The Sketchy Line Revolution

The image here is what most of my cartoons look like. However, I always start out with very sketchy drawings in everything I do. I am a trained artist and illustrator that loves cartooning. From going to an art high school and then Parsons in New York I was trained at an early stage to be able to draw with a continual line and never look at what your putting on the page. If you were drawing from life you observe and let your hand follow the forms you're seeing. Very much like an instrumentalist knows their instrument.

The woman that this picture is inspired by(Joaniqua in the 'hood) told me a while back that I should really explore this sketchy style more in the stuff I do. As of recent, I've decided to really take her advice and some of my street art as well as a current animation projects will be utilizing this method.

The next picture is where instead of cleaning up the picture I start to push the sketch to a place where I am basically sculpting with lines on top of lines.

The final image was done the same way. My sketch books are filled with images like this. I am currently working on 2 animation projects that utilize this style but with movement..will post when I finish the examples.

I kinda dig this style because it really is freeing the artist to push shape, light, and dark around. I think I'm going to do a few youtube tutorials about his technique and animating it all in flash for people that may benefit from it.

I really don't think that people realize the full potential of Adobe Flash. I pretty much do everything in it. From intitial character design, to animatics to full broadcast animation. I've done 3 broadcasts jobs with it, entirely by myself and numerous other projects working for post houses. I think my tutorials will go over drawing free in flash and then animating using Flash to act as an animation station.

When I started in the 3d animation industry back in the 90's I was amazed by the fact that many of the other 3d animators I was working with on major films with really could not draw! They were technical people that knew complicated 3d software like Maya and Softimage because they had the money to study at schools that were offering these really expensive programs in their schooling . That has changed now that high end 3d software is way more cheap. Never the less, anyone who wants to animate should really be able to draw their animations by hand if need be.

This should be fun