I will be drawing and meeting folks at the Schulz Museum for their Sketch-A-Thon to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip.
I am honnored to be joining the likes of artist Debbie Huey, Lex Fajardo, Mike Gray, Paul Madonna, Lark Pien, Shaenon Garrity, Brian Nerelle, Michael Capozzola, and more!
So come by to buy a book, get a sketch, or just chat. I know it will be lots of fun!
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11 ? 1–3pm
Second Saturday Cartoonists Celebrate
60 Years of Peanuts
Every second Saturday the Schulz Museum hosts a new Cartoonist-in-Residence! This month meet, watch, and talk to over ten different cartoonists, including All Over Coffee creator Paul Madonna; graphic novelists Alexis Fajardo and Brian Fies, whose graphic novel won the 2005 Eisner Award; Nickelodeon animator Mike Gray; and more! Cartoonists will speak with visitors, share their work, and draw something for the Schulz Museum’s collection celebrating the 60th anniversary of Peanuts.
I will be exhibiting at the San Francisco Zine Fest on September 4-5, 2010. Hosted in the County Fair Building on the edge of Golden Gate Park, come and see the latest in comics, art and zines. Admission is FREE and there is something for everyone!
When and where is the SF Zine Fest?
Saturday, September 4 from 11:00am – 6:00pm
Sunday, September 5 from 11:00am – 6:00pm
(Labor Day Weekend)
SF County Fair Building (formerly Hall of Flowers) 9th Ave. at Lincoln Way (in Golden Gate Park) map
We are very excited to be returning to our new home at the San Francisco County Fair Building! The SF County Fair Building is easily accessible by bicycle (lots of parking right out front) and also by public transit: The N train and the 6, 16BX, 43, 44, and 71 bus lines all drop you off within a couple blocks of the Fest! Parking can be more difficult, the adjacent lot is for loading and unloading ONLY. There are some paid parking lots in the nearby Inner Sunset district.
Fan art I did for the ladies of the Moustalgia podcast. I had been given a promo ball point pen at Wondercon by hosts Dave and Jeff, but their co-hosts Becky and Kristin could not make it so I drew these fan-drawings for them with the pen I was given.
If you are a fan of Disney theme parks and Disney in general you should give it a listen. They have great discussions of different subjects as well as trip reports, interviews and other goodness.
Hey, thanks to everyone who came to the CAM-JAM 2010 #2 at the Cartoon Art Museum this last Sunday 7-18-2010. It was a lot of fun and our team did some nice work.
Well, my students this past week were really doing some amazing things, and they wanted me to let them know of the tools and software that was used in class and I want to share with all of you in webland what they achieved.
First off we did some Pixalation and Stop Motion. Those are both the same thing, the moving of objects filmed one frame at a time. For Stop Motion we were using and older version of iStopmotion (version 1). It’s Macintosh based and very simple to use which is why I like it. I have not really had a chance to work with version 2 yet, but would like to try in the future. www.boinx.com/istopmotion.
The program was used with just a DV camcorder on a tripod pointing down at a table surface and connected to the computer with a firewire cable. We animated clip art from Dover: http://store.doverpublications.com/0486995666.html which I printed out from the files that came with the book. There was also a battle of Fish vs. Birds with the students drawing their own art.
iStopmotion was also used to film some classic style drawn animation pencil tests of a ball bouncing. The students also went off and drew some new stuff on their own which made me really pleased.
Next off we enter the digital realm with a demonstration of Adobe After Effects CS4. http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/ The program is used for special effects, animation and motion graphics. One strength of the computer is that it can manipulate and re-purpose artwork. Below is a video sample of some Dancing Bears done with one drawing that was first scanned in and had it’s background removed in Photoshop (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/)and then using the puppet tool in After Effects. Then there is a Mysterious Man walking and Spaceships done with the digital version of cut-out animation.
Many of the same effects can be done in other programs like Adobe Flash, but After Effects handles the bitmaps better and is a lot more powerful even with a bit more of a learning curve. I also love the manipulation of flat layers in 3D space to get a ‘multiplane’ effect.
This is the same way they do the Motion Comics, which was one of my inspirations for this class. Artwork being re-purposed for animation.
Last we needed to come up with a simple idea for a short piece of animation in which the students would draw the art which would be brought into the computer and manipulated creating a whole story. After the class agreed to some story elements, everyone sat down to work on some drawings of what characters would look like. The drawings were placed up on the board and assistant artist Chris Conroy and I combined ideas into final designs.
The final result was always planned to be more of a motion comic, but with the art being created specifically for animating. To speed things up I roughed out a simple storyboard and the students worked on making the art which was scanned after class and prepared to be structured into an animation. A big thank to Graham Wong for his help on Friday working in After Effects to animate the drawings and having some of the students assist him.
The voice of the Nanny Ninja is Heather Plunkett and the lip assignments were done in JLipSync, and older java script based program. It’s a bummer since it only uses 8bit mono .WAV files which are very outdated by today’s standards, but it did still get the job done.
The student really did an amazing job of creating some fantastic art that helped tell our story. GOOD WORK GUYS!
Sadly time and technical difficulties have prevented the finished video to appear yet, but it will be finished up in the early part of July with the missing art and missing music, but a close to finished version is presented here as a Work in Progress.
Note: I also found a few drawings did not get scanned in the last rush to finish on Friday and so they will have to be replaced with something else. No art was left out except for that reason. A final version will be on-line in the next week or two with a few missing drawings, music and sound effects — but will look close to the video below.
I just confirmed that there are still spaces available in the Cartoon Boot Camp Classes at the Cartoon Art Museum this Summer in which I will be the teacher.
The classes are aimed at students ages 10-14 who are looking for something that goes beyond the basics. The classes move fast and they are designed for kids who are all ready working on their craft to start with (i.e. intermediate)
The classes are going to be lots of fun and really exciting I think.
June 7 – 11: Character Creation and Design
Learn the engineering of character design: Construction, Costume, Store, and more! This class will focus on learning the structure so that you can draw what you imagine.
June 14 – 18: From Storyboard to Animatics
Students learn to draw storyboards that will be ‘filmed’ into a animatic with sound and posted on the web. Here is the one we did last year…
June 21 – 25: Fantasy Creatures and Mythical Beasts
Gryphons, unicorns, and dragons, oh my! Students learn to draw mythical beasties from around the world and even make up their own. Some of the highlights will be: drawing creatures on all fours, drawing simplified fur and scales, and setting the scene and mood.
June 28 – July 2: Animation and Motion Comics
Thanks to modern technology we have seen a new art form, the motion comics. This class will allow students to learn how to take their own comics and artwork and animate them in both traditional and digital methods. The final video will be available for the world to see on the internet.
Now that our comic work will most likely appear in multiple formats: print, web, ipad, iphone/ipod touch, Motion Comics, cel phone, e-book reader what is the best format to aim for first?
There is…..
1) Standard Comic Book Format (portrait aspect ratio).
Pros: Works good for print and on correctly formatted screens like the new iPad from Apple. The print copy might sell better in Comic Book Stores.
Cons: Posting it on the web requires the user to possible scroll up and down which could take away from the experience. For smaller screens like the iPhone, the page might need to broken up into single panels.
2) Web format comics (landscape aspect ratio)
Pros: Works good on monitor screens with out scrolling around.
Cons: Harder to print as a book. For smaller screens like the iPhone, the page might need to broken up into single panels.
(example: Travis Hanson’s The Bean. It looks great on screen and the printed books are nice but might take more work to create)
3) Panel by Panel (web format) Each panel is a separate illustration which is then can be edited into a page layout if desired.
Pros: Panels are ready for digital formats like cel phones and the iPhone. Can be edited into a comic page if desired. Feels like a picture book or a story board/animation that is reveled as you scroll downwards or sideways. Can control how the reader sees the work since they focus on only one page at a time. Easier to make into Motion Comic.
Cons: Still might have to edit it into a page for print. Would produced full page layouts that are pretty un-dynamic based on their standard shapes. Story telling can possibly go slower paced then a full page of comic. The reader has less control how the view the information since they only see one panel at a time.
(example: Derik Kirk Kim’s The Tune. Cinematic, looks great on screen, can control how the reader see’s your vision more so.)
44) Square.
Pros: Nice, friendly format. Feels like a childrens picture book. Stands out as different then a standard comic. Looks pretty good aspect ratio wise on computer screen.
Cons: Might be harder to print and format for some smaller screen media like the iPhone.
