Comics are fun

Even more so if you try not to use any text in them

This is something I just realised, there are a lot of my comics that don't have any text in them at all. Not that I mind of course, its always interesting to see how much I can do without the help of text. Where is the border of speach and no speach. The latest comic I made was without speach since the images work for themselves.

Comic for KA cafe by ~wulfnstein on deviantART

Its a little comic that will help decorate a café in Sweden. Sara who will be baking lotsa delicious cakes, pies, whatnot asked if I could make something for them. They just started working on the café and I'm sure the exitement will be great over there. Especialy when they'll be open for business. KA stands for Konditori Axelsson, just so you know.

During the clip you might notice a moment where I'm making green outlines and suddenly the two other frames next to it are done in an flash second. That's because I had forgotten to press the record button again. I only noticed that when it was already too late.

On another notice, soon I'll be posting another comic on DA. Its a page that I used for a letter I sent to Studio 100 as a job application. It shows the storie of someone trying to send a letter to the company. I used the characters that the company created, that way I could show that knew what they made, how my skills are and that I'm interested in their company.

The original is of course in dutch and at this moment its not yet translated for internet use, but that'll be fixed soon enough. So be sure to check that out today or tomorrow.

One less movie to see

There's a clear patern in a Miyazaki's movie.

An old person with a big expressive face. A character with no name/face/voice whatever that is just there. Some cute little characters, an enemy that isn't really that evil but a real evil that is actually more in the henchmen. A good character that isn't perfect good cause the perfect good is reserved for the main character and stunning animation of course.

Or I'm only comparing "Howls moving castle" and "Spirited away". Maybe the rest of his movies aren't like that at all. I ought to watch his other movies first before I make a definate conclusion. But for now this one will do.

Speaking of animations, a few days ago I was investigating my "still working on it" folder and discovered some old file. An animation I once started making but never finished. A frame by frame thingy, which means a lot of patience and repetitive work. Probably the reason why I stopped working on it. But somehow I felt good enough to finish it.

Of course its still not done, If I can count on my calculations I'll still have to work a full 24 hours on it to get the motion finished. Then I'll still have to color all of the frames too. Thinking about all that work makes me numb already, but I'll cary on nonetheless. Most off the animation is done anyway. So soon it'll be finished and I'll be able to look back on it with glee.

Pinguins and stuff

2 drawings mentioned in one update, how odd.

A few days ago I was working on an animation I had rediscovered in my "still working on it" folder. I thought it would be cool if I could finish it someday. But since its frame by frame it takes a long time to make it and I realised I wouldn't be able to get it done that evening. So I stopped myself at midnight and figured I'd hit the deck.

But a little post on the internet caught my eye. It was a tutorial on how to work with creative ideas. Interesting as that was I tried it out and at 3:35 that night I stopped working on the pinguin drawing. The next morning I tweaked it a bit more with some extra pinguins and splashes in the water. But as I had made the drawing mondaynight I didn't allow myself to use it as the update for today.

Instead I tried to make something new yesterday evening. Which failed horribly, it started out fine and at one moment in time it was actually very good in its simplicity, but then I kept working on it. And as they said in school once: "Ge moet het ni doodwerken", which sorta means, don't focus on unnecesary details and stuff.

That is of course exactly what I did, I focused too much on perfecting the flow of the shadow- and artlines. But by doing that I forgot the global picture and in the end it just didn't work as I had planned. So one moment off frustration later I went to bed and decided to make something fresh today. Which you can see below.

How I compose stuff by ~wulfnstein on deviantART

I didn't want to upload to much videos so I pasted it behind the pinguin video. The black and white drawing is a sort off visualisation for my worktechnique. I sometimes make a sketch and then start drawing cameras in the scene. Then I add a little sketch of what the view would be through that camera. This helps me in getting ideas on how to show the scenery.

It may seem like a lot of extra unnecesary work, but somehow I belief that seeing all the different options at the same time on paper is better. It helps to chose the right one when you can easily compare them. This time however I stoped at that perticular fase, which I think turned out ok.

And some extra sketches

I'm not sure about pirates in space, but it sounds awesome!

Here are some more sketches that I might use in a little animation I might make. Notice the frequent use of the word "might" here. Cause my reputation on animations isn't that good. I have planned a lot of clips in the past that I wanted to make, but never got to finishing them. Of course back then I never had a storyboard or any general idea of direction.

So a good idea might be to start making a propper storyboard and some decent guidelines. I have made a few sketches in the past weeks to get some ideas out in the open. Even a storyboard of some sorts. Right now the only digital file I have is the storyboard pasted in a flashfile, while the music is playing over it.



I'll see how far this will go. Oh, and look at that, the paper got bended when I put it in the scanner, how funny.

You never know

I wonder how I ended up drawing this?

So I had the idea to draw this steampunk girl in a bee colored outfit with a beehive on her back and some sort of gun to shoot either honey or bees. When I started sketching you can clearly see how I tried. At the third sketch however I saw something completly different in the lines I had just made and fleshed it out a bit.

You can clearly observe what came after that perticular moment. The bee-girl never reached the status of existence and is still living in the plains of imagination. Mr Dummy however is quite alive for the moment. Not sure what it is suposed to be or if it even represents something, but I'm sure people will see something in it.

Mr Dummy by ~wulfnstein on deviantART

Sketches, some digital, some not

Never hang on the branches off a tree, they might break off.

This weekend I was off sketching a bit with Lieven, it has been a long time since we had done that. My result is the pencil sketched church below. Something I didn't notice while I was drawing was the size off the tower, it was way to big, or the other part of the building was too small. But when the sketch was done it was too late to fix it. I also rediscovered why trees can be a pain to draw.

The second part of the image today is a screenshot from my big sketchfile. Its the file I mentioned a few updates ago. Right now it is filled with smaller sketches all seperated by some white area. But today I'm at the point where I can't really draw in it without destroying previously drawn things.

Those paying attention might notice the little girl and the tree, on which I based a drawing off a few days ago. We also have a little stitch in the water with some sort of big animal swimming underneath him. Yes I know stitch would never go in the water like that, but its a sketch, so I'm allowed to draw anything I want.

Damn you blogspot WORK!

Internet should work with me, not against me!

I don't like it when I want to upload something that I'm already not too pleased about. (drawing and short clip) and then blogspot decided to fail two times. Making me retype everything since its not that friendly with ctrl-v. So I'm keeping this short. Video and drawing below...

Pirates in space

To start a little impossible project or not to start it?

Last week I found a nice song on Newgrounds called "Edge of the universe". Quite a nice song, and for some reason it has been speaking to my imagination. Imagining a little boy and girl in or on a spaceship, flying through space, going on an adventure. When they encounter a spaceship with pirates they flee into a nebula and escape the evil pirates. After which they happily fly off into space again.

Right now I have made a "storyboard" of the three minutes and twenty nine seconds. Storyboard is a big word, its actually more like 209 squares with a few lines in them, spread out on four pages in my sketchbook. Of course I also have the character sketches down here. But while I'm thinking about it I actually belief it would be fun if I could make a music video of some sort.

My experience with animation isn't that good of course, the most I've made up till now is three short clips which you can find on my youtube channel. Only one of them is actually movie-like and the other are more like roughs. So I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull off such a big animation like that. Last time I thought about doing it I ended up with a bad dragon animation. Who knows what I'll end up with this time.

The big sketchy file

I'm not sure how I'm going to cope with the sketch file.

I've been using a big sketchfile for the last week now. Its an A3 sized file that started out blank and every time that I just want to sketch a bit I do it in that file. Since I'm only using one layer I'll eventually end up painting over previously drawn sketches. Right now I've still been able to paint around them. But soon I won't have enough place left and I'll have to cross the border.

Its a bit frightning to destroy those little sketches, and yet I know I have to do it. Being able to give up an old thing for something new and maybe even better is a thing I still need to learn. It might come in handy when I'm drawing, so I won't hesitate to try something new. Instead of holding on to the old piece even if its not as good as it should be.

How cute is this by ~wulfnstein on deviantART

The drawing of today exists out of a tree, a little girl and an apple. Each of those three things were drawn on seperate occasions. Firstly the tree, which I drew while listening to Sea of honey from "Markyspark" on Newgrounds, which is my new favorite site to look for fresh music. The apples were a small addition when I got bored for 5 seconds.

The little kid was something I drew over them keeping in mind that i'd use the tree as a background for it. Somehow it felt nice to combine new sketch with something that was already on the paper. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that again. But we'll see how that turns out. About the speedpainting of last thursday that I didn't post, I have some good news I guess. I'll post it today.

You can check out the finished piece in my Deviantart gallery, linky