Simon 'manly' poster

I made a mock film poster for a re-imagined "Simon"


I tried to make it as manly as possible, since that makes me laugh. I probably could have pushed it even more, but I do like the super serious face.

Anyway here's the pencil sketch


I thought I might put this out there, but just for fun, if anyone wants to have a go of re-colouring or even re-imagining this poster of a manly man Simon, I'd love to see what you come up with. You can treat this as stupid or as serious as you want, since it is just for fun.

When you are done, you can either post it on your blog and hit me up with a link on the comments or email me the image at "mrmerks AT hotmail.com"

Looking forward to seeing if this works

waiting for the movie

This is for the first shot of Simon. It will start in present time then go back in time to the dinosaur age.


This is just a crowd shot of people standing in line waiting for a movie. The drawings are blatantly stolen from a talented animator I worked with on 'Pixel Pinkie', Paul Newell.

Throughout the production he did these great caricatures of everyone on the production as well as some really funny comics. Roseline posted a few here


Some of these other people may be dinosaur food.

It was fun to try and draw in his style. It was something of a learning process as I tried to not directly copy but to understand the very clear simple shapes/structure, the rounded/soft line style and trying to add in my own specific personality and character into the drawings to make it feel natural.


This image will most likely be on screen for under a second and will be competing with the background and foreground elements. Heh, that's animation.

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

Simon's first promo image


Here's a promo image for Simon that will go with my 24hour Robot comic, that I'm supplying last minute to the patient person who is putting it all together (sorry Chris).

It should be a pretty cool comic with everyone who took part in the events work all thrown together.

Interior Simons Home

Ok here's a wip (work in progress) for Simon's home interior. This tree is actually quite big and the humans will be about as big as the pea sized smaller rocks. The tree is also damaged to fit a giant Dinosaur head


I'll update this as I go as well as the exterior shot in the post before this one. I'm actually having fun and remembering that making films is what I love to do (funny how easy it is to forget that)

*Update* 11th November

Ok here's the background in 2 states one where it's not broken and 2 where the dino has ripped open the tree.




I'm still working out ideas in how this film is going to be made and that is is halting me a bit on getting the animatic together

Simon's home WIP

Ok here's my working progress of where Simon lives. The good thing about this background style is I can work straight with my pencils and not need to do inking (might try this for the character animation as well)and I'm working with a small amount of colours so colouring is quite fast



This is only the midground of the scene. There will be 4 more layers. One problem will be erasing out around the trees when I'm compositing. The multiply layers are too hard to work with when compositing especially if I need to do some depth of field effects

Simon

Ok a lot of things have been happening but now this projects back in full swing and it will be my focus this month. The film will be made in parts and will be a narrated tale. I was calling this project "Jurassic foo" the last time but now it is called "Simon"

Here's the main character design of Simon for the first story


The colouring style will be scene specific but I'm going to move away from individual colours and just using minimal colours with attention to lights and darks.

I'm still playing around with the character drawing style, but my goal is to find a cross between Moebius, Tezuka and old mad magazine comics. The sketches at the moment are too restrained so I'm going to have to loosen up my drawing style




Ok this isn't all that much to look at for the moment but hopefully by the end of the week I'll have the whole first short deigned and an animatic completed.

You can view the other pictures by hitting the "simon" label or by clicking here

Robot Cover final?

I'm pretty tired so I'm not sure, there might be some mistakes I need to fix but this is generally the final cover for my 24 hour comic.


I stole the layout idea from some Russian constructivist poster. I thought it would be fun to try and recreate my characters in plasticine (which it was). I wanted it to have an overall hand crafted feel to it. The down side is people may be disappointed the rest of the comic isn't in plasticine

Robot cover WIP

Here's a photo for one of the parts for my cover of my 24 hour comic.


I'll post more about my cover as I do it.

update: 3rd of November


here's the second part. This is heaps of fun

update: 4th of november

and bam! here's the city. Clouds and all

My wonderful news

So I've been holding onto this news for over a week now, it has to do with me and this girl called Roseline Lau

She has been a friend.


An inspiration and a motivation.


Caring and the sometimes sharing (haha).


My travelling companion to have adventures with,


and the best person to face troubles with.

We have seen a lot together and we have achieved a lot together.


So last week I proposed to my beautiful girlfriend of 6 years and she said "mmhmmm" and I said "sorry, what?" and she said "YES!!!".

So no longer is Roseline my girlfriend of 6 years, she is now my fiancée and I couldn't be happier

Masked Monster


Here's my second monster who's not so cute and yes that is a decorated paper plate with the eyes cutout on his face. This is influenced by me playing the very fantastic Costume Quest game. Where the kids could turn their cardboard costume into a real version (eg a giant robot). It made me start thinking about those costumes we created as kids and how I could use it in my design. I suppose Naoki Urasawa's "20th century boys" did this pretty well.

monsters

I'm doing some images for Halloween. Here's a WIP


It doesn't give away much, only that I'm trying to get my silhouettes right before I start. The picture is quite cute in my sketch (not this this that's just the colour blocking) I'm going to try and not lose the image when I start cleaning up.

Ok here's an update. I worked from the photo first and sketched out what the monsters would be doing. With the digital inking I tried to add more fat to the monsters as I felt they were like cherubs.


Ok things I have left to do are:
finish colouring the other monsters
ground shadows
reflections
maybe raindrops

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

drawing girls

My female characters are terrible and I need to get better. So this week I'm going to spend it drawing girls. I'll just keep updating this post as to not spread a whole heap of terrible all over my blog.

Here's my first picture (5th/october 2am). I drew this in photoshop and edited and edited it. What I couldn't is a lot of weight in the face. The cheeks felt round and there's real layers of sculpting in the face that didn't quite translate into this picture. Also once again the lips are terrible. I will crack how to draw lips by the end of this (I hope). I don't mind the hair though. That was fun to draw.


I'm not sure who this girl is. There was top model written in the background so maybe she had something to do with that show. Ok hopefully this is the worst drawing and everything else will look better. I'm going to mix it up a bit with styles, focusing on features and poses.

Ok here's a corrections layer, where I just traced off the original image. The nose (as Andrew pointed out in the comments) was too long and not as straight. The eyes sit better in the head, the shoulders are less manly and even though I traced the lips I still don't know how they work (grrr)


5th/october 3:38 pm

Based on Chris Bachalo drawings form 'The Witching Hour"



Instead of working from more photos I thought I might start studying how other comic/cartoon artists approach drawing women. My main focus at the moment is the face. I need to definitely work on poses and figures but one thing at the time.

My 2010 24 hour comic

ROBOTS
(click to grow bigger)


and that's a comic done in 24 hours. Less actually, probably only shy of 20 hours.This was probably the first time I finished everything I wanted to do. I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out.

Well hopefully this works and I can finally get some sleep

*update* this was the initial seed by Roseline. By boxes I meant I had drawn borders on 27 blank pages procrastinating.


 

Influence Map

Well there's a whole heap of artists doing these. It's just a collection of what influences you as an artist



This is only a small portion of my influences but definitely some of the important ones.

Richard Scary
When I think back to who inspired me as a kid, it has to be this guy. Even now looking at his stuff it still inspires me. I always loved the big pages of detail, but simple detail. I loved seeing what all the different animals were doing. Take this image for example, that x-ray view into the house, sooo good! The cats were my favourites.

Earthworm Jim, Doug Tennaple
This is what made me start drawing and love drawing. I used to read a lot of comics but this was what made me want to draw. It just looked so much fun to do. All of Doug's following works were just as good such as "The Neverhood" and "Gear". I may not subscribe to his world views, but I cannot deny this is the guy that started it all for me.

Akira
I dunno where to even begin with this film. To me it's just perfection that has never been topped for me. Craft at every level.

Chris Bachalo
Joe Mad may have been winning all the Wizard comic artists of the month, but Bachalo was where it was at. I have loved everything that this guy has drawn and for me, the Steampunk series was one of the best comics ever made. When that series was cancelled, I just stopped collecting comics for about 3 years. Nothing held my interest as much as that series. I find it hard to enjoy his work back at Marvel with him rarely doing a whole story arc. Still how he captures movement and action in a comic book, I dunno who compares.

Masaaki Yuasa, Cat Soup
I saw a few pictures of this film and I managed to track it down and was blown away by the imagination and the accessible surrealism. Since then I've tried to find everything that he has done and each new project I've heard he has been involved in just amazes me and makes me love animation. Here's a few things "Legend of the dog Warriors", "Mind Game", and "Kaiba"

Neon Genesis Evangelion
This series made me really think. Not only about the themes and characters being portrayed but also about how to make a movie. I know most of us laugh about how either the director went crazy or that they ran out of money at the end but what came out of that was something more satisfying and rewarding and like I said it made me think about it more.

Cowboy bebop
As soon as this series starts with the opening song "Tank" you know you're in for a hell of a ride. This series felt grownup, which was a breath of fresh air from all the other series and shows that were out there. It was both something new and something quite classic.

Wong Kar Wai
Back when I was studying film a friend was watching fallen angels on one a tiny little editing tv. Despite the tv being small the neon visuals attracted me like a moth to a ...well a neon light. "In the mood for Love" is probably my favourite film, but all of his films are pure magic. Fantastic characters, costumes, art direction and heart wrenching stories.

Casablanca
What I love about this film is how everything weaves so great together, how every character is important and could almost have a film of their own. The story and the setting, it's all just perfect. This to me is what I want to aim for as a film maker.

The Big Lebowski, Coen Brothers
Ok what really influences me are characters. I can watch terrible films (which isnt this) as long as there is one great character in it. This is probably the best collection of odd characters ever assembled in a film. The story is hilarious as well. All of the Coen Brothers films have great characters but this is probably my all time favourite.

Jim Mahfood
FUN DRAWING! There are other artist that fit this, Jamie Hewlett and Robert Valley and they should be on this map but I ran out of space. That Generation X underground comic he did made the characters seem fun and full of life, which was quite the achievement because these were Bachalo characters and to deliver more than Bachalo that's a heck of an achievement. One great thing about Mahfood was he really introduced music and pop culture in a friend giving you a mixtape sort of way. There's quite a bit of music that I was introduced to by this comic. One really important moment I had with a Mahfood comic was the comic he did in 9-11: Artists respond. In this comic he gave sense and reason to the events unfolding and I also found out his father was an Arab and that gave a voice to what was missing from the media. It's hard to explain that well but after reading that comic I felt less angry and more hopeful, that not everyone in the world is crazy.

90s Xmen comics
These are what I grew up reading, that and spiderman comics (expecially Romita Jr stuff. At this time there were many great artists drawing the comics with a real craft behind their work. There wasnt that much money in what they were doing and they all seemed to be doing it for the love. You had Joe Mad doing the Uncanny Xmen, Andy Kubert doing Xmen or Wolverine, Bachalo doing Generation X, Jeff Matsuda doing X-Factor and Adam Pollina doing X-force. With Joe Mad leading the pack (with fans) with his Japanese inspired style, the other artists started pushing their creative skills and trying new techniques. Looking back at the comics now, there was some great stuff going on then and it felt more creative than now which feels more writer driven than artist driven.

The Maxx
The art style just flaws me. It finds that nice balance of a cartoon stylised reality. It dealt with quite heavy and dark issues with a sympathy for the devil sort of way. The comic was really the perfect balancing act, it would make you laugh out loud when the Maxx talked out loud, it would scare you when characters were trapped and tortured and the visual would astound you when the dream world and the real world would cross. Sam Keith (the creator) put everything he had into this comic and it shows.

Scud: The Disposable Assassin
Mannnn when I first got a copy of this it blew my mind. Before Scud all I knew were superhero comics and Mad Magazine comics. This guy, Rob Schrab, knew what fun drawing was and he really took it to the next level. Super strong and funny poses, epic monster and villain designs and no holds bared, unforgiving violence pure pulp MAGIC! Still too this day there will always be some sort of scud reference and drawing in everything I do. After reading Scud  who wouldn't hold a gun with their pinky finger extended. I assume that's how they teach the CIA to do it.

Nightmare before Christmas
The influence of this film was so strong that I had to fight not to be taken over by it. From the amazing visuals, characters and story to the technique of stop motion. All I wanted to do was make Nightmare before Christmas films for the rest of my life. The film is just so dam good!

Ninja Turtles
This is something I never want to go back and watch because I know its going to be awful. There's just a magic something about the whole concept. I swear the live action film I've memorised word for word even the music. All the turtles have strong individual personalities and individual fighting skills/styles. It's very clever yet dumb and funny as well.

Ok well that's my list with some really glaring omissions. I just ran out of space. Some of the missing ones are:
Chuck Jones
Jim Henson
Satatoshi Kon
Koji Morrimoto
Jamie Hewlett
Robert Valley
Peter Chung
Astroboy
Robotech
Star Blazers
Yoshitaka Amano
Akihiko Yoshida (Vagrant story)
Scott C
Graham Annable
Kate Beaton
Takeshi Koike
Hiroyuki Imaishi
Secret of Mana
Another World
Super Probotector

I could write even more but I should sleep for the 24 hour comic challenge tomorrow. I'm terrified of it but it should be a lot of fun.

You can find the template and make your own influence map here