Inking!

Stuff that I inked (or was supposed to ink). Then I said “the hell with this!” and stopped. Behold of head shots and almost-finished-drawings-of-full-bodies-and-stuff!

You know what? I kinda like the inked version more than the sketch.

Apparently that snow leopard is thinking about pie or making one... of humans!

I'm pretty sure someone has created a character that looks something like this. I'll call it "ötökkä" (= "a bug") for now on.

A bear.

A female mandrill.

I don't draw monsters anymore because I keep repeating the same ideas over and over again. Plus, I always think that every monster I create is a rip-off of someone elses drawing.

This was supposed to be a cave inside a waterfall but I couldn't draw.. well, the waterfall. Now it's just a random unfinished cave.

This was something random, never meant to be actually inked or coloured in serious matter. Just a doodle done during a break. And yes, I don't know how to draw griffins because I never draw them. And.. oh, shoot, the front legs are in wrong position, I just realised that.

Noo, more griffins! How did this happen?!

A giant kitty! Looks quite bland, though..

This sketch has been haunting me since 2011. And that is a mask that the girl is holding, not an actual animal head. Well, if it was an actual animal head, I wouldn't know what animal that is even supposed to be. Some sort of mandrill-god or something neat like that.

In case you were wondering what the lineart of NegaDuck looked like without the colours. Coloured version can be found here.

Yeah, no dynamic or very interesting drawings this time. All the work is taking so much energy right now.

Commissions 2009 – 2010

Back in the old days (haha, nearly three years ago) I did lot of commissions. They were quite cheap, about $15 per drawing (one or two character(s), digital ink, full colour, no BG) if I remember right. All of them are drawings of customer’s own character. This explains why there are sometimes bright unusual colours, extraordinary details and strange looking creatures. That’s the fun and the most challenging part of the job. You never know what you get to draw.

These drawings that I am going to show here are way much smaller than the original drawings (some of the originals are over 1500x1900 or 2000x1900 pixels large). These also have huge ugly watermarks. The reason for this is that it was part of the deal, that the customer will get the full resolution of the drawing without the watermark. If I ever wanted to post the drawing on internet, I have to put a smaller picture that has a watermark on it. This way the customer will always have his/her “original” drawing.

Please remember, that these are old drawings. I am fully aware of the mistakes and what parts should be fixed (mainly body parts, like legs etc.). But sadly I can’t go to past… Or can I?

Ranting about drawing bears

There are some animals that are hard for me to draw. Those animals usually have lots of fur that hides all the muscles and anatomy under it. Because I want to draw animals in different poses I have to know how the body of the animal works or at least what it looks like. So if the animal looks like a giant furball, that causes serious problems..

Right now my greatest enemies in drawing are these three animals:

a red panda
a binturong
and a bear.

And right now I'm having a battle with the bear. Especially the face. I usually get the eyes and the snout quite right but the shape of the head causes serious problems. Sometimes I get it right by accident. And that frustrates me because I don't understand how I made it look right. If I'm not thinking when I am drawing something right, I can't use that knowledge when I am drawing again.

I kinda think I am making the face way too complicated than it actually is but.. I don't know. Or maybe it really is so complicated. Or maybe I just don't know how to draw them properly. I feel so lost here.. Aaargh!

Sketches (reference used)..

 Then from memory..

Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT. Aaaargh!

Speaking of bears, I have to mention this guy:

This man has incredible relationship with his bears. His name is Sulo Karjalainen and he takes care and studies bears' behavior at The Predator Center in Finland. He has taken care of the bears since they were little and they think he’s their mom.

What I think is very amazing is that when Sulo is feeding (I’m talking about giving them meat, not grapes or small snacks) the bears, they don’t act hostile or possessive of the food. Even the tamest animals can quickly change when food is involved. But those bears stay calm and wait patiently. Incredible!

If you ever thought that bears are just giant furious beasts, these videos will change your mind completely. They can be loveable, adorable and calm, but only with people who know how to handle them and who they can trust. So remember kids, only professional people can do cool stuff like this!

More cool videos:

There's a Finnish document about this guy but there's no English subtitles for it (yet). If you are still interested, the document is called "Tosi Tarina: Tarinoita karhunkolosta" (2011?) (in English "True Story: Stories from the bearhole"). You can find it from Youtube.

Working title, Part 5

I’m now doing clean-up and backgrounds. And there's a problem..

The situation with clean-up process is now this:

Ready:  3

WIP:  4

Undone:  16 / 23

I seriously have to think about this clean-up process again. 

I told before that during the dance scenes the rabbit will be a black silhouette that is dancing in front of blueish background. Now, I can draw dark silhouettes easily and quite fast, it's not a problem. But the highlights make things complicated. You have to draw those very carefully and always keep in mind where the light and shadow comes from. It takes more time than drawing the black silhouette. And that is the most painful part of the clean-up. It's so painful and time-consuming that I don't even know is it possible to finish this whole animation in time.

I could easily get rid of the highlights and draw just the dark silhouettes, but it doesn't look good enough. Here's a screenshot of the clean-up process:

Those highlights make the character look much interesting and three-dimensional. Most of the movements wont even work well if there's no highlights. Aaaargh.

Alright.. I think I will first draw the character in every single scene black and then later add the highlights if I have time for that.

And now the backgrounds:

Ready:  5

WIP:  2

Undone:  11 / 18

Luckily backgrounds aren’t that hard to do. I can do 2 or 3 of them in one day. Here’s an example of one:

Did I mention that the backgrounds move? Just a tiny amount? Freaaaakyyy.

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Previous posts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Part 4

What are these anyway

I don’t know what these are supposed to be. At first these were “background exercises”, then “silly attempts to draw anything dynamic” and finally random doodles. What a transformation.

I realized something funny while drawing these. Apparently I can make a simple basic structure of the background but then suddenly after that I lose all my interest. That’s why all of these drawings look so empty and unfinished. They lack interesting details and texture. I’m not that much into drawing details or polishing the drawing unless it is absolutely necessary. I enjoy more making rough drawings because there's just "something" in them, like I have said before.

My personal favorite is the one where the wolf is running down a hill (come to think of it, it has been forever when I last time drew a wolf. Interesting..) And that picture where a red animal in falling down is absolutely horrendous but I learned a lot while drawing that. Like how to mess up a picture without knowing how to use perspective correctly! 

Why yes, I do like to draw rocks but I am too lazy to bother to use any reference of them. How lazy and unprofessional is that?

And now something else: This is a bit old news but if you still haven’t seen Waking Sleeping Beauty documentary, watch it. It’s a document about Disney Animation Studios during 1980’s – 90’s. It doesn’t really focus that much on animation process but more about what happened inside the studios during that time.