Monsieur Charlo - drawing on Ipad(2018) with Apple pencil

So I did this last night an hour using the Apple Pencil on my new iPad and the mobile version of Sketchbook. I did take into Affinity photo on my desktop to do some refining, but not much. I was surprised how easy it as to draw on the iPad with the Apple pencil. My brother has one so i knew it was a nice drawing tool but all I had done was test a few brushes on his iPad pro, this was full drawing 15 x 15 inches. Monsieur Charlo is my neighbour's new puppy, though he won't get much bigger than he is now (3 pounds). He likes to come over to my side of the deck and play with our Dog Watson, steal his food and chase him around. It's too cute for words.

The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

I am well into production of my next gothic horror animated short, The Tell Tale Heart, my second Poe story. I have plans to do the Raven at a later date, maybe next year.

This one has three characters, I cut the number of policemen in the story from 3 to 1. Makes its more do-able for me and 1 is more than enough for what happens in the story. I got some feedback on the set designs at C4D Cafe from some of the members and I think that made them much better. I kept them very simple.

A couple challenges so far have been making the floor which needed to have several floorboards removable and the thin ray of light lipping through the slightly open door on to the face of the sleeping old man. I am also having some motivation issues getting it all done. It happens - you just feel like you are screaming into the void making these things at times.

Renarldo - more updates

I feel like I'm getting closer to finding out what this guy is all about. I have been improving his finger movements and gave him toes and shortened his feet even more. Plus the glasses. At this point he's is ready to go - but where?

Sketchbook is now FREE!

The drawing program I love is Sketchbook by Autodesk. The pens look like pens, the pencils, pencils and so on. The interface is not conventional but not complicated or hard to get used to either. It has animation component I have never used but might someday.

While I wish it had dodge and burn tools, even though that would break it's "drawing tools only" rule that is not a deal breaker. What was a deal break was when Autodesk got all Adobe on us and decided to make it subscription only. I bought the latest stand alone version and started looking for other tools to use.

Now I won't have to look anymore. The applications now free, only requiring you to sign in to Autodesk's site once, download the software and that's it.

Sketchbook page

New Crow and cast of characters

click to enlarge

So this was another character I did some tests with then nothing but think he could be useful. Like Renarldo, I changed his rigging, changed him from 4 to 5 fingers and reworks his head a little plus gave him more expression.  He is a homage (rip off?) of a few designs done by Mike Luce in my 3D style for animations. I wanted him to be long and skinny to add a little variety to my stable of characters.

Click to enlarge

Speaking of my stable of characters - I've been putting them in the header here and on my home/portfolio page. Maybe someone out there will find them interesting enough to get me some much needed work! 

Renarldo - new version

click to enlarge

I made a little test film of this guy doing the Flashdance scene where the water drops on her head a few years back. I had lots of issues with the final rigging and as I animated, the rig got more and more out of whack.

In this version, he has the same head slightly modified and feet, but long pants, better shirt and arms with 5 fingered hands. I used the rig I have been using for Charles Webster Billingsworth the 3rd in the Dramatic Reading series so it's stable and flexible. This new version has a lot more controls and many more face morphs so he should be more expressive. His cheek fur uses the jiggle deformer for extra motion and his tail has a dynamic joint chain for the same reason.I used the Nitro4D eye plugins to make the eyes. The older ones were nice, I liked them but they didn't work as well and gave him a meaner look than I wanted.

Not sure what to do with him now, I want to do more varied cartoon work like the Dramatic Reading series but I'm sort of out of ideas right now on exactly what I want to accomplish.

Dramatic Readings : Save the Earth!

Another one! This is based on the theme to Godzilla VS the Smog Monster because - why not? Oddly the message, such as it is, is still relevant today... more so even. Plus it's totally weird, 60's and silly.

Book Jacket project: 1984

click to enlarge

One style missing form my current project is what I think of as "pure" design", meaning dependent solely on design elements like typography, colour blocks and simple basic shapes. I forgot I had a hardcover of 1984 and it seems a perfect fit for this sort of design. I want to get away forth idea of staring eyes and raised fists and go for something much more basic and, I hope, eye-catching.

Vectorizer test

click to enlarge

Mike Luce did a test over at his blog with Super vectorizer 2 which I already but only used in a limited way. So I took a really old, super detailed drawing to see how it did turning bitmapped to vector.

As would be expected, the dot and line work looks pretty damn good. It did take some playing around to get there though. The doorway greyscale was done with grey chalk in original and the tones are a little too subtle to be vectorized, but still, not a bad look.

Affinity Designer does not vectorize bitmaps like Illustrator does (barely) so if you need an external program for that Super vectorizer is a good choice and very well priced.

Book Jacket project: 20000 Leagues Under the Sea and Ghost Stories

click to enlarge

I love Jules Verne novels and have read  quite a few in English or French or both. Captain Nemo was the hero of my youth (along with Verne's Rubor the conqueror). I originally was going to make a 3D version from Verne's Nautilus plans... but the Disney version is just the best. I put it up there as one of the best ship designs in all science-fiction.

Again, I am going for a very clean, open look. I had to redraw the Grosset & Dunlap logo in Designer. I used a coloured gradient to give the feeling of the sea without having to have bubbles, or fish or anything like that.

click to enlarge

This tiny book of ghost stories is the last of my uncovered hardcovers, I think. I guess a way to
continue would be to take some books I love and do new covers for them. I might