.
Passing by the magazine stand, I thought it was cute that Rush Limbaugh has the top of Princess Di’s head (due to the Life Magazine in the back). I think that’s the first time I’ve used “Rush Limbaugh” and “cute” in the same sentence.
