Perceptions Characters: Evolution, Part 1

Hi there. Well, I've been working on another book for the "All About Me" series for Hoopoe Books. This is about perceptions and discusses the five senses. When I started on this book, I was told that the characters and visuals would be a throw back to the first book, "Me and My Memory; Why We Forget Some things and Remember Others" and the characters would again be robots or 'bots' as we (my publisher and I) have come to refer to them. Okay, another bot book, but there is stuff in the manuscript about a bear -a cave bear- so I got into working on bears for a term.

Despite how much fun it is to draw bears, I needed to stay focused and work up comps for the characters that would represent the five senses. At an initial meeting with the publisher, we were discussing possibilities and the question was raised,"What if these guys were just the sense like a nose with little legs?" I shrugged it off, instantly thinking of those product adds from the 50's where some poor dancer had to put a giant cigarette carton on and dance around. So I just drew these things below right there at the meeting. After the first (the nose) my pub could see what a bad idea it was but I continued to toss out the other sketches until he was forced to concede. (nothing says "It's a bad idea" better than a little overkill) The disco dancing robot started a new line of thinking for us.
I did already have some rough (and very terrible) sketches of some bots but I was hitting a wall. What the heck can you do with a 'smell bot'? I had an air filter but my pub scowled at me.I do like my note from this meeting, "not so 'roboty'" as shown above. So I started to focus more on 'humanoid' bots. We discussed the need for many 'sight bot' because of the many ways the brain perceives what we see. So progress appears below.
The nose dudes literally stink.
I liked the idea of a big machine that would be the touch bot but i wasn't enjoying it, as you can see-my sketches are so stiff and uninteresting above.
Another head shake from the publisher and I went back to an early sketch of team of bots that seemed right and did the sketch below.I got an email back that these were heading in a better direction but there were a huge list of changes for these fellows. Including, "Please refer to notes from previous meeting about needing many sight bots...". So I was at the drawing board again, when I started to think about the crew from Star trek and how they would go adventures off ship. We were going to reuse the "Decider" idea from "Me and My Memory". Why couldn't the decider receive stimulus and 'send' out squads of senses to investigate? So, while, riding the bus to teach at SJSU, I hustled out sketches like the one below. My publisher dug the idea when I sent this rough lineup above. More changes and suggestions and i started working up ideas for the space ship that would carry this group of misfits with giant ears, hands, eyes, noses etc. They are based off a brain, get it?Now that I had something that would fly these explorers here and there, I could focus on the decider, shown here in various stages of anonymity. they like the fourth one, even though I thought it was a little scary or at least heading in another direction. Just goes to show once again, they will always like the one you don't.
Here are the rough final characters for the project. Uniforms will change a bit, I am really leaning toward those campy space uniforms from classic B grade Sci-Fi flicks. I'll post those in a while. Concept for these guys is misfits. They really don't fit in the real world, like O'l Pap is that guy who waxes about long gone days of piracy and other foolishness (you know the guy at work who should have retired 40 years ago but sticks around just to say random stuff like, 'thar be a storm a'blowin').

There's a funny story about the Touch Team, or at least notes I got from publisher about what the most sensitive parts of the body are and how I should incorporate them into a character...i didn't post the results of those notes here, maybe some other place. If you're really interested in THAT story, post a comment...A line up of the entire away team; the Senses Squad. Click for a larger image. that's progress for now, more later. Thanks for stopping by.

Primary and Secondary Gesture Drawing.

Okay Students of my DAA 264 Drawing Animation class, let's be more clear about the gesture enigma. Gesture shows only weight and action and so I've tried to make it as clear as possible. the drawings below go with the first image from "modelworkbook2" in the group. This fellow is pushing his weight up on a pedestal and the so called 'primary gesture' describes the main visual force being exerted from the arc in the back down through the leg doing the pushing upward. Also the left arm and shoulder thrusting up to support the weight of the upper body. not much here but note the "catch/release" of the lines denoting the back and leg.


The Secondary portion of the gesture are those lines that describe the action of the rest of the body, in this case the limbs, feet, turn of the head etc. as shown below. This is done quickly to nail down the overall action of the pose, realistically it should take more than 20 seconds to nail this. It only gives a rough idea of what is happening in the pose but is the basis and "life" of rest of the drawing.
Below another example with a little construction thrown in. Note: the torque of the gesture for the weight leg.

Below is the same drawing but with the 'primary gesture' highlighted in red and the secondary in blue. Remember this only about primary/secondary gesture. Don't worry about constructing arms and legs or placing the anatomy correctly or anything else at this point even if the examples found here go further. This is all we should be looking for at this point, the other stuff will come later.
Other examples follow below. Try to find the primary/secondary gestures of these drawings, thinking this way and pushing the gesture allows me to keep my drawings alive. By the way, none of these drawings took longer than 5 minutes and most were two minutes. Go draw, draw, draw.

Emotions and What's the Catch now available!

Just got my copies of the two books that I worked on earlier this year (work in progress links are here, here, here, here, and here)More links as to where it's available and so, soon. (but my kid just woke up so I have to go for now...)

Chrsitmas Card 2010

Good morning, here are some ruffs for this year's family Christmas card...
Santa shushing a T-rex, what could be better than that? Other than the t-rex looking really lame, of course.Better t-rex, now to fix my man, Santa.
Final line drawing...with presents! My son saw and yelled, "Santa!" 'must be doing something right.Under painting, first pass.
Detail: in progress.
more in progress. Almost done now, would have been done if I remembered to save BEFORE my son found the off switch on the power strip to my computer. (This week's lesson: SAVE OFTEN)Almost there...almost there.
...Aaand here is the final. What do you think? The plan (at least) will be for each hard copy card to be personalized for the kids of each recipient. Want one? Do I have your address? Send me an email so I know. Merry Christmas! Thanks for stopping by!