flux

A few weeks ago I posted a sketch of a rather amusingly stiff suit I saw on the DC Metro train.


Well, not all suits in DC are stiff, as you can see from this sketch.

Aging is beautiful. I find looking at aging people like watching the fall colors change on a human face. This guy’s face felt like September.

Check out this impressive student animation from Denmark. “Elk Hair Caddis” is Peter Smith’s graduation film, and it just makes me eager to see what he’ll come up with next. Granted, it’s inspired (and he lists his inspirations on the vimeo page for the film); but he’s drawing inspiration from the right places and it’s a nice team effort.

Watch the film:


The “Making Of” is even more interesting to me. If you saw Meindbender’s stop-motion inspired CG rigs, you’ll really appreciate this attempt to get some of that flexibility in a student film character.

I like the combination of miniatures and CG — It brings together the hand-crafted feel of practical elements with the flexibility of animating a CG character. Sure, it’s more work, but the result is worth it. Speaking of more work: The character rigs aren’t exactly action-figure-simple, but that’s true of any good cartoon rig. CG cartoon animation calls for carefully, patiently crafting every pose; not very far from drawn animation but far enough that it has its own place. While it borrows a lot from stop-mo and drawn animation, it adds its own unique touch and does what only it can do.

More on that later.

I see many stiff suits in the DC metro, but few as amusingly stiff as this one.

He rides the DC Metro in a baseball hat, tired from making all those toys. That’s where I saw him.

Saw this guy in a guard’s uniform sleeping on the train. Perfect opportunity for a ‘slowhand’ like me.

Saw this tall, well-built kid on the train with really soft eyes, timidly sitting next to a stern middle-aged woman (I assume she’s his mother); she kept talking tough as he sat almost motionless with his eyes lowered. The dynamic between them caused me to make the instant judgment that became the title of this post.

While sketching people, we often have to make instant judgments, just to give a stronger point of view to the sketch. We may even build up a back story about them in our head. Of course, we may be completely wrong, but it’s a fun creative exercise, and definitely helps the drawing.

I’m not 100% proud of this sketch, but the situation behind it was so interesting I felt like sharing it here.

I know it’s a day late, but here it is! Been really busy with a freelance project that I can’t talk about yet… stay tuned, and in a few months I’ll be showing it off right here on this blog.