24hr comic day 2012

Another year another fantastic venue and turn out for the 24 hour comic challenge in Perth.

A twist on this years challenge we had to use the name of a song to inspire our comics. "I'm deranged" by David Bowie from the Lost Highway soundtrack was my ear worm for that morning

Deranged 24hr Comic Day 2012



What did you think? I was pretty happy with it. I enjoyed the freedom of not taking it too seriously and just having fun drawing. I even got one of the Manly Show super buff dudes in there. (I love that photo realistic picture of me doing the 24hr comic that Christien drew)

I drew this on glossy A5 paper (I guillotined and halved A4 sheets before the event) as I knew that paper likes ink pens. I wore my glove that I have for my cintiq as I knew my hand would be a bit grippy on the gloss paper. I loosely pencilled it with a H pencil. I found the faster and looser I drew the better to ink from. My pens were a small, a mid and a brush pen. I tried to use the different thicknesses to give the scene depth. I also had 2 different grey markers, a warm and a cool grey. I tried to use the different colours to separate the characters from the background. Occasionally I'd mix up the colours due to tiredness.

Working smaller I was able to produce more pages faster and starting from 10am I was able to have all my pages done by 3am the next day. This is the first time I've managed to finish with time to spare. I also felt I was able to keep the drawings pretty consistent  I may have stopped drawing detailed trees for awhile but the character work I was happy with the whole way through.

This character was based on a cultural statue I saw while I was over in Kuching last month. It had a cat that looks pretty much like how I've drawn him being attacked by a similar styled dog/dragon. I wasn't allowed to take photos in the museum but I drew these while I was over there.

This guy is super fun to draw and the 24 hour challenge gave me an opportunity to bring him to life. That's why these events are so much fun. They just force work out of you.

Well another 24 hour comic done. Super extreme thanks to Chris Maximum Markle for organizing it again.

The next thing coming up in a few weeks the 48hr animation challenge!!!! Man I must hate sleeping.

I also need to find a job at some point. My freelancing is only just keeping the wolf at bay. Such is my glorious life as an artist haha

Sorry for the lack of updates here but keep reading the Manly Show. Christien has been drawing up a storm there that keeps challenging me to draw men with the shortest shorts and the largest nipples... heh. Seriously check it. It's the best website in the world!!

Spiderman

I watched Spiderman on Tuesday and just seeing him move and swing through the city inspired me to draw.

My first sketch I did while out at the Zoo

Second sketch done on my iPad

After a few scribbles I felt like doing a simple fun animation.

Just watched the new Spiderman movie and felt compelled to animate something.

I really want to do more with Spiderman. I also just watched the latest Batman so maybe I'll do something with him.

Oh as for my last post on what happened with my oil painting, there was a lot of swearing and cursing as things stopped working out but I did complete the painting. I'll update that soon. Even though the painting is hanging on the wall I might touch up a few areas before it's finished finished.

Mr Gough in Winterland

This post will be about a painting I'm working on.

So far I have this scribble

So this above drawing was based on an earlier sketch that I unearthed while I've been moving house

I had been doing a few sketches in photoshop trying to plan out the image but nothing really felt that great. Like the Mr Gough world that exists in my head so it was great to come across this image.

Here are some of the earlier photoshop sketches. You'll notice the fishing monster was the one thing I was happy with.

The second one I was almost ok with. Having a Mr Gough floating in ice. I did like the tree zombies I created but I couldn't work them into the new image.

Oh I should give a little backstory. Mr Gough was a small little comic that was born in my sketch book. I really liked it and I ended up making an animated short with him. The short won quite a few awards so he's stayed a favourite character of mine. He usually makes cameos in my other films as well.

I added in the little orange monster from the short on top of the round trees. No Monkeybears though

So I tweaked and changed that original drawing in photoshop but it's going to become a painting so this is how I'm transferring the image onto the canvas.

After printing the image I attached one of the sides to the canvas turned the image over and covered the back with black charcoal

I then folded over the paper over the canvas

Then using a blunt pencil I traced over the lines

This hurts my hand as I have to draw without leaning on the page. When I finish (I haven't yet) tracing all the lines I can fold back the paper and see the image has been transferred. Here's what it looks like so far

I'll spray that with some fixative to hold the charcoal and then it will be time to begin the under painting (at least I think that's what I'm doing)

Ok so here's the finished transfer

Which is pretty close to the original drawing. The paper buckled a bit and moved some of the drawing around but nothing too drastic.

So now I'm beginning to tone the image. Because it's winter I'm using blue tone for my under paint. Actually I'm not sure if this is really "under painting" much like when a client asks if we could "storyboard" the idea when he really means brainstorm the idea or calling a corporate video a documentary (my favourite term misuse).

I'm trying to work really light and that means using more turps than oil paint. I noticed that some of the transfered areas aren't dark enough for me to see details (such as the tree behind the rock on the right) and I'll need to let the oils dry a bit and maybe pencil the lines a bit darker.

Will oils you have to build up the paint a bit otherwise you'll have the white of the canvas showing through and that looks crappy. This canvas I'm using is a bit iffy as well. Some areas were hard and it was repelling the paint a bit.

Anyway still a heap of stuff to do. I'm also trying to jump between this, some writing and some flash work. This tree I've been slowly working on for a week or so now (I get distracted too easily these days)

Here's the final painting. It took awhile to get teh colours I wanted and there's probably a few colour's I'd like to photoshop change haha but that's the fun of non digtal art. The rawness of it all

New background work

I've been doing a bunch of backgrounds in photoshop lately here's some from an unreleased film that was finished last week.

This is a working progress for a short animation (keeping this secret just in case I don't finish it)

That floor texture I made for my film Porcelain that I'm constantly adjusting and recolouring to reuse every time there's a wooden floor. I also have some glass textures I made for windows from Porcelain that I also reuse heavily.

This WIP background is for an animation pitch I'm working on set in my hometown forests

I'll try to update this background every day until I finish it. I thought it was good to show at this stage as you can see my layout lines and layer breakdowns (different colours represent different layers). This was something of a style experiment I might simplify everything once I do a detailed study. The layout is pretty boring but when I put the two characters in and fire up the depth of field effects it should look ok.

Oh here's an old background I did for Roseline's loop de loop that has been sitting in my draft posts for forever.

UPDATE 13th of March

So I sketched out the main midground section which the characters interact with

after doing the sketch it was like "...ok now how the heck am I supposed to colour that???"

This is what I have done so far and I'll continue it tomorrow. I guess it will have a slight water colour feel to it. I'm not sure. Today I like it and think it will work

UPDATE 14th of March

Ok this is pretty much done and I'm not completely happy with it but for a first style test it will do

There's things about the colouring I really like. Such as the little red and yellow scattered leaves I think offset the pallet just enough so it isn't boring. The balancing of detail and space are ok but not really that imaginative. I think the default way I draw is looking slightly down so for my next tests I really should play with my camera angles a bit. I also want to push things and also simplify and simplify! This was a test where I'm just getting a feel for the environment but now its time to look at it with my producers hat on and see how to approach this better.

I might do an update tomorrow where I'll add in the characters

Blaghhh!

So this is how I'm feeling at the moment

hahaha mannnnn I've had a crazy hard week that is now going into the weekend. I'm still working on this videoclip which is taking longer than I would like.

(a quick colour test)

oh and this happend

My kitchen ceiling just gave way. My brother (that dude in the photo) and I were trying pretty hard to save it but it was a lost cause. I did manage to do a last minute dash to save a bowl of fruit but all my cereal (that everyone keeps telling me to put away) is pretty much written off. There's a thick layer of dust all through the house but we did manage to move all the ceiling pieces outside. We'll have to get someone in to fix it next week. Of course it being so close to christmas we shouldn't have a problem surely???

Sigh...

I did do some scribbly ipad paintings this week. They're ok, nothing that special but it was a nice waste of time to get my mind off things for a while

Speaking of some good time wasting I've been catching up on some comics. I really enjoyed the Marvel 'Fear Itself" crossover. A surprisingly great story that focused more on the characters and how they reacted  to the disaster(s)  than actually being about fighting the disaster. Some of the issues were even just the heads of the characters just talking about what happend, which I thought was pretty ballsy. I think one of the architects of this crossover was the guy behind Secret Wars and that is possibly my most favourite crossover (Doom rules ballz in that). Oh and the art in the 'Fear itself' series was really high across all the issues. I don't think there was an issue I didn't care for art wise. The few issues Chris Bachalo did were my highlights

I have been trying to read these new DC 52 comics but mannn they are not as fun. Some of the issues are ok in a pulpy comic sort of way but I don't know some of the writing is a bit iffy. The Green Arrow comic tries to stay relevant by adding in mentions to youtube and other pop culture sort of things but they do it in an awfully ham fisted way like they really don't get it. What was great about a couple of the Marvel comics was how they used twitter tweets in the story. It gave a feel of the public mood and it fit quite nicely into the comic narration box style format. I did find it funny instead of running for their lives they were tweeting what was going on although that's probably how it would play out. There were some things I liked in this new DC 52 like Greg Capallo's art on Batman. I used to love his work on Spawn when I was a kid. This work on Batman seems a lot cleaner/clearer and more focused. I also love the work on the controversial Catwomen comics. The dude drawing that draws great expressions it reminds me of Neal Adams stuff.

Ha that's enough comic nerding for now. I think it's time to call it a night and check what those crazy SAMCRO dudes are up to in Sons of Anarchy. Last time I saw them it wasn't looking good.

Break achieved!

Woo Roseline and I finally had time to take a break.... actually no we didn't have time and now I'm working 3 times as hard to catch up... freelancing sucks.

Anywho I'm jumping the gun a bit. Before I left I hammered out this animation for loopdeloop in about 3 hours



Basically I had finished packing and I had a spare few hours and the deadline was that night so I came up with this short. The theme was 'spooky' and this is something that really bugs me(scares the crap out of me) when in a horror/suspense film a character walks backwards down a dark corridor.

"I KNOW SOMETHING IS GOING TO JUMP OUT JUST DO IT ALL READY!!"

I hand drew all the animation frames and background in separate layers on my scribble pad (10x15cm white pad). The wall was a google image search wall. I scanned and cleaned the drawings and set them up in photoshop and then brought them into toonboom animate. I also for the first time imported the images and vectorised them and I was very surprised by how clean toonboom handled that. Once I timed out the animation I added some after effects gloss to punch a little more mood into the animation. I then hit my 'Existence' sound folder for the sound track.

Next months loopdeloop theme is 'Condoms' to tie in with World Aids Day on December 1st. I'm wondering what to do with that one haha

The day after I made this loop Roseline and I were on a boat headed to the WA holiday island Rottnest. Named after these guys who inhabit the island which they thought to be rats ('Ratnest')

These bros aren't rats though. They are quokkas and they are so gentle and innocent. I've never met such a mellow wild animal before. They were very cool

Also what was cool was how beautiful the beaches were.

Our beaches in WA are really something special. It's only when I go away and visit say Hobart with it's dirt grey sand and ice waters or St Kilda in Melbourne with it's polluted smelly waters and beaches that I realise how lucky we are over here... although I should point out the first day we were there all the beaches were locked down due to a shark attack and we had shark hunting helicopters flying all over the island.. SO THERE'S THAT...haha

What was great was we hired bikes (as there are very few cars on the island) and rode around the whole island. I haven't been on a bike in years and boyyy it took some getting used to and awww man there were some hurt muscles that haven't been used in years. It was good to feel that pain again since the last few years I've been trapped trying to make this animation thing work. Roseline has done a better job at keeping her fitness up (she killed me on the bikes) and I only seem to get a good walk in every now and then. A lot of my friends do the gym thing but that isn't for me. I definitely have to work and keep up my fitness though. I've been having the worst kind of trouble with my back over the last few years and honestly once your back goes animation is the hardest thing in the world.

Well enough old man Merks gripes. While I was over there I found some time to get some drawings in. I posted a bunch of these on my twitter (facebook and g+ as well) via my xperia play smart phone which was a new fun experience. My younger self loves all this new technology. I'd love to travel back and show the super mario world game that awed me as a kid that I can now play on my portable phone I carry in my pocket. I did at one stage flirt with being a purist, antitech, prefer it all original person but seriously this stuff is amazing. Take a smart phone, how many minds, how much history, evolution and genius is behind the technology it floors me.

Enough with the words here's some of the pictures I drew

I wanted to do more studies of the environment but I was enjoying just being there. Roseline has done a whole bunch of great ones and a lot of the time I just loved watching her work

This was her late at night doing a water colour pass on a sketch she had done.

I wanted to loosen up my drawing arm and draw some full scenes. I only drew 2 pictures but I'm pretty pleased with them.

I drew that last mountain scene picture at the dome cafe on the last day we were there. 2 cups of coffee (you can see some coffee stains at the bottom) and a whole bunch of time to spend on it. I thought of it as a platform game and just started from the bottom left and worked up.

and one last scribble featuring the Bacon Bros

Well the rest was great and as soon as we returned home we had work phone calls and emails immediately to take care of. It's good to be a busy freelancer I guess but dang that Quokka life looks appealing.

Big Hair and Red Tie

Whoa I haven't updated in awhile so here's a quick drawing I did tonight.

I've been really busy lately trying to do both animation on a short film and a video clip storyboard.

I also had a really bad neck sprain (or something) that put me out for a week and has made all my deadlines harder. I've haven't really recovered from it as my arm and neck still aches a bit which sucks a lot.

I really need a holiday and go get some decent exercise. I'm like an animation battery hen at the moment.

Oh another thing I'm doing is contributing cool stuff I find to the very fantastic Fruitless Pursuits blog. The blogs filled with funny and interesting nerd/art/culture stuff and it's updated quite frequently every day. So definitely check it out. You will enjoy wasting time there.

UPDATE: I totally forgot about these 2 quick photoshop paintings I did maybe last week (weeks and months are blurring together). They're not really for anything (like the top picture) but they're kinda cool

painting some craaazy hips haha

Just some lady

Just a late night photoshop illustration. I really like the colours and the style. The head is probably too big though. I added a grain to get rid of the banding on the background gradient, but it gave a nice overall texture to the illustration.

Anyway I'm busy working on a few projects but I'm going to try and do a few more illustrations because it relaxes me.

YAHHHHH

I was listening to a friends podcast and drew this just for the heck of it. Oh that raised pinky finger is inspired from how Scud: The disposable assassin holds his guns

Some 'for fun' illustrations

Captain America and Lupin

IF: Stay

This was a tiny scribble sitting on my desktop for over 2 weeks that I'm not sure why I didn't just bin (it was seriously just the cats head and hand) but I had to finish it.

It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Which is hilarious considering how small and stupid the picture is haha

IF: Remedy

I wouldn't drink that potion

Drawing Day

Today is international drawing day! I'll be posting pictures throughout the day

You can join in or follow here: http://www.drawingday.org

wooo SIMON! I forgot how much fun this guy is to draw.

I decided to challenge myself and draw something I hate(have trouble) drawing, "celebrities and women". I wont say who it is. Feel free to guess.

TETSUOOOOOOOO!

I've been drawing a lot of request pictures on my twitter account this week (see them here). So it was fun to do a request drawing for myself.

This was drawn all in photoshop and I quite like the expression. Because of that expression he hasn't been hit by the SOL yet. This is Tetsuo when he's making his way to the Olympic stadium

Flinstones

I was challenged to draw the Flinstones. Now I don't remember much about the Flinstones except Fred was angry all the time and used to wail on Barney

Barney looks kinda on model, Fred is more like Captain Knuckles from the Misadventures of Flapjack haha. I love that cartoon

Background art

I've been working on this on and off. It's a background for a film that is about 80% animated. I'm going to try and have the remaining 20% done by tomorrow night.

A bit of product placement in there but nothing new really for my films (there's always at least 2 or 3 references to previous films I'm made or am going to make). I've always liked adding in advertising, signs and graffiti into my backgrounds. I like how it give a splash of colour and texture and how it can break up a plain surface.

The imagery is mostly from my head I did mash the buildings designs together out of some Melbourne photos Rose and I took.

The composition is quite flat but that's the style I'm going for. Something that feels like a bunch of stage flats. I do use the background objects to flow the view to where I want it. You'll notice that fence is used to diffuse the building detail, the trees diffuse the detail a bit more. I have the leaves on a separate layer and I'm wondering if in after effects if I can add a shimmer or a slight move (this will be an experiment). I tried a few different things for a foreground elements but nothing seemed to fit.

There's a lighting grade that sits over this to pull all the colours together but that happens after the animation is added. This is a photoshop file that I was able to open in Toonboom Animate pro and keep all the layers separate. The background is made up of 7 layers and there's a tiny parallax at the start.

The animation itself is quite silly but it's the first of a series focusing on different acting styles and funny movement.

Oil painting artistic level up!

Well Rose and I have been doing oil painting classes and it's been great! It was fun to learn how to paint with a real brush and use real paints and get dirty. I felt like a real artist walking around Fremantle with oil paint on my pants (real poser artist haha).

Ok here's the first painting I did, it was a follow what the teacher does and work from a photo sort to deal. When I started painting and following the instructions all my digital painting knowledge I was taught working at Ettamogah suddenly started making sense. I think the reason why I started understanding it more here was there was no undo shortcut. I think the undo option can make you more unsure of your work without it you just got to go with the flow.

Now the second painting I decided to try and jump in and paint up one of my characters. I chose my character Dash since he is so round and bubbly. I suffered a bit that my initial drawing could have been a bit better but I didn't really know that until I started filling the sketch in with the paints. It was interesting thinking of the whole shape and how the light would wrap around Dash. When I was doing this Roseline was painting up a still life of one of her blythe dolls and they have quite cartoony features so I was able to cheat and look over her shoulder and see what she was doing and then apply it to my painting.

So for our last painting I came up with an idea of us making a Cat and a Rabbit painting that we could hang in our house. Also to put a spin on it we would each do the initial sketch for the other person. So this painting is based on a Roseline drawing. I like his fuzzy fur and bright colours. Rose was really happy with what I painted, she said he feels like christmas (I felt that was a pretty high compliment)

Roseline's painting of my drawing looks fantastic as well. Check her blog to see if she has put it up. Roseline has been pretty busy putting together a red bubble store (http://www.redbubble.com/people/roseyland) and she is inspiring me to do something. So I'm adding that to my todo list

Super Week

Ben Grimshaw threw down the super hero/villain challenge. Draw a childhood hero every day for a week. I'm super busy (haha pun) at the moment so we'll see how I go.

Here's my first picture, X-Men's 'Psylocke'

A little rushed but it turned out ok

My second, an X-Men villain 'Omega Red'

Sorry I haven't been keeping this updated here but here's day 3, Modesty Blaise

(I'm not a fan of that drawing)

Here's my day 4, Scud the disposable assassin battling Jeff

and finally my day 5 drawing, Wolverine and Cyber

Oh most of this went down over facebook. Roseline has done a few drawings and posted them on her blog (she absolutely schooled me with her Modesty Blaise)

I'll link here later if anyone posts there pictures on there blogs or whatever

Awww Notty

Naughty Notty eats the cookies that Cat's sister brought from France

This is a picture for Roseline who will blame the eaten cookies on Notty her toy rabbit I'm sure.

Archangel speed(kinda) painting

While I was waiting for some large files to move from my hard drive to my portable I did this picture in Photoshop of my favourite comic character as a kid Archangel!

This was one of the first comics I got, X- Factor issue 44. I think it was in a showbag

Archangel just looked so dam cool, those razor wings and that funky costume. The whole issue was amazing as well. The opening page is Cyclops about to be crushed by a giant robotic foot! The princess also bribes a guard with a whole heap of drugs so she can steal a baby. Seriously for the first X-whatever comic to read this one was a winner. I was done for after that.

I've been taking oil painting classes recently with Roseline and it has been quite interesting. I've been trying to apply certain photoshop painting techniques that I learnt to real painting (although ctrl z doesnt work). I really like using oils with how the colours mix and blend to the texture of the paint. I'm still very much the amateur but it's a great class and everyone is really nice and supportive.

If you haven't seen my blog in a while you'll notice that I've given it something of a makeover. It's a lot more brown and earthy... I dont know why. It is just what I felt like I guess. You'll also see there are tabs up there now with links to a page with my showreel and a page with a few of my storyboards. I'll update that a bit more when I have time, for now though there's a board for Porcelain and an animatic for Existence.

I've been using Twitter a lot and I post a heap of scribble doodles on there. You can see what I've drawn over on the left in the twitpic widget or just click on this link http://twitpic.com/photos/timmerks You can see the wip of my oil painting plus the crazy pictures I draw for Roseline aka @scratchrabbit

I know there's a reluctance to have a twitter account but once you get one and you start finding all the artists you like tweets (as they are called in the twitter business) of what projects they are working on, the little scribbles they do on napkins, links to cool videos and all other kinds of cool things it's super inspiring.

Also everything links in together quite seamlessly (blogs, youtube, facebook etc). So it's not about using all these different programs but using the right program for the right job and having them all linked in together.

So yeah get a twitter account