Norman Saunders: Illostribute

Over the summer, illustrator Toby Thane Neighbors asked me if I'd like to participate in a new collaborative blog he'd started called Illostribute. The idea for the site is to pay tribute to famous illustrators and fine artists by "investigation through interpretation." And he's been able to gather up quite the impressive roster artists, including regular contributor Nate Wragg. I missed the first few rounds because I was crazy busy, but was able to carve out some time in September for the current artist, Norman Saunders.

You can see the full post --> here

...which details Saunder's career as one of the most renown pulp fiction illustrators, creating more than 800 covers in his time—and includes well over a dozen outstanding tribute illustrations.

I began my investigation by poring over cover after cover of Saunder's work. There are many great resources, including this one over at PulpArtists.com. After much searching, I settled on the Mars Attacks trading cards he co-created for Topps in 1962—a good online index of those can be found here. This is apparently the set that inspired Tim Burton to make his movie of the same name. I chose the image on the left because it features one of Saunder's trademark women in distress, and of course, because I knew I'd have fun drawing the alien.



Here's the sketch I started with.



Which I then scanned and inked in Flash.



I imported the inks (with transparency) into ArtRage, where I did all of my painting and coloring. Above is an in-process screen shot. As always, I highly recommend this program for digital painting.



And the final rendering, which I imported into Photoshop to design the typography, added texture, and to crop it to match the trading card (see image at the top of the post).

The process of visual investigation was definitely a fun one, though I'd consider it a cover or tribute more than a unique re-interpretation. Still, it was enjoyable to take one of his images and remake it. Plus, I normally work in flat colors, so moving the paint around and rendering the forms was a welcome exploration.

For more on Norman Saunders, there's a great book out by his son David Saunders, published by The Illustrated Press. Shane Glines has great praise for it, too.

Senses Characters

(click on these guys to see'em bigger)

I have some new character art and designs to share with you! If you follow the blog, you may remember a series of animations I posted about a year ago from a project we developed at FableVision for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science called "Top 10 Traumas on the Trail." If not --> here's a refresher (with plenty of animation to watch). You can currently see that project in a fantastic exhibit at the museum called Expedition Health.

Well, the awesome crew from the museum came back to us with a request for a sequel! (I was of course, ecstatic!... There are few things I love more than combining animation and science). This new series of shorts features the same hiker with a new friend—and this time they're learning about how the makeup of our DNA alters how we perceive various sensations.

I started by revisiting earlier designs of the hiker character, and coming up with a few more. The original, who we call Spikey, is in pink.


We ended up going with (B), but realized we'd need to add ears so they'd be able to, well...hear.

Next, I designed some environments. Below are stills from a few of the opening segments. We start outside at stops along the trail, and then enter into the body to explain the scientific process. These are all painted in ArtRage, which is an app I still highly recommend.





And then it was on to the senses characters. We needed all 5 of them (touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing). I thought it would be most fun to have the characters become the body part that perceives the sense. Here's an early composite sketch.



There's also a bright little character named Poly (short for polymerase, which is an enzyme that reacts with DNA). We think of her as the engineer responsible for reading the blueprint of your genes. Some early sketches of her, below (we went with C):



And last but not least, the Brain.


(like I really needed to design another brain character...YES!)
He's the guy all the senses report to.

*Update: FableVision animator, Hannah O'Neal, asked me to dig up the alternates for the Brain. She inspired version (D) with a doodle she passed over to me. So many brains, so little time.



And here they all are in the final character lineup.



One more image to toss at you: a test that I did to make sure they worked on the background concept (devised to be a cool little factory & command center inside the body).



That's all for now! I like to think of these little sense guys as cute cousins to my weirdo brain character. I'll share a few of the final animations in the near future.

Brainy Christmas!

I played with the new version of ArtRage tonight. If you follow me on Twitter (@bobjinx) you may have caught me raving about it. They added a bunch of new features, including an inking pen, watercolor brush, and selection & transform tools. I only exported to Photoshop to resize and save it as a proper jpeg—the new ArtRage even has color adjustment options. The inking pen is a bit too smooth for my taste, though very impressive. So I inked the little brain dude in Flash.


I did prefer the inking pen over the paint brush for detail work—you'll see I added the drool marks and puddle after I inked in Flash. If you're curious about how I use Flash with ArtRage, I can do a tutorial at some point. Sherm Cohen has already covered the Illustrator/ArtRage combo like a pro. But essentially, all I do is export a hi-res transparent PNG from Flash and drop it on a layer in ArtRage to paint under.

Have a great holiday everyone!
...and Merry Christmas!

See you in 2010, if not sooner...

Traumas Animations: Diarrhea

Of all the "Top 10 Traumas on the Trail" animations I made at FableVision for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, this one was definitely a crowd-pleaser. You'll understand why when you watch below—note that load time may be a bit slow because we're at animation capacity right now, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
(visit my blog if you are viewing in Google Reader)

Diarrhea

Watch in full resolution.

That final note knocks'em dead every time. Adults, even! Fart sounds and learning go hand in hand, right? Everyone seemed to fall in love with this little guy, too: the giardia cell.


To think that he could be responsible for your gastrointestinal pain. I went into the project planning to create characters that would be appealing and easy to animate, thus the simple design.

I'll highlight the title slate, because it's my favorite of the group. I was going for a putrid urine yellow to punch up the ick factor as much as possible—considering this is just a stream (an infected stream, mind you).


This is one of the many digital paintings I made using ArtRage. The character and title were added in Flash. I should mention again that Sherm Cohen is the guy who first turned me on to ArtRage. He's been posting a series of great tutorials over at his blog. I highly recommend it as a painting app, because it is incredibly intuitive to use and cheap. I used it in combination with hand-painted watercolor spatters to create all the background art in the series. I believe this long intestine shot was one of the first I painted, previously mentioned here.


Once again, I handled design, storyboarding, and layout—Allie Biondi on animation. Also, Tony Lechner did all the sound design and music for these animations. With a message slightly contrary to the Dehydration animation, here's a case where you don't want to drink the water. Keep that in mind the next time you're on a hike.

Traumas Animations: Snowblindness

I thought I'd cap a week of animation posts by featuring the third in the "Top 10 Traumas on the Trail" series. This one is probably the most cinematic of the bunch. I was tasked to create a funny but horrific tale of destruction. Watch the animation below—note that it may take a little while to load because my blog is overflowing with animation right now. (visit my blog if you are viewing in Google Reader)

Snowblindness

Watch in full resolution.

Probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of snowblindness, right? It's basically like getting a sunburn on your eye. I was amazed to discover that our eyes absorb oxygen cells right from the air to heal the cornea. Maybe you learned something, too.

It was obviously a treat to create a UV Monster villain. As with all these animations, I tried to keep the characters simple so they would be easy to animate, using painted backgrounds to enhance the visual oomph. Here's the painting for the destruction pan, which I created in Art Rage.


I handled design, storyboarding, and layout. Allie Biondi animated the entire piece. And finally, here's another plug for the new Expedition Health exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science where these animations are featured. It just opened last weekend, so be sure to visit if you live in the area.

Traumas Animations: Dehydration

Here's another short animation from the "Top 10 Traumas on the Trail" series I created with my talented crew at FableVision. This one features a thirsty body cell in a desperate search for a drink of water. Watch the animation below. (visit my blog if you are viewing in Google Reader)

Dehydration

Watch in full resolution.

In case you missed it, here's a still of the painted close-up.


All done in ArtRage, mind you. If you know me, you know this humor is right up my alley. I have this weird tendency to enjoy stringing along a character by giving them a glimpse (delusion) of hope. Is that so wrong? Our client actually encouraged us to end it where we did, too. Ha! Man, sometimes the right projects land right in your lap. Best of all, the message stays with you. Drink a lot of water when you're hiking, or you'll end up like this guy...

Again, this animation is featured in one of the many outstanding interactive activities at the Expedition Health exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science which is now open to the public. Be sure to look for it if you're a local!

Traumas Animations: Mosquito Bites

For the next week or two, I'll be posting a few of the short animations I created at FableVision for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. I posted production frames earlier in the year showing how I'd been using ArtRage for background painting (here and here). Now's your chance to see them in motion!


The title of the activity is "Top 10 Traumas on the Trail," a touch-screen kiosk in the museum aimed at making people aware of the physical harm you might encounter while hiking. The larger theme of the new permanent exhibit, Expedition Health, examines the biology of the human body while encouraging healthy living. This poor kid has ten things horribly wrong with him. The home screen invites the user to touch regions of pain, which are highlighted in red and pulsing. In the attract loop, the kid just stands there teetering back and forth in a painful trance. It's priceless :)

The first animation I'm featuring is called Mosquito Bites. Each short uses a bit of narrative and metaphor to explain how your body is coping with the trauma. Not to mention a dose of humor.

(hop over to my blog if you're in Google Reader to view the embedded animation)

Mosquito Bites

Watch in full resolution.

I handled the storyboarding, layout, and design, with the help of the fabulous Allie Biondi on animation. The activity was written and produced by Naomi Greenfield. As mentioned, the backgrounds were painted in ArtRage with a bit of compositing in Photoshop. It was incredibly fun to work on. I hope the kiddies love it!

If you live in the Denver area, I encourage you to visit the museum, as Expedition Health opened this weekend! You can find out everything you need to know about it here. It sounds like an amazing experience for all ages—so popular that you might even need a reservation!

More ArtRage

I've been mainly using ArtRage to create backgrounds for animation. Because Flash is a vector environment, it can be a bit limiting working primarily in flat colors. I've wanted to experiment with textured and painterly backgrounds for awhile. Above is the opening shot of another short animation I'm working on. The background is all ArtRage; the characters and living room props are all Flash (so they can be animated).


Here is a background I painted for a long panning shot of a destroyed city, burnt to a crisp. Flames were added later in Flash.

One of the short-comings of ArtRage, in my opinion, is that it lacks the ability make a mess or add grimy texture...spray paint, spatters, sponges, drips, etc. I gravitated to tools like this in Painter—or, it was really easy to do in Painter. So, to achieve the effect I had in mind, I created a bunch of smudge and spatter paintings with real—that's right, REAL—watercolors. I made this mess of a painting by dabbing my finger tips on watercolor paper. You can probably make out my finger print in places.


I then superimposed it over a digital painting of the insides of intestines. After some layer compositing in Photoshop, I arrived at the dirty-smudgey look I was going for. I think this might have been one of the first backgrounds I made using the program.


Again, highly recommended! Just play around with ArtRage and see where it takes you!

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.