ghost tree

my friend Dave has a tree in his garden that looks like it has ghosts on it that have try to find their way to the heavens but got caught on the branches..

i think they should plant these trees in cemeteries

anatomy 101

so i’ve been working a bunch on some comics recently. mainly on a multiple parter on my tumblr telling the story of getting round to watching Trollhunter, and also a bit on a new thing that i’m doing (which i’m excited about). (this is all i’m showing of it for now.) 

so i thought it could be good to do like an anatomy of a comic type blog post. so here’s how i went about doing a comic i did a couple of months ago.
okay…it started as just a bit of a side thing to fill up some empty space in my sketchbook:

(click these to see them bigger)
then later on i thought this would maybe be good to do up proper. so i marked out some boxes in photoshop and drew some pictures in them.

techy people might be interested to know that when i’m doing computer drawings i used a Wacom Bamboo MTE-450A – which means nothing to me except that it’s a mouse that is shaped like a pen and has blue lights which i assume is indication of the magical properties it holds to allow me to draw pictures on a computer!!!
so next i did some colouring…all in photoshop…

then it’s just a case of adding finishing bits…

and hey presto! comic! ready to post on tumblr….or whatever…

so yeah…it was about here that i realised that there’s not much of a process to making a comic other than 1. thinking of a comic. 2. drawing a comic. but when i’m working in photoshop i tend to draw and colour things on separate layers a lot so as not to disturb stuff, and i really like the look of things like this when you omit certain layers from the finished piece. so when i was doing the mock up images of the comic in its progressive stages, i also saved a couple of extras of it with different layers left out. i guess it’s these that really give the anatomy of the comic and not how it’s made at all…

my tumblr is http://boxrocketcomics.tumblr.com if you haven’t already had a nosey. Trollhunter’s final installments should be done and up in the next couple of days and keep peeled for more news on the exciting thing. i’ll probably blurt it out on twitter soon anyway..

1:09am

maybe it’s just brain crack but i this is something i wanna do.
i want to head out. start at the lascaux cave paintings in france and end with universal studios in america and i want to see what happens in between. i want to see the sistine chapel and the van gogh museum, the pyramids and the street art of brasil. and i want to meet people and eat pancakes and discover bands that sing in different languages. and i want to travel with friends and strangers and people who aren’t quite either yet.
and i want to video it, and draw it, and write about it and play it on a guitar…so later i can remember it and share it with anyone curious enough to take an interest.

i think that’s something that would be worth doing.
…and…erm…if you think so too and you happen to have a ton of money lying around that could fund it…you know……

…and other reasons why my dissertation isn’t getting written.

“There was method in these seemingly nonsensical statements: by the time we’d grasped their total idiocy, our thoughts had strayed in every conceivable direction.” – Walter Moers

the word fuck is scratched in chalk on the edge of the pavement.
i’ve been reading a lot of slice of life style comics recently and it seems to have effected me in that now i have this almost constant internal monologue going on in my head; commenting on everything i see and experience as if it were some part of a larger narrative.
i don’t really mind it i guess, but the desire to share (or at least record) these commentaries is so much that i’m finding that, whenever i go anywhere, i’m always in a rush to get back and write down whatever it was i was thinking about.
i guess i should start carrying paper around with me..

2011_09_20_DCIM_101MSDCF

@CharlGoesRawr

i get asked this quite a bit and i’ve answered it a few times on various platforms but i don’t think i’ve answered it on this blog so i thought i’d give a kind of step by step thing here for anyone who’s interested in making animation of their own.

so first off, the program i use is called MSPaint and actually comes free with all windows computers. (start menu > all programs > accessories > MSPaint ) the version i use is the windows 7 edition…but you can use anything from XP upwards really.

STEP ONE: DRAW A CHARACTER.

you can draw with which ever tool you feel comfortable. here i’ve used the brush…but why not try using the spray can?

STEP TWO: SELECT THE CHARACTER

use the marquee tool to select a box round your character. if you character is way to complicated fit in a box, you can use the free form marquee tool – it has the same effect.

STEP THREE: ANIMATE SELECTION

go to the select menu that can be accessed via the tool box bit, then simply choose the option to animate selection.
once you do that you should see you character start to move similar to this:

and that’s pretty much how you do it. easy
you should try experimenting with the process to see the results. for example try only selecting a small portion of the character and a large amount of empty space:

and how about animated background? if you right click your selected character and choose selected inverse from the drop down menu, then animate selection from the selection menu (exactly as before), you can get some fantastic results:

STEP FOUR: SAVING

saving can be tricky. the export is all down to naming the file. it doesn’t actually matter what you decide to call it but you MUST REMEMBER TO SAVE IT WITH THE FILE EXTENSION .animatedvideo
and then your video should end up looking something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG8zHqx3pHg

i hope that’s answered that question once and for all.
have fun animating guys