Wednesday, April 26, 2006

progress on the painting front




Now that the Cartooning course is done I can clean up some of my other commitments.

The portraits for my client are almost done. It has been a crash course, re-learning how to paint. All in all, the faces aren't bad. Kids faces are a heck of a lot harder to paint that adult faces, and little girl fingers are murder. I painted an extra (head only) portrait of the girl just to get a bit of practice in.

At the same time, I'm very parsimonious with paint. This means that when I squeeze a little out of the tube it must be used. If I see I have some that may go to waste I either prepare a new canvas with an earth ton base coat or start a new painting. there are about 10 at various stages right now and they are much more interesting than these two. Postings to follow some day soon. I have to have these two ready to mail next week, which has to include drying time.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Where ESR-A Lives

Or part of it - What fits in the scanner.













ESR-A, Poubelle and GRRR-BIN all live in a "mixed use" neighbourhood on a residential / light industrial street. The view out the back of their home is of industrial buildings and a distant city scape. Their house is the one under the high tension power lines (the ULW radiation keeps their batteries charged). It is a small factory building or something like a railway switching tower. They live there in hiding, although only nominally so. ESR-A occasionally has to disguise himself, and they have to keep an eye out for Sanitation Department inspectors. The yard is littered with broken appliances. most neighbours are strangely blasé but there is at least one Mrs Kravitz they need to deal with from time to time. (Or, who was the nosey neighbour in My Favourite Martian???)

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Perfect House for a Cartoon Character


My first though was to place him in one a "Save TheChildren" donation box. You can see these in Scarbourough, ususally in pairs or threes. Cute idea, but then the interior isn't going to work unless I distort the space - or ignor it.


Alternately there is the industrial building idea. I like the railway contol tower, but in practical terms it will be a time consuming
pain to draw over and over again. It will also dictate that their home is some place near train tracks, because for the story I don't want to part from reality that much. There fore the tiny factory building works best for me. The next step is to design and model the interior, then map the neighbourhood.




I was most impressed when I went to see Seth's exhibition in Guelph the the thoroughness of the back story he created. The central piece of the exhibit was a scale model of the city it was set in. Each building had a history. One of his notebooks was open to a page with the history of the train station, which was based on Toronto's Union Station.