Ken Andeson has a huge fan base (and deservedly so). My 2012 blog post featuring some of his character designs for Robin Hood is BY FAR the most visited during my 5+ years of blogging. Here is the link to that popular post:
Here is another photo of Ken in front of some of his many concept sketches for the film. To the upper right of his head you see a sheet with head studies of the rooster Allan-a-Dale. Those are by Milt Kahl. Ken also storyboarded several sequences for Robin Hood. Below is Sequence 1. It's astounding to realize how close the animators stayed with Ken's poses and staging. This section of the film was animated by John Lounsbery (Wolves and Sheriff, also Robin and Little John walking toward camera, then falling into the water), Ollie Johnston (most of L. John) and Milt Kahl (Robin and some of L. John). Milt decided to have Robin Hood stand up during his opening dialogue scenes, instead of sitting down.
I posted a B&W version of this model sheet before, here is the color version.
And this is what you get when combining the talents of Ken Anderson and Milt Kahl. Even miscellaneous characters turn out looking fantastic.
The thing is, almost everything that matters is a skill. If even one person is able to learn it, if even one person is able to use effort and training to get good at something, it's a skill.
It's entirely possible that some skills are easier for talented people to learn. It's entirely possible you don't want to expend the energy and dedicate the effort to learn that next skill.
But realizing that it's a skill is incredibly empowering and opens the door of possibility.
Special Advertising Note: The following sponsored content is brought to you courtesy of FastLabels, one of PRINT's trusted partners.
If you want your chosen graphic designer to create a product label that's both well-designed and highly-effective at converting prospective customers to actual customers, you're going to have to get stuck in and help.
Why? Well, while your graphic designer might be perfectly capable of designing a great-looking label, this doesn't guarantee that it'll be good at its job – therefore, you need to do the "pre-design" stage yourself.
This will involve:
Researching your competitors
Researching the target market/demographic
Building an informational hierarchy
Pre-deciding the correct material/shape/size for the label
For most entrepreneurs, the first two stages of the process are probably already complete, but you need to make sure that you pass along this information to your chosen designer. It's important that he/she knows which brands you're competing with, what their product(s) look like, and exactly who you're targeting (e.g. men aged 30-50 who have recently taken up golf) – your designer will be able to create a much more effective label if they know this information.
Next, you need to create an "informational hierarchy", which means deciding exactly what pieces of information need to be present on the finished label, and the respective importance of each one. This will help your designer to give prominence to the right things.
Finally, you need to decide upon a material, shape and size for your label. There's a tonne of different options here (just browse this page and you'll soon see just how many, but this really needs to be decided upon before getting in touch with your design.
Sound a bit complex? You might benefit from the infographic (below) created by UK label printing company FastLabels which serves as an in-depth guide to the process:
My sincere thanks to Muddy Colors for allowing me to hijack the blog as a Guest Contributor today. I'm here because an idea-generating card deck I created, called RECKLESS DECK, has a new Kickstarter that's launching today. I'd like to use this opportunity to share with you some of the deeper creative motivations behind why I made this thing.
A very quick lowdown on Reckless Deck for the uninitiated: It is a card deck that contains 72 individual cards, each one offering a different object, character attribute, weapon or trope from the Fantasy, Sci Fi, Horror, or Steampunk genres. The idea is to shuffle the deck, draw some cards, and then, as Artists & Creatives, make something new happen out of the random, incongruous hand you've drawn.
The strength of Reckless Deck lies in the idea of TROPES... How to use them, and how to subvert them.
I feel (and this may be the first of several things I say that might get me lit on fire, making this the briefest debut in the history of blogging), the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy Art gets a great deal of its mojo from the "Set Design", "Costume" and "Prop Shops" of your imagination.
Let's not joke - Sci Fi and Fantasy tend to be realms of "cool stuff". Because otherwise, we'd just be painting naked people on blank backgrounds, or pedestrian-attired people doing very everyday things (see also: Fine Art, Portraiture). What makes it "Fantastic Art" oftentimes is a function of the personal vision of your inner production designer, and how big a "creativity budget" you have stored up in your head to "fund" your next production.
CLASSICAL THEATRE AS A MODERN PERFORMANCE
For those of you who don't know me, I left my illustration education mid-stream to be a professional actor for 13 years, finding my way back to illustration only after a lot of stage work, a lot of "suffering for my art", and a Master's Degree in performance from the A.R.T. Institute at Harvard University.
I want to share with you some of the performance-related lessons I learned that ended up fueling the creation of Reckless Deck, and how my creative process continues to shape itself as a result.
I performed in a number of Shakespeare (& other classical) plays, and witnessed countless more. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw a doublet-and-hose, traditional period rendition. (Or, what we used to call "pumpkin pants". Never wore 'em once.)
"In sooth I know not why I wear this ridiculous getup."
Modern Shakespeare performance tends to exist in either:
A) a different historical context a director might use to frame (and hopefully thereby inform) the production, or...
B) a kind of theatrical nether-realm, which to our Sci Fi/Fantasy eyes can often be actually an exercise in really intriguing world building.
And, it's in this nether-realm that I learned that it's possible - and often preferable - to have a world that can encompass both swords and handguns, a pocket watch and a cell phone, an hourglass and a laptop. Some recent examples you may already be familiar with:
Kate Fleetwood &Patrick Stewart, MACBETH, 2010
Alan Cumming, TITUS, 1999
Steven Waddington & Andrew Tiernan, EDWARD II, 1991
Creating Reckless Deck did an interesting thing - it allowed me to see that the various objects & tropes we traffic in as Sci Fi Fantasy illustrators can behave in very startling and unexpected ways, once you lift them away from the snug surroundings of their native genre and make them interact with unfamiliar companions. The inherent nature of a thing suddenly can fizz and pop in surprising new ways, similar to the shades of meaning of words in a sentence, or (in an analogy-tip-of-the-hat to Lauren Panepinto and other Mixologists) ingredients in a cocktail. Often, the incongruity between one thing and another creates a visual tension that can be really interesting - something akin to an unscratchable, never-ending itch in your brain.
THE KULESHOV EFFECT
Something unique to the nature of film as a medium is the act of film editing, or Montage. In the 1920's, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein credited montage as "the nerve of cinema". He stated, "Montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots" wherein "each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other."
The term "montage" was first coined in 1916, however, by filmmaker Lev Kuleshov. In a now-famous film experiment, Kuleshov combined independent shots of a man, a bowl of soup, a woman in a coffin, and a woman on a sofa. The strategic ordering of the shots had a marked effect on audience's interpretation of the man's neutral expression. Although the man's expression doesn't change, when juxtaposed with the three images, the resulting mini-narratives suggest that it does. Essentially, Man + Soup = Hungry, Man + Coffin = Sadness, and Man + Woman = Lust.
For me, Reckless Deck acts as a kind of portable illustrator's Kuleshov Effect Kit. Each card becomes like a snippet of film that can endlessly be edited and re-edited together in different combinations.
We all know well the resonance & frequency of combinations like "Sword + Shield + Dragon", or "Laser Pistol + Robot + Spaceship". And, no arguments, these are good frequencies, that most of us revisit often, and some among us wield with superlative skill. But what happens when you go jumping Once More Into That Breach with a montage like "Sword + Robot + Suit & Tie?" or "Shield + Laser Pistol + Angel Wings?" The results, admittedly, could be a hot mess. But, they could also be amazing - and have a freshness and a vibrancy that are borne directly out of the inherent risk - and dissonance - of such a montage.
The last thing I want to leave you with is a moment from the completion of my undergraduate education at UC Santa Cruz. The 'Shakespeare Santa Cruz Artistic Director' at the time, Danny Scheie , showed us two opposing clips of the same aria from different versions of George Bizet's CARMEN.
One was from the 1984 film by Francesco Rosi. This one was…about what you'd expect. Spain, stucco, petticoats, peasants.
The second was from a stage production of CARMEN by British director and theater pioneer Peter Brook. (Apologies in advance, I've scoured the internet looking for this footage, to no avail. The best I could do was this photo from a remount of Brook's adaptation at Baldwin Wallace University in Cleveland earlier this year.)
Brook's production has become legend in the theater world for its brazen stripping down of this pageant-like opera to its barest bones - a small cast, reduction of the full orchestra to 14 musicians, and all the lavish costumes and sets reduced to a blank, Zen-garden sandbox and minimal props.
Seeing the juxtaposition of these two interpretations of the same material was one of the seminal moments of my education both as an actor, and, as it turns out, an illustrator, as well. This freedom to upend and subvert expected tropes (sometimes replacing them, sometimes obliterating them completely) to suit one's own personal vision has become something that is central to my work, both in my own work in the studio, and with the creation and expansion of Reckless Deck.
Time for another post featuring one of my favorite animal artists, Fritz Hug. Both his sketchy as well as his more rendered work show this man's passion for animals. Mammals, birds, even insects are fascinating to him, and he succeeds in finding poses and expressions that reveal the animal's particular characteristic and personality. You'll find quite a few posts with art from this Swiss artist on this blog, here is the link to the first one:
When you watch Milt draw some of his characters at the end of his episode from The Disney Family Album series you can't help but feel his intense concentration. He was interviewed and filmed in 1984 at home in his Condo, just north of San Francisco in Marin County. Milt hadn't drawn in several years, he left Disney in 1976. Nevertheless, full of self doubt feeling rusty, he gave in to the show's director Mike Bonifer and sketched in front of the camera. The footage is of historical importance, because it shows Milt's unorthodox way of drawing. He throws in a light circle for the main mass of the character's head, but then goes straight for details. The order in which he puts lines on paper is completely absurd. He finished drawing Pinocchio's head, before moving left to define his finger, which is on fire. The connecting arm was drawn in much later.
Milt's assistant Dave Michener told me that Milt stared at blank paper on his desk for a very long time before then quickly animating his scene. He literally saw poses projected on paper, which he then "traced".
Her is the link to The Disney Family Album Wikipedia page for more infos on all episodes:
The rough sketch above is from one of my favorite Milt Kahl scenes. This is Seq. 13, Sc. 53.4, and the Disney draft says: King Hubert gets angry - he is about to smash his crown. Prince Phillip grabs the crown and tries to calm his father. Hubert: "No, no...you can't do this to me!...Give up the throne...the kingdom...for some... some nobody! By Harry, I won't have it! You're a prince and you're going to marry a princess!" Phillip: "Now father, you're living in the past! This is the fourteenth century! Nowadays... Hubert: "Nowadays I'm still the king and I command you to come to your senses..."
The scene is a little over 30 feet long. Hubert's anger outburst is beautifully animated, great poses, great timing. Phillip grabs the crown out of his father's hand just in time. I highly recommend studying the scene frame by frame.
The following three drawings by Milt were done for John Lounsbery scenes to make sure the character stays on model. Milt animated the first half of the kings' drinking sequence, Lounsbery drew the second half.
Milt didn't animate any scenes involving the three fairies, but he did sketch this hat treatment for Merryweather and gave it to Frank Thomas.
This is a rough in-between for an early scene that was cut from the movie. At that time Milt drew the Prince with a sharp nose tip.
Design ideas for Fauna. The sagging cheeks were later eliminated for a simpler facial appearance. Beautiful arrangement of shapes, but I do prefer Frank and Ollie's version of the character.
These few scenes, showing Milt's wire sculptures with some dimension, were filmed at his home in Marin county. A little bit of the footage made it into the final 1/2 hour Disney Family Album episode, the rest are outtakes.
I wished the cameraman would have circled around the sculptures more, since that is the best way to show real depth. Nevertheless, these pieces are full of elegance and intelligent simplicity.
Just like in Milt's animation drawings, what he leaves out is as fascinating to watch as what he puts in.
Kyuong Hwan Kim is a Korean concept artist and illustrator, who works under the name of Tahra Art.
Kyuong Hwan's work is something of a mixed bag for me. Some of it falls under the heading of fairly typical anime influenced pin-up art, an insular style that is overly abundant these days, while other pieces are far more interesting, original and imaginative.
I think the latter make it worth wading through the others in search of the more compelling work. I particularly enjoy his pieces in the vein of fairy tales or children's stories, which are often rich with texture and detail.
There is a collection of his work, Tahra Art, that was published in 2013; reviewed here on Parka Blogs.
If you do well on the test, you will certainly go on to the next year.
If you do well on the other test, you'll certainly get to go to a famous college.
After you repeat these steps obediently for more than ten years, there will be a placement office, where there will certainly be a job ready for you, with fixed hours and a career path.
People telling you what to do, and when you respond by reciting the notes you took, people rewarding you.
Oops.
We've trained people to be certain for years, and then launch them into a culture and an economy where relying on certainty does us almost no good at all.
Broken-field running, free range kids, the passionate desire to pick yourself—that seems like a more robust and resilient way to prepare, doesn't it? Who's teaching you what to do when the certain thing doesn't happen?
