Dash Dashing

8 second Dash frames

I liked my drawings on this. These are the 12 frames that make the run loop


Part of the design for Dash was adding in those O's to help with the movement. They help add the perspective and define the bend of the joints

8 second Dash

I drew this


and thought, 'Hey I want to animate that!'

So...

8 second Dash from Timothy Merks on Vimeo.


Dash is a really fun character to push poses with. I actually find it easier to draw like this than to draw simply. I think it comes down to not thinking and letting my drawing take control. I like how his leg curls in the distance.

That spiral background is from the first Dash Dashing cartoon I made (you can see it here). How I made it is with my coloured pencils I shaded radial bands of colour and just did a few frames to create the loop. The image was then inverted in after effects and it turned out pretty nice. I didn't even have to adjust the colour.

There's a 4 colour gradient on Dash to make him match the background. In Toonboom (which I animated straight ahead in) the scarf was animated on a different layer. I pushed that layer back in z-space, tinted it and put a focus module on Dash so the scarf would blur.

Well this was just a bit of fun for the weekend.

Working out the kinks

Ok I made the video of this animation (under this post) loop so you can see it better.

The purpose of my blog is to capture my art growth so I try not to hide my lousy stuff. This runcycle wasn't a winner and has quite a few problems with it.

Here are the key frames and my analysis of them.




I think I could add in an extra drawing here to sell the antic. It's a weird move, as usually when you start running you begin by falling forward and let your legs catch up. I wanted the start in this to be like a slingshot


this is my favourite frame


This is the first loop frame.


That front arm moves a bit bad through this bit. The arms in this animation lack purpose I tried to have them sweep the air as an extra leg but it doesn't read


This frame feels weak


That front leg doesn't move back enough. This is a sticky frame on the animation





That front arm need to go back further.


This is the loop frame. You'll notice that the scarf is different. I want to treat the scarf as an effect to add after the main animation.

This animation was done as an experiment to do a run cycle with one foot always on the ground and I felt as though I learnt some things. I'm also getting use to both animating Dash and working in Toonboom. As far as a run cycle goes this isn't good enough but it is a good start and something to build on.

Dash Dashing animation run test



based off a quote from Miyazaki, I challenged myself to make a run cycle where there is always a foot on the ground. The idea/theory is it gives more weight to the run.

I think I need to sell the leg push on the ground more. Have a cleaner head movement and stylise that scarf a lot more.

I do like the antic though

Dash with explosives

I'm still getting used to drawing Dash again. Drawing the cheeks on that turtle last week gave me an idea on how the face works. More experiments are needed to be done.


Just so you know this was done straight in photoshop. Oh some good photoshop advice, dont do your inking on your sketch layer, it takes ages to clean up. Haha oh man that was dumb.

Dash, Dr Sketchy and a cowboy

So last Wednesday Rose and I went to 'Dr Sketchy'. I've been meaning to go for ages but I kept piking at the last minute. Since I'm not working at the moment I used this as a good reason to get out of the house and do something productive.

I arrived at the city a little early and waited outside near the Perth art gallery. They've built an urban orchard of sorts there, it's quite nice. So while I was there waiting for Rose I drew this


Dash and his friends. There's even my first drawing of "Dog Dashing". He's going to go through some development as well as the other animals I haven't drawn yet (This is probably interesting to 3 people haha)

Anyway, after the 24 hour comic I've been trying to get back into drawing with pens. Just a felt and a brush pen. In a way I'm trying to trick myself into drawing confidently with bigger and less lines. With these first few 5 minute poses I was going ok


Then it got really scratchy. This one still feels ok but the others were bad


I put in some focus in with this drawing and tried to push the shapes more. I like this one


To break it up a bit, there were some games. The host (dressed like a mad scientist) was told by the audience to bite on a lamp that someone called a mushroom. I had fun with this drawing as I treated it as a throw away drawing.


That drawing did help as I started feeling little more comfortable




A funny thing about that night, I was drawing the model quite wide for some reason. My usual problem is I draw too long and stretched. Maybe it was because I was using an a4 sketchbook. I was quite happy with the faces this time around. That might have been from the practice drawings I did earlier in the week.

Well my first Dr Sketchy was a bit of fun. There was the problem of being the new guy and getting pulled up on stage to pose (clothes on thankfully) but I guess it's all part of making it a fun event.

This last picture I just finished drawing a few minutes ago. I was drawing it while watching Predators, I'd seen Jonah Hex earlier and was still thinking about how cool cowboys were.


They were even better than the icecream that I was craving

Final Dash Dashing promo piece

Well here's the last image I did for my application to tell and give some feeling on who the characters are. Originally I was going to do that with a character line up but I always feel they don't really sell your work


Still Rush bugs me. That is not a good drawing of her. Her face isn't pretty at all, her neck feels too long and overall it lacks charm. Ah well, at least everyone else looks great and the overall style I'm really happy with.

Down here is the character lineup made from all those earlier drawings. I'm pretty happy how well they all go together. They actually feel like friends which is nice.


This was included in the application of course. I like how the non costumed characters contrast to their superhero personas.

This weekend Roseline and I are participating in the 24hour comic challenge and it should be a lot of fun. you should be able to follow how that goes right here

http://24hcdperth.wordpress.com/ 

I'm looking forward to add to my comic tags over on there on the right

Tank Macho character design


So here's the last character design of Tank Macho. Tank is loosely based off Guld Goa Bowman from Macross Plus. I always loved the idea of an alien living side by side without it ever being questioned.Tank and Bowman share the same skin and hair colour but motivation wise they are completely different. As Tank has no real motivation.

Tank is the strongest member of the group, the superman, but he really has no interest in being a superhero and would prefer just to bum around. He kind of reminds me a little of Mondo from generation x. His beach clothes are loosely based off Kazuma from Yakuza 3 and his hair curl is adapted from an early drawing that Christien (check his blog here)did of him


So you can see the development process from what it was to what it is. I have much love for Christien's drawings

Well that is the last main character. I might compose them all into a shot now

Rush Lovable design


Here's Rush Loveable. A really difficult character to lock down. It's so easy to be lazy when designing girl characters and just doing stereotypical things. I've done something I didnt want to do and made Rush's super suit pink. Originally it was more green but it didnt really suit who Rush is. The more I tried other colours the more it didnt feel right so for now it is pink but it mayyyyy change again. The other design which might be a bit controversial is she is going to have short hair. There's 2 reasons for this, 1 is that her ability is to change costumes and take on their powers so I figure she'd be wearing a lot of wigs and 2 I wanted her to come across as European. It's not just the short hair but she'll wear a lot of scarfs, hats, sunglasses.... ok basically she's a lazy cliche of european women, so much so I based her on Jean Seberg in Breathless. haha but she was a great character, a very strong women (I swear everyone designing a female character has referenced breathless...so lazy).

The things I'm not entirely happy with are the super suit's colours, her mouth style and that beach costume pose could have been better. The things I like are the red knees and cheeks, the eyes are feeling right (they have to be right otherwise she'll look like a boy), the beach costume, the hair colour (seriously hair colour is so hard to get right) and hair style.

Tank Macho is next!

Black Mantis character design

Here is the design for Black Mantis in "beach chillin" clothes and "super suit" (guess which is which)


When I'm designing I'm thinking about how the character is going to move, how I can use them in shots (how their silhouette works for example), their personality, little extras in their costumes that could be used for story points, ease to draw (cutting back detail where possible), their turn arounds (Mantis' head piece thing is a challenge), strength and weight and how they are going to match or complement the other characters. There's a few other things but those are some of the main ones.

This vampire one I did shows how I designed for a 48hr animation comp. It was designed that he would float (cuts animation down incredibly), simple to draw and that the model was loose (meaning it was ok to draw it quite differently depending on the shot). His face especially was designed for large expressions


With Dash Dashing a unique focus of my design is with the characters eyes. Each character will have their own eye style. This may more suit my own animation style which is pretty close (extreme close even) to camera that I'm putting a little more detail into the face. I am however trying to make sure that the characters aren't just detailed heads on stock bodies. Doing that life drawing has helped a lot to understand how the muscles and body parts work.


So yeah 2 more main character drawings to go. Oh one last tip when doing character design, flip your drawing constantly. You do this to combat your drawing lean and you'll end up with a more solid/grounded character

Dash and Mantis final


So here is the final image. I decided to add in a spaceship to add a little bit more to the composition. It's both a little over worked and a little under worked in a lot of areas. This problem usually turns up when you don't know exactly what you are wanting to do with the image.

Dash and Mantis WIP 2

Ok so I'm still working away at this picture and as you can see I'm working with a background. There was obviously no real layout done so things might still need to move around. Once I'm a little bit happier with the layout I'll go into the detail more.

I had a reference location to work from. This is an inlet at Peacful bay. I wanted to make it a little bit more cartoony, this still feels a little too realistic. I might add in a few more things like what Dash is sitting on. What I really like about this, is it isn't a cliché beach scene. I think it helps to actually go to different places and explore rather than relying on reference books and google image search.

Dash without costume


So here's my first go at Dash Dashing not in costume. I've got to do the other 3 characters as well. This is Dash's beach wear since they begin the story in Peaceful bay.

I'll have to design some other outfits (since they wont always be on the beach) plus their super suits have stages, an ultimate mode and a space mode.

The hardest thing though is I have to give them all real names as well.... naming characters is always a pain

Dash and Mantis WIP

Just been working pretty hard so I haven't really got up to much. I decided to go back to these guys and get this "Dash Dashing" ball rolling again.


Just a sketch so far but I'll start adding to it throughout the week. I've been looking in to adding more 3dness to my drawings, trying to add a bit more volume and shape. I want to make the characters feel like they're solid and have real weight. Hmmm this sketch was based off a loose drawing I did in my notepad at work. The notepad sketch has a bit more character... I might have to rework this drawing a bit more and loosen it up a bit.

Well an old co-collaborator friend of mine, Mr Dean 'Mendoza' Swanton, has finally just started a blog. He even threw up some great Dash Dashing pics he did. You can check his blog right here