The Future Boy Conan

So, I just finished watching Hayao Miyazaki's 1978 TV series The Future Boy Conan and I'm absolutely stunned by the quality exhibited in this show both in its narrative qualities and in the background artwork and animation. 

 The story starts after world war III devastates the planet, sinking the continents and killing billions of people "in an instant", as the opening describes.






A boy named Conan grows up on an island with his grandfather 20 years after the war. For him life was peaceful but his grandfather worries that they may be the last humans left on Earth...

...until a young girl named Lana washes up on the beach.

And then adventure ensues.

I won't get into plot specifics, but I'll post pictures from the series that exemplify what is so great about it.

Photoshop sketch

I'm still not entirely pleased with drawing in Photoshop on a tablet. I have a hunch that drawing on a tablet with a screen on it would be easier to get what I have in mind on the computer.

Class Sketches

Notepad sketches

The Heckling Hare

This is one of my favorite frames from any cartoon. "I... I crushed him..."

Flash project

I've been working on a project for my Flash class the past couple weeks. Here are some screen shots:

Tests

I'm working on a project for Flash class where my Samoan character, Sen, runs to a rock and jumps into a pond where he's eaten alive by a giant black octopus. I'm maybe half-way done. I've been producing some of my first run cycles and it's been a struggle, but not unbearably so (with a little help from my friend).
Here are some of the pencil, line, and finished color runs I've done (be sure to click the links that lead to a full-screen version to see more detail):

This was always intended to be a silhouette. Click

Pencil test. Click

Line test. Click

Final color. This is a hard angle to animate something running. Sen gets cut off at the end because that's where the bottom of the frame will be. Click

More Flash fun

Transformation Fascination

I've always been fascinated with transformations of the bodily kind. Not slow progressions of change but the rapid, violently awful kind. Ever since I was a kid I've found it mesmerizing. I think it has to do with the things I used to watch growing up in the '90s.
One of my first fixations was the show Street Sharks. The concept of being physically transformed into a powerful shark creature that tore through the streets was so cool to me. But my favorite image from the show is the one above with the needles pointing towards the guys. Experimentation, transformation, chemicals, I ate it all up.

Life Drawings

I don't normally post my life drawings online because I don't really consider them too interesting. However, I thought these were kind of neat.


I like this one because it vaguely reminds me of the scratchy illustration style that was becoming popular in the late-fifties/early-sixties:

Taken from Today's Inspiration

I tried mimicking the style a little more with some help from Photoshop:


One more.

I got a tablet!

This is my first attempt at using a tablet in Flash class. I was so enamored of the experience that I went and bought my own (Wacom Bamboo Pen and Touch for $70).

This was animated on twos (in Flash one can just set the frame-rate to 12) and is in fact also my first attempt at animating a character of my own. One problem is that he gets smaller towards the end. Another is that I first did the animation on one layer that was very sketchy. Then I made a layer above it and planned to do more refined drawings on top of the sketchy one. I did that for a few frames, came back to it a few days later, and then started where I left off except I started doing the clean drawings in the layer the sketchy drawings were in. This made coloring a lot of the frames a pain. Having to use the paint bucket tool for all those little spaces the sketches made was time consuming. That's why you can still see the sketchy layer in the background; it's all intertwined together. Something to be careful with next time.

Here's another one:














I do these in class between our exercises (and maybe sometimes when I should be listening to the teacher...). I'm still getting used to all of this.

Davis Sketches

Here are some sketches I did when I went to Davis, CA in early January to visit some friends:




I went to a genetics class with my best friend, just for fun.

And here's some sketches done more recently.

I'll just leave this here.

Biology Metal

Biology Metal by Harkosion
I'm quite proud of the new song my band Harkosion has finished. I used samples I recorded of our friend David's drum set to get more of that "band" feeling. I like electronic drum beats and all but sometimes it's fun to pretend to have a real drummer playing.

Note: the working title for this song was "Meat Mace to Face"

Classroom sketches

You know the situation. You have a question about something and you cannot proceed without the teacher's help but he has a couple other students to help before you, so you have 10 minutes to kill. That happens to me a lot. A few examples of what such boredom has wrought:




The hand's not meant to be a part of the picture but I drew it first and then starting drawing the guy too close.