Bit by Bit

I'm learning. And the neat thing about this blog and showing these pieces in stages is that you can see the learning and progress. I read your comments, we spitball it over email and then as I do the drawings and refine them, I hear you, I hear your comments.  GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!! GET OUT NOW!!! Joking! You can stay, you're helpful in there.

The girl with the pony tails was easy and didn't change much from how I imagined her to drawing her on the page. I like her hair and glasses and the hands are pretty funny too. 

The other character was more challenging.  I had a sense of his pose, but the hands, arms and shoulders were difficult. I wanted a nice, readable silhouette (one of those principles of animation!) but couldn't see how to manage the arms till I looked at drawing 2 in the computer. The trick was to tilt his shoulders so his left arm is slightly higher than the right.  Notice the slant that the paper bearing drawing 2 is on. I did 2 as a layer over drawing 1, but could see that I didn't have his body tilted enough, so I turned the paper till I had it right, then drew the square border around it to help register it to the overall cartoon when scanned in. I really like his pose with his hands stuffed to his mouth and his slightly tearful eyes are hilarious. I've never tried eyes like that and it worked really well - Thanks Ren & Stimpy!

I included two inked versions to show a slight change between the two.  Can you see it?  Shortly after finishing drawing 3, I realized that the plant needed to look cold.  So this morning I added some icicles to the plant to sell that idea.  It's a bit extreme perhaps and less realistic, but there's that great saying "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story". The same is true here, and anyway... it's a cartoooooon!