Monday, January 05, 2009

Thirsty?


Here's a little guy in desperate need of a drink. These are keyframes from a series of short animations I've been working on for the past month or so. On a tip from Sherm Cohen, I've been playing around with a fabulous digital painting app called Art Rage. It's basically an easy-to-use stripped down version of Painter, offering up only a dozen tools...and it's only $25! I couldn't recommend it more. In approaching the design, I thought it would be fun to step away from the vector traps of Flash for a bit to create something more painterly. To add further texture, I scanned in some watercolor spatter paintings, and composited the final image in Photoshop.


Best of all, I got to do my first painted close-up (often used in animation to show more detail than the typical cel will allow). Added bonus: a gross close-up! I sort of had Clint Eastwood in mind, left stranded in the desert in The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly (chapped lips included!). I'll likely post more from this series when the project wraps up.

9 comments:

Louise Smythe said...

love it. it reminds me of Ren and Stimpy awesomeness. also, i have the Art Rage trial version (i haven't used it in a while) but this post made me want to use the program again! i mean, $25 is pretty hard to beat.

Bob Flynn said...

Yeah, Ren and Stimpy basically owned the gross closs-up.. SpongeBob uses it...and many countless shows since (The Mighty B, as of late).

Definitely take Art Rage for another spin. In the very least, it just offers another visual route to take.

Sherm said...

Hey there Bob... Glad you're diggin' that ArtRage. I hope you can share the animation on your blog when it's all finished ^_^

Honolulu Dogfight said...

These are great, and I think folks will be even more delighted when they see the animation movin' around.
I haven't picked up Art Rage yet, but it's on the list. Just saw you mentioned and linked on the meathaus site which is excellent, congrats!

Bob Flynn said...

Thanks, Sherm and George! These couple images are just the tip of the iceberg...I'll post more soon (including animation, at some point).

ArtRage on!

I'm gonna look into Meathaus. They put out an anthology...cool that they featured me.

Togotooner said...

Very cool stuff! Sure does remind me of the Ren and Stimpy days as well as the Still Title images that Kricfalusi used during each episode's intro. Loved that stuff!

Art Rage is a beautiful thing isn't it? I can't wait until AR3 comes out next month or so!

dankrall said...

my mouth is pasty just looking at that.

Chris Houghton said...

Oh man, these are GREAT! Looks like your having fun too. I actually just read the post where Sherm (stumbled upon his blog through your's- weird how that works, huh?) mentioned Art Rage. Very cool! I just started using it.

Also, great drawings in your last post. Last year when visiting my parents, I did the same thing and had such a blast.

Taker easy dude!

Bob Flynn said...

Thanks again everyone! Dan, hope you got something to drink. You sure don't want to end up dehydrated like this guy.