Longhair and Doubledome: Return to Graphite

Returning to Pencil on Animation Paper

From the dawn of time... or at least since I was a child, I have loved drawing with pencil on paper. In time, I would fall in love with pen and ink, pastel, watercolor, and other media, but graphite is where I started my journey into the world of visual art. Graphite on paper is also where I began my animation career, drawing in-betweens for Disney, and later drawing backgrounds for other animation studios.

Then came the digital age, and all animation industry drawings were to be drawn on digital devices. Resistance was futile. Every animation gig I have had since about 2012 has been drawn on a computer screen.

However, recently I had a rare opportunity to return to graphite on paper. Gavrilo Gnatovich (affectionately known as "Gav"), reached out to me about creating some art for Longhair and Doubledome - but not for another animated cartoon, this is in connection with his upcoming graphic novel (read about it on Kickstarter here). I've known Gav since about 2005 when our paths crossed at Fatcat Animation Studios. I was thrilled at the chance to work on one of Gav's projects, but even more thrilled that he has been drawing this graphic novel with pencils on animation paper. Gav gave me the option to work digitally, but I was not going to pass up the opportunity to work in pencil on animation paper and actually get paid to do it. This decision, however, would cost me time and frustration - but also teach me some valuable lessons, as chronicled below. But first, let me show you the drawings I produced.

The Final Penciled Drawings

Gav has given permission to show these in advance of publication of the graphic novel (they don't give away anything important about the story), so I am posting these now. The next three images are the final drawings, all penciled on 16 field animation paper (typically about 17x12”).

Challenges of Graphite

Since I had not actually drawn a background with pencil on animation paper in years, I had to reacquaint myself with the techniques of graphite rendering - a process which taught me just how much digital media makes us lazy. First, pencil on paper has no “undo” function - you can erase but it's not as clean as Photoshop's "CMD/CTRL-Z". You cannot save your drawing at various stages and revert back to an earlier stage at any time. There are no "layers" that let you resize/move things around, or experiment without ruining the drawing. Basically, you have to live with your mistakes. Probably this is a good thing, as traditional media forces us to take more risks and be decisive - at the risk of ruining a drawing or two (or three, or…). It's like drawing without a safety net. By contrast, digital media, with its endless undo's and layers, creates "safe" solutions that don’t really tax our drawing skills quite as much. Hence our skills atrophy.

Other challenges included having a flying insect land on my drawing paper as I was trying to concentrate. Working on a Wacom screen, I haven’t had to deal with insect guts staining my drawing paper in quite some time (don't worry - this happened to one of the early versions, the final drawings are free of insect guts). Also, I had to take extra care not to accidentally crease or fold or otherwise damage the paper. I try to be careful, but accidents happen; with too much vigorous erasing, I almost tore one paper.

Finally, I completely forgot about peg reinforcements! As I worked on these drawings, the paper began to stretch or tear around the peg holes - then I remembered these reinforcements from my days at Disney and DreamWorks. I've rarely used these for the last decade+ but digging them out of an old drawer brought back memories!

Peg hole reinforcements used at Disney and DreamWorks

Alternate Versions and Works-In-Progress

The following images are either work-in-progress or early alternate versions of what would become the final drawings. For the first background, I started in blue pencil. The landscape was maybe a bit too "cartoony" in this version.   

First version - plants are maybe too cartoony

Here is where I hit my first real snag: my first attempts at rendering were disappointing. I didn’t fully appreciate how out-of-practice I was with graphite rendering. So, I decided to completely redraw the scene on a fresh sheet of animation paper. On the bright side, this gave me an opportunity to rework the design of the plants and trees. The line drawing below eventually became the final rendered version. 

Revised version - more interesting plant designs

2nd Background

The second background changed a lot from initial concept to final composition. This early version showcases a variety of plants, but it misses an opportunity to create stronger depth while improving the composition (compare to the revised version below).  

Early version - limited depth, lacking strong focal point 

In this line drawing for the revised version, the plants are more varied in design, and shapes are overlapped to create stronger layers of foreground, middle ground, and background. The "Dutch angle" (tilting the horizon) adds dynamism to the composition.

Revised version - stronger depth, better overlapping shapes

During the rendering of this scene, I became discouraged by my lack of practice in graphite. This drawing really needed more contrast, but I was afraid to ruin it with over-rendering. So, I scanned my drawing and continued working in Photoshop. I digitally darkened the foreground, adding more shadows which help to emphasize the focal point in the distance. This is a more cinematic lighting which I was hoping to achieve in the final drawing - but this is what I mean by digital media making us lazy: I have done this type of lighting so many times in Photoshop that it seems easy to me, but on actual paper, I lost my nerve and became afraid to finish. I am disappointed that I resorted to Photoshop to solve a problem which I should be able to solve directly in graphite. Alas, digital methods have dulled my skills and made me timid. 

Photoshop edited version - foreground shadow helps emphasize distant focal point.

3rd Background

The third background may have changed the most from early layout to final version. This early line version worked fine as a showcase of plant varieties, but it lacks a strong focal point or feeling of depth. As I looked over my drawing, I felt there was an opportunity to create a stronger composition. 

Early version lacks depth or strong focal point

For the revision, I decided to try a different approach. I don't have a line drawing of this one because I jumped directly into tone, employing an age-old drawing technique where you smear graphite across the paper with a chamois cloth, laying out the big masses. Then you work into the masses with kneaded eraser, blending stumps and pencil, to "sculpt" the big shapes - with smaller shapes and details only emerging later out of the bigger shapes. This technique really took me back to my art student days, when drawing was exhilarating and fun. I lost myself in the process, unaware of the passing of time, as the pencil seemed to move of its own volition and plant shapes emerged spontaneously from the graphite void. The next image is from a couple hours into that process, but hopefully you can still get a sense of how plant shapes were formed out of masses of tone.

Plant shapes emerging from the graphite void

Here is another shot from later in the process as I tightened down the rendering and hammered out many of the smaller shapes, sometimes changing my mind about the design of a plant or two.

A few more hours of rendering - heading towards the finish

The final version is up at the top of this post, where perhaps you can see that the composition has a better arrangement of shapes and the plant designs are more satisfying. Below are a couple of closeups where you might see the time I put into details. I think that by the 3rd background, I was beginning to feel comfortable rendering in graphite again. 

Closeup details of the final rendering

Looking back now, I could have done this job entirely in Photoshop and finished much more quickly, while avoiding the frustrations, but I would have missed an opportunity to challenge myself and realize where my skills need work. Also, this job really took me back to my childhood love for pencil on paper, as well as my early days in the animation industry. Thanks Gav, for giving me this opportunity to play with graphite and relive old memories!

As the age of pencil-on-paper animation was winding to a close, I remember spending a good deal of time studying and admiring the fine pencil renderings produced by the layout departments at Walt Disney Feature Animation, DreamWorks, and other animation studios. I expended considerable effort to absorb those techniques as best I could. Sadly, I haven’t had many opportunities to continue honing those skills in recent years - at least not within the animation industry, since the industry no longer values pencil on paper skills the way it once did.

Memories of Oswald

Of all the animation productions I have worked on, it’s really tough to say which one was my favorite. I’m not sure I could pick just one, but if I had to, I might choose Oswald the Lucky Rabbit – mainly because the environments where so much fun to design, but also because of the history/legacy of the Oswald character.

Walt Disney created Oswald before Mickey Mouse, but lost ownership of the character to Universal Studios way back in 1928. Nearly 80 years later - in a strange and unexpected turn of events - Disney CEO Bob Iger negotiated back the rights from Universal, trading Oswald for ABC/ESPN sportscaster Al Michaels (fascinating read on this story here).

Following Oswald’s return to the Disney fold, a number of attempts were made to revive the character, including video games, merchandise, a short film, episodic TV series, and apparently - there is now a live-action/animation hybrid in the works. I should note that I was/am not involved with any of the other efforts to revive Oswald – just this one from around 2016-2017, when I was freelancing for Disney Interactive/Disney TV. For unknown reasons, the series never materialized.

For nearly a decade, my work on Oswald remained unseen to all but a few people, but now that Oswald is public domain, I hope it's OK to post these. So, I put together the video at the top of this blog post using a bunch of my Oswald backgrounds (the video is mine so any bad editing is my fault, and the music is courtesy of Google Vids, and not from Disney). To create these backgrounds, I worked with the amazingly talented production designer, Edgar Carlos, who has a great eye for design and composition (without his input/advice, my drawings would never have worked as well as they did). My role was primarily background design, so I only claim credit for the backgrounds (not the character drawings – those were done by other artists). Also, this is early development work, so some of the drawings are quite rough. All of these backgrounds were drawn in Photoshop using a Wacom Intuos 4 tablet.

One of my favorite scenes was this establishing shot of “Coneyopolis”. This first version (below) was an early rough concept.

Later, we reworked the idea, making Coneyopolis more expansive. This version includes a field guide to indicate camera movement – the camera was to pull out wider, while the foreground hills fall away, revealing the extra-wide shot of Coneyopolis (second drawing below).

I must give credit where credit is due. The above drawing was so detailed and it was taking me forever – so Edgar stepped in and drew in some parts, helping to finish on time.

The next scene (below) is an even wider shot where we digitally transplanted the previous drawing of Coneyopolis into the wider landscape, with endless rows of windmills covering the hills. Very time consuming, but very much worth the effort.

I regret that this Oswald series never materialized, but I’m just grateful for the opportunity to contribute in some small way to the legacy of this iconic character. I really enjoyed drawing these backgrounds!

CrocPond: The Dream Job that Lasted for a Moment

Lately, I’ve been reminiscing about old projects from the course my career. One project for which I had the highest hopes was the ill-fated world of CrocPond. Originally, it was intended to be a direct-to-DVD film series aimed at teaching life lessons to children. But as all too often happens in this industry, the project ran out of funding and was eventually abandoned. (I will refrain from commenting on specific events, controversies or conspiracy theories surrounding the demise of the project or the closure of FatCat Animation – I have no dog in those fights. For this blog, I just want to focus on the artwork).

In early 2005, I was contacted by someone from FatCat Animation, a studio founded by Len Simon in Tempe, Arizona. Initially, the job involved cleanup animation on the Curious George movie, but when I enquired about layout work, they said they would need to send me a test. Not long after, a package arrived by FedEx. Inside was the test: a couple of penciled line drawings for which I was asked to provide tonal renderings. I had seen no other CrocPond material, and I was given no reference or direction for the lighting – I just had to invent the lighting myself. So, I put my whole heart into it, and the result was the pencil rendering you see here, as well as the one at the top of this blog post. Needless to say, this test got me the job.

As I child, I loved the animated film Secret of NIMH, as well as the laser disc video game, Dragon’s Lair, both created by Don Bluth Entertainment (or its various incarnations). Fatcat was staffed with artists who had worked for Fox Animation Studios, which in turn, had absorbed talent from Bluth. While CrocPond was stylistically distinct from NIMH, I couldn’t help but feel excited to be working with people who had some connection to one of my favorite childhood films. In my mind, CrocPond was an opportunity to create environments which had the kind of atmospheric, mysterious, magical quality that reminded me of Secret of NIMH. For me, it was the dream job. I was very disheartened when the project came to an end.

I worked at FatCat Animation from about mid-2005 to mid-2006, the first part of that time doing cleanup animation on Curious George, the rest of that time spent drawing backgrounds for CrocPond and Rindin the Puffer. This was still the age of traditional pencil-on-paper animation, and so all of the drawings here were created with graphite pencils, kneaded eraser, and blending stubs. For many of these scenes, I was provided a rough layout (usually just a line drawing with no tone - so I had to invent the value pattern and lighting myself).

For others - such as the next two drawings here - I designed and rendered the background, so both the composition and finish are my own.

The last two drawings (below) depict the “House of Knowledge”. The exterior was initially designed by the amazingly talented Filipino artist, George Villaflor. George gave me a line drawing of the exterior, and a very rough line drawing suggesting the interior (for which I was to provide the finished renderings). Another artist had made a drawing of the interior, but from a different camera angle, and not all of the room was visible in his scene. So I had to design the rest of the room and match the desired camera angle. The script called for a room crowded with objects from every continent, representing every culture around the world. This assignment had my name all over it – a job perfectly suited to my tastes, skills, and artistic ambitions. I spent days researching reference material for everything that needed to be drawn. It was very time consuming, but I genuinely enjoyed the work.

While I am disappointed that Crocpond never reached the screen, I have fond memories from my time working on it. It was a moment in my career when imagination, craftsmanship, and opportunity aligned – however briefly – and I am grateful to have been a part of it.

By the way, I recently found some clips from FatCat Animation on YouTube (thanks to WorkOfZen for posting these!) This one provides a sense of what CrocPond might have been, if the funding had not dried up. 

Memories of the "Amazon Project"

Recently I put together a short video featuring some of my background work for the "Amazon Project" (actually, we called it "Amazonia" or something back when we were developing it, but for some reason, I kept referring to it as the "Amazon Project", and the name has stuck in my head).  

I've written about the Amazon project on my website here. Basically, it was to be an animated film featuring the character designs and animation of my good friend, the insanely talented Sandro Cleuzo. And it would have been an opportunity for me to develop a bunch of backgrounds loosely inspired by the art direction of Disney's Jungle Book (a film which Sandro and I both love). As happens all too often in the animated film business, too many great projects end up getting shelved.

On my website, I also wrote about The Last Days of Traditional Background Painting. By the time we were working on Amazonia, the animation industry had pretty much moved away from acrylics or gouache paints to all digital painting. I was one of the lone hold outs trying to work in traditional media. Here is a photo of me working on an Amazon background from way back (circa 2012 or so). Since this was a dev/dev piece rather than a production BG, I could use any media. I actually used oils on canvas for this one. 

And since I recently found these old photos, here is a look into my working process. For this next background, I started with a graphite drawing. After rendering out everything in graphite to establish the composition and value pattern, I airbrushed over my drawing with acrylic ink to darken the darks.

In this next step, I begin airbrushing thin layers of color over the black and white rendering. I like to work with a solid drawing under my painting - since I have already resolved the lighting and atmosphere, now I can focus on color. 

Slowly and patiently, I build up the layers of color so they become more intense, while trying not to lose the feeling of atmosphere established in the drawing.

Here the painting is coming along, but still a ways to go towards the finish. At the bottom of the photo, you can see paints laid out on my palette. I used a damp paper towel under the paints to keep the acrylics from drying out too fast. A spritzer bottle also helps to keep the paints moist. I still have the old butcher tray which I used as a palette in art school. With the painting progressing this far, I've put away the big brushes and brought out the small brushes for detail work. 

The finished painting is displayed on my website, as well as in the video above. Even though the film was never made, I am forever grateful to Sandro for the opportunity to collaborate on his film. And it did provide me with the opportunity to make some great portfolio pieces which helped me to land a number of jobs later on down the road.

The Odysseus Machine

About 5 years ago, I built “The Odysseus Machine”, a desktop PC for my animation/illustration work. I named my computer Odysseus after that great wanderer of Greek Mythology, but also for the unmanned spacecraft Odysseus (later renamed Ulysses) which was launched in 1990 on a highly unusual trajectory to the Sun. I think that describes my path in life: "a highly unusual trajectory".

The Odysseus Machine was probably over-equipped for my needs, but I don’t upgrade often; I tend to buy the best thing I can afford at the time and then use it for as many years as I can get away with. Below is a partial spec list (for a more complete parts list with descriptions, see my build on PCpartpicker).

CPU: i9 9900k - I primarily use Photoshop, which doesn’t really use more than 8 cores, so at the time, this was probably the best CPU you could buy for Photoshop.

GPU: Nvidia RTX 2080ti with 11GB of DDR6 VRAM – Overkill for Photoshop, but great for running multiple 4K monitors and occasional video editing.

RAM: 128GB DDR4 3200 CL16 – This is way more RAM than anyone really needs unless you are making your own Avengers Movie on your desktop, but too much RAM is better than too little.

Storage: 30 TB - includes 2 NVMe SSD drives (2TB each), 2 SATA SSD drives (4TB each), and 1 HDD (18TB). The OS is installed on one of the NVMe drives, while the other is for current projects. The SATA SSDs serve as a library and a place to store finished projects, while the 18TB HHD serves as backup/archives. In years past, I had to delete files to save drive space, but that is not an issue with this build.

Monitors: Wacom Cinitiq Pro 24” touch screen (on which I draw and paint), above it is an LG 27” HDR 4K monitor (I place reference material here), and off to the side is a smaller, older monitor (here I run programs to monitor CPU/GPU temps, hard drives, etc.) Even further to the right is the much older Commodore monitor (from 1985 and it still works!). This one is not attached to my PC. It’s connected to a VCR/DVD player, on which I can play older video reference.

Finally, I must confess that I went crazy overboard with the RGB lighting. I lost all sense of practicality here, but it was lots of fun building and figuring out how to make everything work. I think the final results are quite entertaining.

Below are photos of the build in progress. First: the obligatory “parts showcase” with all the parts in their colorful boxes.

Next, early stage of the build in-progress: Originally, I had a GSkill 1250w PSU, but it was going bad, so later I replaced it with a Thermaltake 850w (which is plenty of power for my needs).  

First "power on" test to make sure everything is working so far. No operating system installed yet. “Cable management” is a total mess at this point, but at least it works!

Installing the GPU (video card). I first tried horizontal orientation, before changing to a vertical mount.

Next photos: GPU is now vertically mounted. The AIO fans have been moved to the front of the radiator, and an additional 2 case fans are now attached to the back of the radiator (partial "Push/Pull" configuration). While removing the radiator, I installed an extra two case fans on the side panel/motherboard tray. This makes a total of  8 case fanes + 3 radiator fans. If you include the 3 fans on the GPU, that is a total of 14 fans running in this build.

“Cable management” is an art form unto itself (and I am no expert), but I routed most of the cables around the back side of the case, and stored as many loose ends as possible under the PSU shroud. In this view, you can see the additional 2 case fans added to the back of the motherboard tray (I was concerned they might interfere with airflow, but it turns out the added fans actually help keep temps down a bit). Also in this view, you can see the Samsung SSDs (4TB each) plus the spinning hard drive (18TB) - plenty of storage. Lastly, I added an RGB hub to control the lighting.

The Odysseus Machine has been running for 5 years now, and I've gotten quite a lot of work done on it. Here is a short video showing off the RGB lighting effects.

Futurama: Drawing an Environment from Multiple Angles

Here is a typical scenario for an animation layout artist: drawing the same environment from multiple camera angles. Below are three of my drawings from Futurama. The first one is a high angle down shot in three-point perspective.

The second shot is a one-point perspective view with a low horizon line.

The third shot is a two-point perspective view (with one vanishing point inside the picture frame), zooming in closer on the dumpster.

It’s been so long ago, that I can’t remember which episode this was, or even what the characters were doing exactly (I think somebody was digging in the dumpster, but I'm not sure - I do remember that the production deadlines were so tight that I was living on too much caffeine and too little sleep, and the rest is a fog). However, these backgrounds represent a typical pattern in filmmaking: an establishing shot, followed by medium shot, and then close-up. 

• Establishing Shot: composition would emphasize environment over characters
• Medium Shot: emphasis might be roughly divided between characters and environment
• Closeup: composition would emphasize characters over environment  

The high-angle shot establishes the setting, and would show the positions of characters within the scene. The medium shot brings us down to the level of the characters, helping the audience connect with the character acting/story. Finally, a closeup brings us right up to the characters, emphasizing acting and emotional impact. (I really wish now that I had saved the character poses for these shots, but regrettably I only Xeroxed my backgrounds.) 

Before so much Los Angeles animation production was shipped overseas, an animator/character layout artist would focus on the character acting, while the background layout artist focused on developing the environments. The main challenge for the background layout artist was to keep the proportions and environment design (including all the details) consistent from shot to shot, while applying credible perspective. Looking at these so many years later, I think my proportions are a bit off on the dumpster and the crates (but hopefully animated cartoons are somewhat forgiving).

In one of the perspective classes I taught at AAU, students were assigned to draw the same environment or subject from multiple camera angles. I think this is a great exercise, because it helps you develop your eye for proportions, and really think about the structure and design of the environment. And of course, you can’t get away with hiding stuff in the background by overlapping it with a foreground shape - that might work for one shot, but probably not the rest.