sketches

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!!

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


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.

Zoo day 5

Roseline and I went to the zoo to do some drawings. So it is time for a much needed blog update


There were 9 spotted dog puppies running around today. Terribly cute and hard to work out how to draw. Most of my drawings look like rats haha


These Rhino's were a bit annoyed and were running around. I was struggling trying to work out how to draw them and capture the angry face and then they just dropped to the ground and went to sleep with their ass pointed at me... You win this round Rhino's!


Rose loves this little bird on the right. He's terribly cute and gets excited when people come and see him. Not many people go into the bird section since it's either being reworked or neglected. There's only 3 pretty awesome Macaws and a few other birds there so it looks a bit lonely for the little guy.


I decided to draw in the background for these two scribbles. The top one is a cheetah in the grass chewing on a steak. An amazing creature! The bottom one is another Macaw who comes right up to you. The colours are so bright and happy (that doesn't translate well using a felt tip pen)

Well sorry that this blog has been a bit neglected as I've been busy working and doing a webcomic over at http://merks-comics.blogspot.com/


The comic is mostly about the videogames I play but I change it up a bit every now and then.

I also have a lot of art on my newish facebook page. If you click the like button it should keep you up to date with my comics and any new stuff that I do.



UWA life drawing

Well Roseline was over and she made a compelling argument (we can get Jus burgers) that I should go to lifedrawing. Here's what I did from my warm up to my final drawing, I drew with a fat 6b pencil.








I finshed my last drawing early so I drew anrgy Fred Flinstone again. He cracks me up

Details:
University of Western Australia in the Hew Roberts Seminar Room (adjacent to the Hew Roberts Lecture Theatre) on the ALVA campus (Northwest corner of Stirling Hwy and Hampden Rd): $10 6-8:30 pm Monday. BYO materials, tables and chairs are available, as are basic supplies for purchase (it is still recommended that you bring your own).
Format for the sessions starts at short gestures, then moves up to two 10 minute poses, then three 30 minute poses.

http://lifedrawinginperth.wordpress.com/

Cat and Rabbit (A Tissue!): Sketches 01

Here's some sketches for a book Roseline and I are making based on an old script that Rose wrote.



I'm trying to refine the drawing style and make it more 3d. Give the characters more volume and make them more I guess huggable. I think Rabbit is working out but Cat feels a little too controlled and not like a person yet. Oh that sour looking cat is another character called Milky. Rose has already written about him here

You can read a webcomic about Cat and Rabbit that I made a few years ago (and quite fond of) here

This book titled "A Tissue" will be drawn and layed out mostly by me with Roseline cleaning up (my work is pretty messy), adding details and finishing it with watercolours. You can see some of Roseline's water colours on her blog here

Rose will be doing the book between jobs painting charactered portraits of peoples pets which is her business. you can read more about that here

Scribbly scribble

Here's some more scribbles. This first one I did yesterday but I delayed posting it since I posted the illustration Friday illustration instead.


I really like the old man in that drawing and that bird at the top. This was drawn at work and on the train going home.

This next one was drawn today. I've been wanting to draw some pirates for awhile so this was fun.


I like Spiderman at the top with his spider senses tingling. Derrrr Spiderman, they're Pirates

and a few more scribbles

Here's a scribble I did at work today of Roseline, Little B and me going on adventures (although I seem to be sleeping through them).


The other day before we saw "Tangled" we had a bunch of time to kill, (we did have to stand in line for 40 minutes though).  After our Retro Betty burgers we did some scribbles in my sketchbook (those birds I posted yesterday) after those first few drawings I remembered the game going around twitter recently of drawing batman with your eyes closed (search #drawbatmanwithyoureyesclosed) so Rose and I did that. Because batman is quite boyish Rose changed it to draw Strawberry Short cake, I for the life of me could not remember what she looked like. A big hat, eyelashes and lips was all I remembered haha, when then tried Garfield. We laughed quite a lot doing this, I hope you can work out what is what haha


oh just so you know, Roseline's drawings are at the top.

Busy working but here's some scribbles

Rose and I just got back from seeing Tangled again. This is the first film in a long time (Ponyo was the last film) that I've felt the need to go back and watch again, especially in expensive 3d (I'm poor I really cant afford to do this too much). This is probably the best 3d character animation I've ever scene..eff that it's real acting, such beautiful, funny acting (I love that horse).

While we were waiting for the movie we drew some crazy birds. We drew something else that made us laugh but I'll let Rose put that together.


I've also been busy working this week doing after effects stuff. I thought I'd get a lot more drawings in but I've been working nearly every minute of the day. A few drawings snuck in my notes though


Well hopefully I can fit in another illustration friday (maybe tomorrow)but for now enjoy a bird eating a pie and a whale playing videogames

What is this Tim?

I really don't know, I mean who are these brats?


They don't look like they are up to any good. Also what is up with this 4wd, it's a pretty sick drawing for someone who hates drawing cars.


What am I up to? I should be doing 3d tutorials

Swordsman

Had myself an easy Sunday. I watched some silly movie about some guy in a jail cell who had a tunnel or something that he was able to get in and out of the jail to do things like blow up all the lawyers cars... that might have been the twist, I dunno. Anyway I drew this while I was watching it and I just finished colouring it in photoshop


I tried colouring it just using greys then adding colours to the greys but it made it look all washed out so I spent ages messing with adjustment layers and all kinds of things. Doing this brought back memories of my film 'Existence'(click the link to watch) Maybe this guy is a Dark Mountain.

Here's the original sketch


Oh and here's the sketches for the last few pictures I've put up.



Man that movie I watched was dumb. Turns out jail dude worked for the government as a tactician that's why he was so "smart". The end moral was also a bit questionable. The main lawyer dude realises he is no good at his job even though he has all the evidence at the end to put this guy away, he chooses to put the bomb the jail dude made under the jail dudes bed. Jail dude blows himself up and lawyer dude walks away from the explosion in slow motion. Then lawyer dude finally makes time for his daughter and sees her recital, because lawyer dude was a jerk to his family.

Zoo day double feature (episodes 3 and 4)

Well I'm overlapping my Zoo days and blog posts. So here's a double post!

These pictures are from Friday the 3rd of December and it was just Marcus, Rose (see here pics on her blog) and me. This was one of those days where I started off really well and then slowly started getting worse. I was also really tired that day from memory. At the end of the day we were in the Australian section which is possibly the best set up part of the Zoo. It's funny because that dam cultural cringe kicks in every time someone mentions the Australian section, "ohhh Australian stuff is boring" but it's actually really effin good. I was so tired at that point and I only drew the Tasmanian devil, a koala and a wallaby. I have to go back there again and just spend my day drawing those animals (I guess zoo day 5). Oh yeah the wallaby had a baby in its pouch, I've always wondered if you could stack these animals hopping mouse in a baby wallaby pouch which is in a wallaby pouch which is in a joey pouch which is in a kangaroo pouch. It would be like the clown car of the animal world!



I really liked my lions, that giraffe however... not so much


I really wanted to draw birds that day but when we got to the bird part there wasnt that many there (in the Australian section there were heaps but I was too tired by that point, Rose drew a bunch though). There were 2 Macaws but every time I drew them they looked evil.



Those Tasmanian devils are really funny. The zoo person threw in some fish blood into where they were to stimulate their senses. I could only put up with that smell for so long before I had to move on. That koala was funny to. It's just a ball of fur!


Ok these following pictures are todays pictures, Wednesday the 29th of December. Once again Marcus and Rose were there and we also had some special guests from Melbourne, the very talented Ann-Marie Denham and Adam Duncan. I was a little worried that it was going to be too hot today but it turned out to be ok, reasonable in the shade. I also have to get used to wearing flip-flops as I now have blisters on my feat.


I really like this drawing. I almost felt that I had completed what I wanted to do at the zoo after this first drawing and go home. haha


Lions again. I drew one a little wrong as I tried drawing both the profile and the 3/4 of the head (because the lion kept turning his head) on the same drawing. I then worked out if I did 2 drawings one profile one 3/4 I could just work on one and when he turns his head I could work on the other. Rose and I also saw the cheetah that just had it's head pooped up above the grass sleeping. Roseline drew some great ones of this (better than mine)




This turtle cracked me up, from their funny legs, to their cheeks, to their big eyes. I had to draw a cartoony one at the bottom



Aw man, these monkeys are so funny but they move so fast. You really have to be persistent and just wait them out and draw really fast. I really love how Roseline draws their eyes. It cracks me up, check out her blog later when she posts them up.

Well another zoo day complete!

ZOO day 2: The return to the ZOO

Last Friday we (Roseline, Marcus, Andrew and Jesse) returned to the zoo for another drawing outing. We spent some time in the African Savannah section, moved on to the nocturnal exhibit (surprisingly you can see you pages pretty good in there), drew a few birds and then finished with the Oragnutans again. Not my best drawing day but it was a fun outing


We're going to be going to the zoo again this Friday. I'm hoping to draw more birds and hopefully find a bear

City background pencils

Whoa this took ages, fun though. I always loved city drawings in comics like spiderman and films like Akira.


Well now I have to work out how I'm going to colour this. That drawing of everyone standing in a line needs to be composited in and that Simon poster as well.

Speaking of that Simon poster, that drawing challenge hasn't really worked at all haha. 0 entries, no one was man enough to take it on yet (although most people I know are swamped with work at the moment, so that's understandable). I'm going to give it until this coming monday before I call it officially dead.

Z-Trip

Took a trip to the perth zoo today with Roseline, Marcus, Andrew, Michael and Steve (that's right I'm linking to you Steve so you better upload those drawings haha) and we drew some of the animals.

I'm actually surprised at how much fun this was and it was a great beautiful day to do it as well.











I was glad we started with the reptiles as it gave me a good chance to gain some knowledge and ideas for 'Simon'. I had fun with the birds and loved the monkey's with their funny hairdos and expressions, my favourite were the orang-utans because they look like some laid back dudes