The Chad Frye - Illustration GuySpent some time doodling in my sketchbook this week. Went back to the well of one of my favorite things to draw – bears! Here’s a bear excited for the accidental meal he thinks he’s about to have. How this ends is probably not in the bear’s favor.
Some cat scratches today made with just a pencil and paper. Crazy that those tools still work in our digital age.
As a character designer for animation (which I do from time-to-time), it is important to be able to really explore the needs of the story with your designs for just a single character. Often you will have to play with head shapes, attitudes, expressions, fur, teeth, eye shapes, etc. There is an endless amount of combinations out there. (I once did over 60 designs for one character to try to satisfy a client!) These cats were not specifically for any project, but just a personal exercise in my sketchbook to try different things within the same species.
Also, when designing a character, it isn’t just about what the character looks like, but what the character looks like doing something. In animation, the character obviously has to move, hold things, talk, emote, interact with others, and even just walk. If you design something that looks good in a held staged pose, but really can’t move or bend in a simple walk, then you have a character that is non-functional.
Believe me, I’ve had this problem when working on projects for clients who don’t understand the design properties necessary for movement. I won’t get specific, but one project I worked on had characters that the client had first developed to a certain extent for print, not animation. In their drawings, appendages never were drawn bent, and their characters were always drawn from a front view. When I introduced elbows and knees to the designs, they panicked. When I made the thumbs slightly bigger than their initial nubs so they could hold things, that inspired a slew of discussions. When I drew an accurate side view, the sky caved in.
So, when designing, don’t just draw something static. Draw it doing things. And if you are drawing for other people, don’t fall in love with what you came up with, because they will always want to change it for good or bad.
This kind of turned into a lesson! Sorry about that. Just enjoy the rough sketches of cats!
– Henry Fielding (1707 – 1754)
This past weekend, the legendary Bernie Wrightson passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was a true master of the macabre with his monster work for comics and movies, with his take on an illustrated Frankenstein in 1983 being a benchmark that few have ever achieved with ink and paper. His work was simply inspirational.
I first met Bernie at the first comic convention I had ever attended back in the mid-90s. It was HeroesCon in Charlotte, NC. I was brand new to the business, and was spending the day with my friend Jim Scancarelli, artist/writer of the Gasoline Alley comic strip. We attended a dinner for all the invited pros (of which Jim was one) hosted by the convention coordinator Shelton Drum. Jim and I sat with Green Lantern creator Marty Nodell and comics legend Dick Giordano. Bernie was there, too, and I was thrilled to meet him. He was very gracious to the new kid in the room.
While my path did not take me down the road of comic books, animation called me away from the east coast to the sunny San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles area. A few years later, Bernie also moved to the area where it was a thrill to get to know this giant a little bit better at various local industry events.
At one point, I became the president of the local Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS) where it was my duty to bring in guest speakers for our group of professional cartoonists. Bernie graciously accepted the invitation to come speak one night, and once in a while would drop in as a spectator for some of our other meetings just being one of the guys.
Perhaps the most fun I had around Bernie was at a dinner party we had been invited to. It was an anniversary party of some mutual friends of ours, and I got seated at the best table because Bernie and his wife Liz were there, too. To my right was movie director Ryan Schifrin and his wife Theresa, on my left was Frank Darabont, to Frank’s left was Bernie & Liz, amazing designer Greg Aronowitz, and I believe writer David J. Schow and his wife were sitting there, too. You may be wondering what a table full of creative people talk about at dinner – just about anything and everything would be the answer. It was such a pleasure to be in the company of these folks eating, laughing, and telling tales to each other late into the night.
While I had always hoped a little of Bernie’s talent would rub off on me, especially since I love drawing monsters, I will just have to settle on being the humorous cartoonist that I am, and remain in awe of Bernie’s greatness. (If you don’t know his work, do yourself a favor and Google him NOW!)
Feeling a little inspired yesterday, I thought I’d sketch this creature in Bernie’s honor.
While many parts of the United States have already been showing signs of spring, others are still buried under snow thanks to a big storm that hit just last week. Where there is snow, there may be some hibernating bears you don’t want to awaken.
If you happen to be hiking through the woods, stay alert out there! DON’T bury your nose in your cell phone. You may come across a bear just up from a long winter’s nap, and he may want to check his e-mail or take his first 2017 selfie!
You may laugh at the absurdity of this situation, but believe me, it could happen. A few years ago I was watching the morning news on television here in Los Angeles, and a situation like this almost happened. Someone posted the clip on YouTube, which I have provided for you here…
You know how it is when you play fetch with your dog…
He/she jumps up and down giddy with the anticipation that you are about to lob that tennis ball somewhere. As you release the fuzzy orb into space, the dog bounds after it with the energy of NASA rockets, snatches the ball before it comes to rest, and races back to you re-entering the atmosphere at breakneck speed. As you reach down to retrieve the orb for another launch, the dog immediately turns into a ferocious beast with growling and fangs ready to rip you to shreds as if it had been infected by some strange being from another world it may have encountered while on its journey.
If only the dog returned with some kind of superpower like the Fantastic 4.
Back in September, I picked up one of those neat Toned Tan hardcover sketchbooks made by Strathmore. While not perfect for my way of working (I wish the paper had more tooth), I have been having fun experimenting a bit with sketching on this mid-toned paper with some darker, lighter, and colored media.
Just felt like drawing a lion yesterday, and as I started the sketch, that old Aesop’s Fable story The Lion & the Mouse came to mind, so I added a mouse in the mane. Some get lice, the lion gets mice. (As a side note, one of my favorite depictions of this story was illustrated by veteran artist Jerry Pinkney whose stunning version of the story rests firmly in my personal library.)
Roar.
Two posts ago, I showed you some sketches of real Russians drawn from real life while really in Russia. While I didn’t personally see any elephants while visiting that fascinating country (maybe they were hibernating for the winter – I’m not a zoologist, so it’s probably true), my mind still wandered to them one cold Russian day, and they made an appearance in my sketchbook.
I wish I had a more expressive pencil on me at the time, but armed with just a .5mm mechanical pencil, a few elephants emerged from the cold recesses of my mind. I present them to you here with a little digital enhancement.
