October 24, 2009

Blob Monster – Icon

Filed under: Animation — Tags: — Screenhog @ 4:59 pm

Creating the animation for yesterday’s blog post took up a significant amount of my free time, so I’m gonna have to be a little lazy about today’s blog post. I know that quite a few of the people visiting my site also visit other forums, so I created these:

They are 100×100 pixel icons, and if you want to use them for any reason, be my guest.

In other news, if you’re one of the people coming to my site looking for new word puzzles, I highly recommend ClockWords. It’s a very simple concept for a word game that relies on your speed and word creativity to beat, and the music is wonderful too.

October 23, 2009

Blob Monster – Animated

Filed under: Animation — Tags: — Screenhog @ 7:00 pm

After drawing the blob monster last week, I decided that I really did want to animate it, so this week, I did. I started with one of the sketches from last week’s drawings, and worked from there to create a general goopy monster animation.

I’d forgotten how even the smallest animations take quite awhile, though… I’m probably going to have a much smaller post tomorrow to fulfill my two-post-a-week promise.

October 3, 2009

Alphabet

Filed under: Animation,Wordplay — Tags: — Screenhog @ 12:31 pm

There are a lot of early sources that I can point to that made me want to become an animator when I grew up, and one of them was definitely Sesame Street. Oh sure, it was a lot of puppet stuff most of the time, but there were also lots of little animated segments, including ones that taught the alphabet.

These little animations inspired me seven years ago to create an alphabet animation of my own, and while I’d like to do a better one someday, this type of thing still brings back memories of my early childhood.

September 8, 2009

Quick Animation: Anti-Theft Device

Filed under: Animation — Screenhog @ 8:07 pm

July 10, 2009

Luigi Scared

Filed under: Animation,Sketch,Video Games — Tags: , , — Screenhog @ 8:32 pm

Over the last week and a half, I received not one but two e-mails requesting a scared Luigi. One e-mail suggested that Luigi should be running scared from a ghost, so here we go.

Casper meets Luigi

I get the feeling that Casper the Friendly Ghost isn’t what the e-mailers had in mind. :)

June 16, 2009

The Tortoise and the Hare

Filed under: Animation,Sketch — Tags: , , — Screenhog @ 8:20 pm

Over the last few days, I’ve already received more e-mails than I can possibly draw, so to all of the fans of this site, thank you! There have been some really wacky ideas, and there’s a few more that I’ve already received that I still plan on doing (including one that would work much better as a piece of music than as a sketch).

A fan named Steven wrote me with the following request: “I think you should draw “The Tortoise and the Hare”. The tortoise would have a rocket attached to its shell.” Sounds good to me:

There are actually a few influences behind this picture. The first, of course, if the Aesop’s Fable “The Tortoise and the Hare”, but there’s more than that. The rocket, while not identical, is somewhat inspired in its shape by Rocketsnail. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have his logo up anymore, but he used to have a 3D snail with a rocket tied to its back as his logo.

However, I also got some inspiration for this from… myself. Back in 2000, I created an animation in 3D Studio Max for animation class that was based on, you guessed it, The Tortoise and The Hare. It was called “The Rematch”, and these were the characters:

Ah… that takes me back.

May 2, 2009

For The Birds – Unfinished

Filed under: Animation,Digital Painting,Sketch — Tags: , — Screenhog @ 6:52 pm

Sometimes, I bite off a little more than I can chew.

Have you ever seen “For The Birds”? It’s a hilarious Pixar short film that you owe yourself to see if you’ve never done so. Well, today, I had the grand idea of making fan art of this short.

So, I first make myself a sketch:

So far, so good. I then begin to color in the big bird and one of the small birds:

It’s at this point when I start asking myself “How am I going to do these feathers”? And do I have an answer for myself? No. I do not. The only way I can think of to do the feathers in Photoshop would be to actually draw every feather on every little bird, and I’m going to be honest with you… that would take a very long time. Hair and feathers are difficult and time consuming to create in any art form, and I didn’t have that kind of time on my hands tonight.

So, you’re stuck with unfinished art to look at. For some, this may be a fascinating insight into the behind-the-scenes of my art creation process. For others, you’ll look at it for 5 seconds and say “Screenhog’s lazy!”.

Yes. Yes I am.

February 25, 2009

Marvin the Martian

Filed under: Animation,Sketch — Tags: , — Screenhog @ 6:53 am

For some unknown reason, this guy popped into my head this morning, so that’s what I drew:

A few notes:

  • For all of you budding artists out there, if you need to color something black with pencil, make sure that you wait until the very end of your drawing to do it. Otherwise your fingers will get into it when you’re drawing other things and start leaving smudge marks everywhere.
  • I think every artist has a preferred size that they draw. Some draw very large, and can’t fit their whole artistic vision on a regular sheet of 8 1/2 by 11 paper. For me, though, I will usually draw five or six things on a sheet of paper that size. While this has some advantages (thumbnail drawings, storyboard, etc.) I think I have to learn to feel more comfortable drawing bigger.
  • Marvin the Martian’s costume, so I have learned, was based on the character Mars from Roman mythology. His face, I assume, was not.

November 25, 2008

Don’t Touch That!

Filed under: Animation,Digital Painting — Tags: — Screenhog @ 7:48 am

The subject for Monday’s art challenge at work was “Don’t Touch That!”. I had been playing with a concept in my head all week, but Sunday afternoon, I suddenly came up with a much better one to attempt to draw:
Deedee presses the button from Dexter's Lab
In case you don’t recognize it, these are the two main characters from the Cartoon Network show “Dexter’s Lab”. It was very unusual drawing in that style, but I went into it knowing I’d be breaking out of my comfort zone. I don’t think it’s quite good enough to actually be a frame from the show, but it’s close. At the very least, I was able to create pretty much exactly what I’d pictured in my head, which has to count for something.

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