The Outhouse

Wolverine

2012-03-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

2 posts in 1 day! I'm on a roll!

Here's Wolverine after what I imagine was a bloody good time. Hoho, haha, get it? Cuz he's--ahem, moving on. No real reason for drawing this other than I felt like drawing Wolverine so I drew Wolverine. I like it, kinda cartoony but kinda bad ass too.

Wicked Witch of the West

2012-03-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

Apparently whenever a new twisted take on a classic fantasy story is drawn the female characters have to be really hot. I don't know if I fully follow the logic but I'm happy to play by the rules. Here's the Wicked Witch of the West, if you don't know what story she's from there's probably no hope left for you. This started with some ideas for the flying monkeys and I really like how they turned out. The witch is missing something though, it's kind of a bland pose and maybe that's it but I feel like I could've done something more with her. Maybe I'll take another stab at it one day.

Robo Junker

2012-02-25T23:46:00.000-08:00

This is the first of what will surely be many fully rendered concept designs for a character in a graphic novel idea that I've got kicking around.

Prior to this all I've got of this guy are some half finished doodles. I really like how this drawing turned out but it's not quite the vibe I'm going for so there's much tinkering still to be done. This particular graphic novel isn't necessarily on the top of my priority list though so it'll probably be a while before I crank out any more iterations. I recently bought a new box of gray markers and I wanted to take them for a test spin...that was really my prime motivation for this particular drawing. I like doing steam/cyber punk drawings...if I feel like drawing but have no specific ideas at the moment I can usually start drawing something like this end up with something...not always with great results, but something somewhat interesting at least.

Peter Pan and Hook

2012-02-21T14:00:00.000-08:00

Been on a quest lately to try and track down the 2003 live action "Peter Pan" and Spielberg's "Hook" on DVD and so far it ain't happening. HMV claimed to have a copy of "Hook" but it was nowhere to be seen. Logic only dictates at this point that there's a conspiracy in play to prevent me from procuring these films. The only real question now is who? and why? Don't think I'll be letting this go anytime soon...I will find who is behind it. So anyway I happened to watch "Finding Neverland" and I drew this...

Pete's a little on the big side but we can pretend he's a bit closer to camera. I drew this kinda on the fly but it'd be fun to actually sit down and design my take on these classic characters with a bit more thought. I purposely gave Peter longer hair than usual cuz I don't imagine there are a lot of barber shops in Neverland. I shouldn't have made it so wavy though, it should be stiff and dirty looking, doubt they have a lot of shampoo there either. Judging by those teeth though it looks like they have a pretty good dental plan.

Rock 101

2012-02-16T21:04:00.000-08:00

I wake up to the Bro Jake Show every morning...

I love classic rock and 101 is my station. When I worked at the Animation Brewery I used to have it pouring out of my headphones all day, every day...and some of those were loooooooong days. I'm not quite as religious with it as I used to be...I discovered a few podcasts among other things, and I'm a Stern fan too so I mix it up a bit now but my clock radio still plays the Bro Jake Show every morning. These guys here? This is Jake, Mike and Alece.
I used to animate shadows and highlights at Ooga Booga Studio, and just before I scanned this drawing I got the idea to approach this the same way those commercials I worked on were done. It's a neat effect with those harder shadows. It's done by drawing the shadow shapes on another piece of paper and the hightlights on another piece of paper again. The shadows are painted black, the highlights white, then you drop the opacity and layer them on top of one another. This is only one drawing...imagine doing 24 shadow and highlight layers for every second of animation. I don't have to...I did it.

Vincent Price

2012-01-31T09:50:00.000-08:00

        Vincent Price was a cool guy, and underrated comically too. Have you ever seen "His Kind of Woman" with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell? I don't love the movie, but it's not bad and Vincent plays Jane's clueless husband in it, he's hilarious and the best part of the movie. A far cry from the more ghoulish roles that he was most famous for throughout his career. He also voiced one of my favorite all time Disney characters, Ratigan from "The Great Mouse Detective." He's a big mean and nasty looking rat with this flamboyant Vincent Price personality. Awesome. The ghoulish stuff is cool though too, I love those old B-horror and sci-fi flicks.
       I like drawing caricatures but I don't do it too often and I've been wanting to change that. I also realized I don't very often do fully rendered pencil sketches any more so I got it in my head to tackle both with this drawing. Here're some of the quick sketches I did to get the ball rolling:

New 'Midnight Murderer' Poster

2012-01-26T13:18:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest poster for 'The Case of the Midnight Murderer.'

I really like how this turned out but I kinda procrastinated over finishing it for a long time cuz I wasn't sure if the idea was actually gonna work or not. Half the poster was reliant on blending in frames from the movie and until it was done it was a little hard visualize properly. I thought it'd be fun to post some of the steps I took to make it.

I started with these thumbnails which is always a good place to start. Problem is you should really be doing a whole whack of these things and then picking the best one or mix and matching the best parts from them all. I had this idea for Dash, Milda, Sam and the killer...I was gonna fill in the rest of the poster with other characters but before I even tried I got the idea to use stills from the film and that was the end of that. Here's the drawing in progress...

You can see I changed my mind on how the title would stretch across the page...mainly to allow space for the stills...which came in after colouring:

I laid out all the frames on top and then moved them to a lower layer under the faded cityscape and the spotlight, then dropped the opacity to like 30% so the red would come through. I'm quite happy with how it came out but I'd never tried an effect like this before so I was worried the whole time that it was gonna look too cluttered and busy. But anyway, there it is. If you want to download a wallpaper version for your desktop you can do that at the official website.

Drawing Dash...and the making of 'Drawing Dash'

2012-01-24T16:05:00.000-08:00

Check out this bad ass camera rig!

If you can't tell that's a bedside table lamp with a ruler stuck to it using about half a roll of scotch tape, with a webcam stuck to the end of that with another quarter of a roll of scotch tape, plugged into a laptop and sitting on top of a stack of coffee table books over top of a collapsed animation table. And yes, if you're curious that's a also a package of socks on the table. Not for any particular reason. They're just there and I'm strangely proud of the fact that they made it into the photograph. Believe it or not, this is actually a drastic step up from the death trap I had rigged up a couple days before this but unfortunately I never thought to take a picture. That one had the same webcam taped to a floor lamp that balanced on a plastic crate and hung over my shoulder to film me drawing on that same animation table, set up properly on the kitchen bar. I could barely move without knocking something over or getting tangled in a cord...it's a miracle I survived, but here I am to tell the tale. I had camera trouble that day and the footage I walked away with was pretty much unusable, hence the opportunity to figure out this beautiful setup you see before you. The result is now on youtube, and here's the drawing I did:

I was using markers that I hadn't used in a while and of course they decided to die while the camera was rolling. You can probably see how streaky the marker job on this drawing is...I would usually have the chance to clean that up while shading with the other markers but the other ones died too. It sorta makes me cringe but it was fun to do anyway and the videos kinda cool. Here's the video by the way:

Gotta love that digital watch, hey? I'd like to do more videos like this...I even bought a new box of markers today(50 bucks by the way, jeez), but as you can imagine it's kinda a pain to hook up that camera in that way with any regularity so I'm gonna need to figure something better out for future. The drawing from beginning to end took about 45 minutes and I sped it up to 8 minutes. The unsped version features a lot of complaining about those damn markers.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

Saw "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" a couple nights ago and drew this when I got home. Didn't have a chance to colour till this morning though...

Mikeal Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. These aren't based specifically on Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, I drew it from memory using the movie and the book. The movie was really well done and compares really favorably to the book...or at least I thought so.

Spider-Man

2012-01-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

I got a Spider-Man coffee table book for Christmas. "Why?" you may ask. "Because I'm a geek," I might say. The book as you would imagine is loaded with artwork of the character from days gone by and it got me in the mood to do my own take on him. I've drawn Spider-Man a lot over the years as many kids did growing up so this isn't necessarily new ground for me but it's the first time I've really put my own distinct stamp on him and I kinda like it. The long arms sort of happened by accident but it seems so appropriate for an arachnid, so I left it that way.

I did all of these fairly quick and they're kinda rough but I like em. Maybe one day I'll do a properly rendered version or fully coloured one, that'd be cool. I also did a bunch of quick gesture drawings. If I was ever gonna draw a Spider-Man comic I think I'd need to put in a lot of practice on his posing to really do the character justice...he's so much cooler when he's contorted into those awkward poses. I left these gesture drawings out on the table and my cousin immediately recognized them as Spider-Man without seeing the other drawings, I think that means I'm on the right track.

A Christmas Carol

2011-12-23T12:26:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I had some ideas for what I thought would've been a pretty cool animated version of "A Christmas Carol." I even did some sketches for it, then a week or two later I saw the trailer for Robert Zemeckis' mocap version and that was pretty much the end of that. His take on it wasn't that much like mine but it was close enough, it was mocap, that alone is too close to animation. These aren't the original sketches I did for it, I still have them somewhere but I drew these last night after having watched "Muppets Christmas Carol" and "Scrooged" over the last couple weeks and getting kinda inspired. Here's Scrooge and the Cratchets:

I really like Bob Cratchet here but I think Tiny Tim could use some work. I like Scrooge too but I could push him a lot further, he's not miserly enough for my liking. Here's Jacob Marley:

I like where I'm heading with Jacob here...going for more of a zombie idea, but again I think I could push it more...could do something more creative with the chains too. One idea I had when I was first starting that actually was in Zemeckis' version was Marley's jaw dropping from his face when he takes the bandage off, they played it more for laughs though where as I was thinking it'd be more creepy, maybe funny too, but in a more sick and twisted sort of way. And of course the real stars are the ghosts of past, present and future:

I really like all three of these drawings actually, but if I was ever going to actually pursue this I'd probably experiment a lot more...in animation it's sort of a waste to keep characters like these too grounded in reality, these could all conceivably be played by actors and where's the fun in that. I doubt I ever would've really had the chance to pursue my version of A Christmas Carol anyway, it was just something fun to think about. I did like Robert Zemeckis movie though...

New Trailer for "The Case of the Midnight Murderer"

2011-12-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

No new drawings or anything but I might as well post the new trailer for the movie. Just uploaded it this morning!

Welcome to the Outhouse

2011-12-01T23:12:00.000-08:00

I don't know what's taken me so long to get into blogging. It seems so natural for a cartoonist...it's the perfect place to post and share stuff. I can't make excuses...but I can tell you that I've recently gotten addicted to the blogs of a ton and half of talented artists and that more than anything is what has finally made me start. Actually, I'm lying to you already...this isn't actually my first blog...a couple weeks ago I started a webcomic and I decided do it in blog form, it's called Cowman, you can check it out here. That's the last time you'll catch me in a lie though, I promise. I'm making the 'scout's honour' hand signal right now, I was never a scout though, so I can't be sure I'm doing it right. See. Honesty.

I can also tell you that I've been keeping pretty busy. I'm a freelance animator and cartoonist and a few years ago I decided to attempt the impossible and make a feature length animated movie called "The Case of the Midnight Murderer," which as you may assume has eaten up a lot of my time. Cowman was something I started whenever I needed a break from that project in order to keep myself sane. One annoying habit I've had my entire life though is consuming myself with projects like that and not giving myself enough time to doodle. You come up with some pretty cool stuff when you just let yourself riff on a piece of paper and I'm hoping this blog will help encourage me to do more of that. I get inspired sometimes to draw something that looks great in my head and then just don't take the time to do it because I keep my plate so full all the time. Well this movie of mine is almost finished folks so I'm hoping to make up for some lost drawing. I'm working on sound mixing the flick right now so it might take me a while to start posting with any regularity but it should happen. I'll be making an effort anyway! And dammit I'm gonna have some fun too! In the meantime here's a behind the scenes Newsreel of myself at Outhouse Cartoons: