Gobelins Summer School doodles

Hey, it's been almost 2 months since my last post...shame on me! I've been on my summer vacation but on the summer vacation I attended the Gobelins character animation summer school in Paris.
To put it simply: it was great! Met a bunch of wonderful people whom I'm missing already. It was an intense 2 weeks. Information overload and huge inspiration at the same time. Not to mention..it was all in Paris. Doesn't every artist want to do something there at some point :)?

I was one of the few there who didn't have a background of an actual animator but as those few who follow by blog know, I'm an animation buff and have been that since I was a kid.

So this was my 1st and possibly last actual or formal training in animation. But from now on I hope to start implementing what I learned in the summer school and on my own in the many years that have passed.

This post has doodles from my sketch/notebook. So they are again reaaally random doodles from the pages of extensive notes made during the school. Also one image is a collection of some jolly doodles guys and gals did while we were enjoying the cheapest beer in Paris..I think the place was called appropriately Bistro Des Artistes :D

The short animation exercises done at the summer school I still have to finish and then I can post them here..At some point :P

Doodle Gaboodle

Collected, random visual ramblings of a demented mind.

And you were again who?

Yes, I've been reminded that it's been 2 months since last post! I know, I plead guilty, I've been busy and all that jazz...

You've probably noticed from your friends that keep a sketchbook that they're really reluctant to show it to anyone. Well, that's all I have in this blog anyway.

So I give it all again, all the fabulous crap from the sketchbooks and random scrap papers in glorious collected deluxe volumes.

Enjoy.

Back to the Dark Ages

I hope the picture speaks for itself 'cause it's about the only inspiration or support that the future parliament of Finland is gonna give to us.

Fumetti! Il Incontro Con Dei Carabinieri!

Ciao a tutti! I meant to post this already a while back. It's a comic exercise drawn (fast - on the previous night) for the script class I attended some time ago. The idea of this exercise was to take some real-life memory or incident, take it to a certain point where the real life story ends and there happens a "what if" moment. That means that I continued the story from that point how it could have gone - exaggerating slightly :P

You can guess where that point is. Click the images bigger. The translations for the few finnish texts are:
Panel 1: It was year 2002. I was doing a student exchange in Turin...
Panel 2: One night, we were returning from a proper bar night with my finnish friend (Kai=maybe)
Then some sound effects here and there: kick! Slap! Swipe..

Green croquis

Another batch of lifedrawings. I used a different kind of medium again, this water-soluble green pencil. I did find out pretty soon that there wasn't much time do the wash part for the color. The faster ones are green green felt pen with black brushpen.

And yes..the head is quite big in that one in the middle :)

Crawling Doodles

Obviously sketchbook stuff, no need to elaborate more. Some older and some more recent. One note though about these: the page with the man waving a knife and the "cowboy" in rain is all digital.

The medium does dictate some of the look&feel even though I can't escape my "house" style ;)

Winter's Croquis

Haven't felt this good with life drawing in a while. Usually the last 20min is a bit of a struggle but today I felt like I managed to get something done.

I switched in the halftime from graphite to good old ink and at the same time it's always a bit difficult to switch your mind too. The graphite ones are obviously longer poses from 15 (the left-most) to 10 minutes (the rest). These longer poses serve as a warm-up for the fast 5min ones done in ink.

Still I have to keep reminding myself on not to get caught up in details. So on many of these I left from the thought that I'd do the pose in one single line. That didn't happen with these yet so I've got plenty of drawing ahead ;D

Click for a closer look.

Scraping the doodle barrel part III

These doodles are some of the same miscellanious stuff I scanned in and collected a while ago. The sketches include some from the aforementioned character design -course I attended.

Then there is a doodle of an elder man in a bed that I sketched for a comics assignment in the script course. It's unrealized still though.

The other's are just the usual doodling...sometimes with a concious effort in drawing with the different style. I like to try that out often. That's why I feel I haven't still found "my thing" properly. In a way I hesitate to get stuck to something particular.

Animation Classics from upper elementary

Now this is a special post. At least for me. As those who know me and those who've been checking my blog, probably know that I'm an animation buff. I've always been.

I practically took posession of the Illusion Of Life -book from my local library.

I was also a fan of The Simpsons which had recently started on tv. So was my friend Tuomo Kokkonen. We especially were fans of that lovable comical duo, Itchy&Scratchy. So we decided to do some animation. Pretty soon we realized the obvious fact that how much labor it is and we had no idea of practical technique (like keeping things in register..).

We had a very original story idea but ended up drawing only fragments of it. We also never saw if me had actually achieved any illusion of life...So with great anticipation after almost 20 years I opened some archives and with the aid of modern tech (if only we'd had Flash&After Effects back then..) I scanned in the drawings. There wasn't much to see and pretty hard to tell what's going on but still I was quite proud what we kids had tried to do :)

I'm not quite sure which "scene" was drawn by me or Tuomo but it was supposed to be seamless story in the end anyway.

There's also, which really must be my first drawn paper animation (flipbook or two maybe before), a test with half-filled flour sack. It was inspired by the Disney-book but the animation looks more like the sack has a fit mid-air...Click the images if they don't play.

Rusty Nudes

It's of course obvious that when you stop doing something for a long while, it becomes more difficult. That's how I felt yesterday when I went to do lifedrawing after a long pause.

I had to concentrate to get anything proper on the paper. Next time I hope it 'll go smoother 'cause I want to try again something different in terms approach or style.

The ones in ink are 5min poses and the ones in graphite are longer.

Oh and the funny thing was also that feet got cut from many of these. Whether it was the rusty drawing hand or the fact that I drew an a smaller pad than usually (just A5 which is maybe a bit too small). Although I do feel that the emphasis on fitting the whole pose on the page is sooo old school...

Scraping the doodle barrel part II

Scavenged the sketchbooks, various bits of scrap paper and collected some doodle posts. After all that's why I originally set up this blog. I have to keep the initial step for a post relativily low to get something done around here ;D

Here's also some life drawings from a while back.

Scraping the doodle barrel part I

Hey hey, look alive! Here's some update again and not a moment too soon ;) The serial pictures, also referred as comics or as in the other case a storyboard were done at this Character Design workshop. It was organised as a 4-day course. The 1st part took place during the comics festival and the 2nd during Animatricks -festival for which I was the Head of Programming. Which was nice.

These were done really quickly so they are a bit unfinished and can be difficult to follow :D . 30 minutes time for the comic and 10-15 minutes for the storyboard. The comic exercise was part of lecture held by comic artist Sascha Hommer The idea was to pick to random words from a basket and improvise a comic based on those quickly...so I didn't sketch any, just drew it. My words were "lottery win" and "birth of a child". They obviously do ring together quite nicely. But I thought what if the father isn't that happy about the child but eventually just finds the baby useful. I'm horrible, I know :D

The storyboard -exercise was part of a interesting lecture by designer and animation director Eliza Jäppinen She had with her self-made stuffed animals/creatures. So we did a short exercise in small groups..playing with stuffed animals :) We improvised a story based on the characters. Then after we had played it out to others we had to make storyboard version of it.

The third picture has some sketches which were part of an assignment given by character designer and animator Ulla Bergström. Between the two festivals we're supposed to draw people in "the wild". I should have done more but that's always the case!

Quest for the doodle

Slow it has been. So here's actually on Oldie Goldie that's a favourite of mine. I did it as a birthday present to my mother in 2004. It shows her as a little, lilliput size girl riding a tortoise (which is of course referring to our pet Yoda) in a magical forest.

Unfortunately it's not a scan but I just took a photo of it with my phone in it's frames on the wall :) So excuse me the low quality.

He lives

Just a a quick post of a drawing I found lying around. The type design (I don't the designer..) is a leaflet I picked up when the university of Helsinki was havin their elections. So while sitting at the bar, I drew our forever young über-president.

Ich bin ein Wunderbaum - high school stuff

I'll continue my Oldies Goldies -posts. With these I was at the same time pleasently surprised that I didn't grin in horror when looking at them but at the sae time thinking that have I improved so little.

These character design sketches were done when I was in high school (circa 95-96). A group consistings of a young and older animation enthusiasts and an animation veteran was thinking about an animation short. I don't remember why it didn't start going forward but I guess that's the case usually anyway.

The character in the synopsis was this wooden puppet (not Pinocchio). And I think we were discussing the name of Wunderbaum for it or it might have been that I just scribbled that next to the sketches. So here are the sketches I drew mostly on the spot. There's a couple of variations on the character. I also included some sketches to samurai character to a short animation that a friend and I were thinking about. Pure gold :D

Nostalgic as hell beginning from the year 1988 part I

I have to apologize in advance that this stuff is anything else but recent stuff. It's one of those "Oldies Goldies" -posts. I just want to share with you the nostalgic joy that I've had recently :)

My Parents stopped by with a couple of boxes of my old school books, comics and drawings. Here are few of those. They're dated between about 1988-1994.

I think it was interesting to see how much I was interested in animation early on as an industry and medium. I copied and inked a couple of animation drawings from the film Fantasia to overhead projector transparencies as they we're animation cels. Then I colored them from the backside as they back in the day ;) Then I painted backgrounds for them in watercolor. I'm really fascinated on the look that the bright cel with clear cut, flat colors painted on them have in contrast to the more muted background. I've been planning for couple of years but never got around to it (yet) to do an exhibition on the idea of "The Animated Feature That Never Was". It takes off from my interest in the "art of" books. For the exhibition I would do the pre-production related work, sketches, maybe even pencil tests, animation drawings and painted cels with background paintings but not the film itself.

In this post it's funny to see how I have marked with "The Comic Characters Inc" etc.

The oldest drawings I posted because they served the purpose of learning to draw by drawing from model. So the oldest here is from -88. There's Judge Dredd that I drew from this cover by Brian Bolland when I was 11 years old...nice bedtime reading ain't it :) Then there's a coloring model of a baby eagle from a Disney short that I have copied from a book on animation around the same time. The dragon creature is from the film The Black Cauldron which has remained a favorite of mine even with it's several flaws. The Batman picture is drawn from the seminal Frank Miller's Dark Knight comic around start of 90's

I bought an airbrush with the money I got from my confirmation party :) Around that time I had also been already a big fan of the Alien -movies. So naturally one subject would be the alien. The colors are just awful on the original so I did a quick test with photoshop to see if it would be kinder to the eye in less colors...

And finally here's a utterly corny comic from the year 1991. I can tell that I've just recently been reading Stephen King, learnin english and found some zip-a-tone :)

The Night Of The Croquis

Life drawings sessions resumed again after the summer at Taidehalli. Felt a bit rusty and tried also a bit of a different technique again. So these are made with a pretty basic ballpoint pen.