Toronto Comic Arts Festival: Pencil it In

My friend Tim Haldeen sent me this earlier today... it's a great little window into the tools & techniques of cartoonists from all walks o' life.  As for myself, ideally I like to have a nice mechanical pencil on me at all times & enjoy drawing with just about anything outside of crayons and ballpoint pens.  The novelty only lasts so long... 
I'm currently neck-deep in many-a-project so I've been slacking on keeping this dog of a blahg, but I've done a lot more digital painting in Flash this week and I have a music video shoot coming up tonight so there will be plenty to see here soon.  

Lost & Foundish: Tongue Boy™ Comic Covers (1995-1998)

If you recognize any of the following drawings then I tip my hat to you, sir/ma'am... we have known each other a LONG time now.

Back in my middle school days I drew comics that I'd sell to friends and other students for fifty cents each.  It wasn't a very self-sustaining business model (I think I made about $0.02 profit for every comic sold) but it was fun to do until I started liking girls,.
I started it all in 1994 when I drew my first comic book called Stomach Man #1.  The whole story was that a mad scientist was trying to create super organs and inevitably wound up creating a whole army of evil humanoid organs, except for Stomach Man.  It was his job to stop them from advancing their evil super organ agenda.  Unfortunately that didn't last for more than an issue, and that's where Tongue Boy came in.  Up until that point I had been drawing an alter-ego version of myself since the second grade, a spikey-haired kid named Marcus (I never had hair quite like his...).  With Tongue Boy all I did was replace his hands with enormous tongues and slapped a poorly self-made costume on him.
I was influenced by many of the irreverent and weird cartoons of the time such as Ren & Stimpy, The Simpsons, Batman: TAS & most notably of all, The Tick, which aired Saturday mornings a few months after I started work on TB.  Tongue Boy didn't really have powers in that he basically just had big useless tongues for hands.  If they offered any sort of benefit, the tongues acted like big wet bludgeoning objects in which to stop thieves with.  There were lots of weird supporting characters as well, but more on that later.

Tongue Boy #1-2 (1995)

When you're young you do stupid things.  In my case, I went back and changed the cover of my first Tongue Boy comic book years after it was initially drawn.  I didn't even alter it from a photocopy!  I just put white-out directly on the original issue I had drawn and made sure it was changed forever.  It's actually very close to it's original, but I wanted the shading on Tongue Boy to match with his design in later issues.  But still stupid.

Anyway, the first issue dealt with Tongue Boy's origins (his dad accidentally used radioactive waste on a cow tongue sandwich as opposed to mayonaise) and his first victory over evil, in this case being a tiny parasite wielding a telekenetic remote control.  I'm honestly not sure if it makes sense as a story -- I'd have to go back and read them and it has been some YEARS.

The second issue of Tongue Boy revolved around Marcus finally getting to meet his childhood television idols, only to find that they've been horribly disfigured due to an accident involving (yup) toxic waste.  Desperate for work, these "Mutated Men" (pretty creative so far I know, try to keep up) begin to do work for Perry T. Parasite, brother of the parasite killed in the first book.  Unlike his brother, Perry is huge and obtained his large stature due to the overuse of parasite steroids... or something like that.  The issue ends on a cliffhanger when Tongue Boy is saved by a new hero...

Tongue Boy #3 (1996 double-issue!)

... that new "hero" was Marcus' best friend Lancy dressed up in his saliva suit going under the alias of "Drool Lad." I thought it fit the theme.  While I started out thinking Drool Lad would make for a good sidekick, he was too smart & independent of a character to get swept to the sidelines.  In the end Drool Lad became his own hero, and usually the one that would save Tongue Boy in the big fights.  While I'm still proud of how I tried to develop my characters at the time, I definitely sucked in the plot department.  After a reasonably coherent three-comic story arc, I had Perry T. Parasite succumb to the claws of a randomly introduced stray cat and subsequently all remaining parties went their separate ways.  You may remember this very same plot device being used later on in the 2007 blockbuster, Spider-Man 3.

 

Tongue Boy #4-5 (1996, '97)

One problem with producing small comic books out of folded standard copy paper is that you don't get a lot of room to move the story along.  These two comics made up a two-part story that introduced one of my favorite characters, Chia "Rambo" Pet.  Back in my middle school days I wanted to make a cool character that could be anything that I wanted him to be.  Maybe he wasn't particularly 'cool', but I liked Chia "Rambo" Pet a lot.  I had been drawing him since I started Tongue Boy back in '94 and introduced him as a mysterious mercenary-type character that was out to assassinate the father of the new girl at school.  One thing leads to another and Chia "Rambo" Pet attempts to blow up the whole city to destroy Tongue Boy & the gang (is it any coincidence that Independence Day came out in 1996 and I looooved it? answer: no) but after some fighting and lesson-learning, everything gets resolved.   

Not sure how that part went.  Again, it's been awhile. 

 

Tongue Boy #6-7 (1997, '98)

More often than not, writing Tongue Boy was a way for me to sort out all that dumb teenager stuff going on at that time in my life.  The crime-fighting superhero aspect of the comic always took second chair to whatever was going on in Marcus' personal life.  In 1997 I took a trip to France with my family and worked that into the story arc for the remainder of Tongue Boy series' run.  In this exciting chapter, the Earth has been peppered with missiles sent from Mars that contain a mysterious poison gas.  This gas manifests itself into large "cloud lawyers"... similar to the bad guy in that crappy Fern Gully movie we all may or may not remember.  They were kind of a stupid villain... I think more than anything they just helped me facilitate storytelling based around mass destruction & they didn't do anything remotely lawyer-related beyond wearing ties.  You have to keep in mind that not only was this pre-9/11 but also the best years in America to watch stuff blow up on movie screens.  Michael Bay anyone?  Looking back now I realize that even I couldn't escape those influences... cities just liked getting blowed up.

 

Tongue Boy #8-9

These comics were both never released.  Tongue Boy #8 probably had about a page left of inking to do and #9 was left unfinished.  These were both miles beyond the comics that had been released before them in terms of storytelling & layout, but by this time in my life I was moving from Madison, WI down to Phoenix for what turned out to be only a yearlong excursion.  That turned out to be one of those "growing up" years of my life (hair gel, shaving, etc), and although I never gave up drawing I did stop making comics on a regular basis.  We'll see if I ever get a chance to revisit these characters, they were a very important part of my life.

If I ever get more time I'll try to dig these comics up and scan the pages in... but that's probably on the lower end of my 'if list.'

... almost done!

Here's a screen from a stop-motion spec piece I'm doing for Lifelong Friendship Society.  If all goes as planned it should be done within a week!

Ren Hoëk Faces

On Saturday I was drawing what I can only describe as incredibly repressed-looking men with a friend for an upcoming short we're working on together.  For inspiration I turned to an old episode of Ren & Stimpy called "Stimpy's Invention" directed by John K which originally aired back in early 1992.   How has so much time gone by already?
Anyway, for those who aren't familiar this is the episode where Stimpy becomes worried that Ren is always unhappy and thus invents a Happy Helmet for him to wear.  I've never seen happy faces drawn with such unwilling intensity & misery... some of these shots made for perfect references:

I'll try to post the full clip when I have some time...

Tuesday Quotery

... this would explain why the last time I went to the New Museum there was an exhibit featuring piles of rags on the floor.

Ink Drawings

Lately I've been busier than I'd like to be but I've managed to find a bit of time to keep working with my pen & ink.  I haven't been in a great mood either & that generally comes through in my drawings... maybe next time they'll be smiley-er.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

This is considered to be the oldest feature-length animated movie to still be in existence today and it's available RIGHT NOW on Netflix streaming.  I watched it last Friday night and was completely blown away by the craft that went into creating each frame of this film.  Even the story is engaging and each character has a sense of purpose; not just to be seen & never heard from again.  Just because it's from 1926 doesn't mean it lacks sophistication, and while the animation itself may be a bit rough I can't help but wonder how it looked back when it was initially released.  I can't recommend it enough to someone who loves the art of animation.

From Wikipedia: 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (German: Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film; two earlier ones were made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani, but they are considered lost.^[1] The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented which involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. The technique she used for the camera is similar to Wayang shadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action. The original prints featured color tinting.

Bounty: The Raw Footage Part 2

Here are more animation clips from the Bounty project.



Fun with magic paper towels.



This was actually my favorite shot from the whole project.  Our assignment for this animation was to have them flying through the air rockin' out and then end with a wave at the camera.  Luke animated the bald dude and I had a little too much fun animating the other scientist doing the robot.  We were a bit ahead of schedule at this point so we had fun the frame with random things that would eventually be cut out.  There was no sound to work off of for this one so you'll have to use your imagination.



I had a lot of fun with this shot as well.  This is basically what happens when you feed an animator enough beer to convince himself that it'd be a good idea to make one of the characters get tired of holding his arm up while freeze-framed.  Needless to say, it was cut from the final project.

Bounty: The Raw Footage Part I

Here is what the animation looked like for the Bounty project before any visual effects were applied to the footage.  Today I'm posting mostly shots involving the scientists driving in their car.  To give you some idea of the rig we built quick for it, here are some pictures:

... and now onto the videos:





This was the first stuff we shot of the scientists in the car.  The funny thing is we both wore white that day and it wasn't until a few seconds into the animation that we realized it was affecting the lighting.

Lesson Learned: Your personal wardrobe can affect post-production in stop motion.




This shot was pretty basic.  Just some singin' and PT pullin'.

This was a fun shot because we got to finally try out the rig we built for the car.  The script called for the car flying through the air & the storyboards I had drawn up called for spinning cameras and such, so we needed something that would be flexible but would also offer precision.  Also, fist bumps.

This shot was fun because not only did we have to animate the characters, we had to have the car tilting lengthwise as well as do a 180-degree spin mid-shot.

I had a lot of fun with this shot. The tiger rig wasn't super flexible to work with but I think I got some good action out of it.

... and if you're wondering, that's an MMA fighter coming out of his mouth.

Bidding Adieu to the Old MarkedAnimation Site

IT'S OFFICIAL.

Within the next 48 hours my original website will be switching over to a brand-new, much more user-friendly design powered by Cargo Collective.  The URL will continue to be www.markedanimation.com, but gone will be the days of my foray into basic (some would say too basic) web design consisting of cut up photoshop documents.  I can't tell you how tedious & difficult it was to keep that thing updated, which is why I eventually migrated over to this blog to keep new work coming.  My new site will be updated much more frequently, with easy navigation, fast-loading Vimeo video & all the other bare necessities.  Check back for an update shortly when it's live!


UPDATE: The new site is live: www.markedanimation.com


I beat her to it, Joe!