Classic Cartoon Style

Always loved classic animation. I didn’t watch Scooby-Doo or Speed Racer.

I loved Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny & The Road Runner. Foghorn Leghorn. Wile E. Coyote.

My absolute favorites were the gritty penned and washed black and white cels from the Warner Bros. Studios.

So imagine the delight in discovering Private Snafu. As it turns out, He’s drawn by the same animators that gave us Elmer Fudd and voiced by the marvelous Mel Blanc.

When I look at my own cartoons I’d say these guys really gave me my basic impression for the weight and mass of cartoon characters. My guys have the same bulb noses and round flap ears !

YouTube’s got a nice little pack of the Snafu shorts.

Happiness is a Day in the Studio

Well it’s another day in the studio and I’m sitting here at my digital tablet, pen in hand, and smiling like a fool.

I’m just plain happy, every day. But an entire day in the studio is just fabulous. I don’t about you, but I’m just not ever going to run out of ideas for work. So every day in the studio is another happy day.

When I get up in the morning, my studio is the first stop after the espresso machine.

My latest projects have been to pilot the use of Paint.Net and ArtRage 2.5 in tandem. Both allow painting in layers and saving those layers individually for further editing or new versions. It’s thrilling to have the use of ArtRage’s beautiful airbrush together with Paint.Net’s speed and technical effects (way too many to mention). I often go to the Paint.Net user forum and find that seemingly 90% of the questions from users or new feature requests involve brushes, so I’ll just say it again ! If you’re a Paint.Net user, go ahead and spend the 25 bucks for the pro version of ArtRage and use them together. If you’re not sure you can test the free version first You’ll miss out on the coolest features – the airbrush, and the ability to save your work in separate layers – but you’ll get a good idea.

Having those working smoothly, I recently discovered a new print-on-demand publishing platform named Blurb, that’s inspired me to dig a past illustration project out of the archives and create a new series ! So I’ll keep you posted as that progresses.

So, I’m darned happy.

Now all I need is a bigger studio and a lot more time in it !

Grab a pencil and join in !

Drawing Day is a fun concept and I couldn’t resist playing with it a bit.

Using Scribd’s new “ipaper”

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