Designing and Working

Well over the past few weeks, I have been designing characters and working on, yes, an actual job.  Here are some of the designs I have been doing.  Some fun with elves and imps.

Besides getting ready for the Holidays

I have been working on a digital painting for my niece, her hubby and their little guy, Owen.  An obvious shout out to Game of Thrones.  This painting depicts my grand nephew Owen proclaiming "Winter is Coming".  Work in Progress, hope to finish today.

Longhair and Doubledome

As I continue to look into avenues for these two cavemen, it is always fun to play around in the Photoshop sandbox trying a variety of tools and little tweaks to their imagery.  Here trying a little more contrast and saturation.  Nothing earth shattering, but fun.

Working things out

So for the past few months, I have been working on a bunch of projects.  Six months designing for Fiasco Lab, a small animation project and pitching two shows to PBSkids.  I now find myself at a crossroads, plenty of projects to work on but unsure which ones to move on.  I am taking the day today to just let it filter in, something I haven't done in quite a while.  Letting it come out of the ether, and hoping for an answer.

It is a necessary element of creativity, to meditate, to close one's eyes and see what comes into your head.  What motivation?  What comes forward.  Looking forward to finding out.

Working on Fiasco Lab

Over the past, say six months, Mike Parker (web developer) and yours truly have been working on a design lab and merchandise store, Fiasco lab.  I have been designing nearly every opportunity I can and have been enjoying the challenge of designing engaging T-shirt designs.  Here are some of the more recent attempts.

Hard to be interestng online as an artist when all you have been doing lately is writing.

I love being a an animator, and an artist.  I love the physicality of drawing, painting and doing what I do best, making the visual come to life.  But there are times when pre-production has to take precedence and writing is a huge and necessary part of it.  I tell many of my students to concentrate on writing and continue to work at it.

For me, writing can both clarify and even create the visual.  It can give you a direct and valid direction and it helps you avoid trying to jerry-rig a concept to make your character work.  It is like drawing to painting or sculpture, you cannot create a a great painting or sculpture without the ability to draw it.  Drawing allows you to try your idea, twist your idea in a variety of poses and shapes and so does writing to concept.

So for now, I will keep writing, and getting things right before venturing into the visual realm.

Frankenlincolnstein

Occasionally, I think of fun mash-ups to make my artistic life a bit more interesting for a couple hours or two.  For some reason, anything with Abe Lincoln seems to work really well.  Here is an entry from this month's Inktober 2016.  Haven't done many inks for this but here is one of my favorites, still have to tweak it, but here is a preview.

Here is my Flat Top Dracula from inktober 2016

Flat Top Dracula-Intober 2016

Tweaking the Knock Knock website

When you don't have a twenty year old, geekified millenial working to update your website, weekly, monthly or yearly, it may be one of the jobs that is most daunting.  It would be great if content could magically appear as you think of it, but it has to be organized, written and rewritten.  Just another job, I don't get paid for but is totally necessary.  Oh well, it's a crappy rainy day anyway.

2016 STARTS with a BANG

Knock Knock Cartoons has all ready completed one commercial for RPM Advertising in 2016 and we are about to start a new commercial production as soon as we can get some approvals...Hahaha.  Boards for new projects are in the works and phone calls are roaring in.  Yay! 2016.  We will post some of the art soon!