NCS artists invade Nashville! Free!

Hey everyone.  Especially those of you that are in driving distance of Nashville, TN.  This Saturday, Nov. 3rd at 11am, There is a FREE series of lectures THIS SATURDAY here in Nashville, TN at Watkins College of Art by members of the National Cartoonist Society. I will speak at 11am, then others like Mad Magazine artistsTom Richmond and more too! You gotta go. Spread the word and see the flyer below for more info.

Mini Character Design Interview

Someone getting a Master's degree in Character design recently asked me to answer some questions about my career and thoughts on character design.  Here's the mini interview:

When did you start with character design and what motivated you?

WHEN I WENT TO CALARTS, ONE OF THE CLASSES I HAD WAS A "CHARACTER DESIGN" CLASS.  MIKE GIAMO, WHO IS A GREAT TALENT, TAUGHT IT.  I HAD ALWAYS LOVED DRAWING CHARACTERS AND MAKING UP MY OWN, BUT SOME OF THE PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN HE TAUGHT US REALLY OPENED MY EYES TO HOW MUCH MORE I NEEDED TO LEARN.  I GOT HOOKED IN THAT CLASS, BUT IT WASN'T UNTIL YEARS LATER, WHILE AT DISNEY ANIMATION, THAT I STARTED TO ACTUALLY DO CHARACTER DESIGN PROFESSIONALLY. 

What are your main resources for inspiration?

ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING.  I LOVE GREAT ANIMATION STYLE ARTWORK SO I HAVE A LARGE COLLECTION OF OTHER ARTISTS' SKETCHBOOKS AS WELL AS MOST ALL OF THE "ART OF" DISNEY, SONY, DREAMWORKS, AND PIXAR BOOKS.  THEN THERE IS THE INTERNET AND ALL THE GREAT ARTISTS BLOGS.  MOST OF THAT IS FOR STYLE INSPIRATION THOUGH, FOR POSING, EXPRESSION, CLOTHING, PROPS, ETC INSPIRATION, I DO GOOGLE SEARCHES FROM LIVE PHOTOS OF PEOPLE.  THE INTERNET IS A HUGE PART OF WHAT I DO.   I RARELY START A DRAWING/DESIGN WITHOUT GETTING SOME KIND OF PHOTO RESEARCH FIRST. 

How do you recognize that a design idea is „final“ at its sketch state?

THAT USED TO BE A HARDER QUESTION FOR ME.  AS I'VE GROWN IN EXPERIENCE AS AN ARTIST, I HAVE A CLEARER IDEA OF WHAT I WANT TO DO BEFORE I START DRAWING.  BECAUSE OF THAT, I HAVE A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF WHERE I'M GOING WITH A SKETCH; SO THEREFORE, I KNOW WHEN IT’S DONE. 

What to do if there is no matching anatomy in nature?

I RAN INTO THIS PROBLEM WHEN I WAS DESIGNING "MUSHU" IN THE DISNEY FILM, MULAN.  AT FIRST, I WAS LOST.  I COULD DO ANYTHING, SO THEREFORE I COULDN'T DECIDE WHICH WAY TO GO WITH THE DESIGN.  THE POSSIBILITIES WERE TOO ENDLESS.  FOR SOME, THAT'S A BLESSING, BUT FOR ME I LIKE SOME MINOR RESTRAINTS TO WORK WITHIN.  IT HELPS ME HAVE A DIRECTION EVEN IF IT’S A LOOSE ONE.  I DID FIND THAT YOU ARE NEVER TRULY WITHOUT SOME REFERENCE THOUGH.  MOST MONSTERS, CREATURES, ALIENS, ETC. HAVE SOME KIND OF ANATOMICAL REFERENCE THAT RELATES TO EITHER HUMANS OR ANIMALS.  THEY REALLY NEED TO, ALSO, SO THAT THERE IS SOME REFERENCE FOR THE VIEWER TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING AT. 

Do you use vector art in your character designs?

NO I DON'T.   I DON'T HAVE A VERY GOOD UNDERSTANDING OF VECTOR ART CREATION VIA FLASH OR ILLUSTRATOR LIKE SOME DO.  I WISH I DID.  THERE HAVE BEEN SOME CLIENTS THAT NEED A DESIGN I'VE CREATED TO BE VECTORIZED SO THEY CAN USE IT IN A VARIETY OF WAYS FOR MARKETING.  WHEN THAT HAPPENS, I HAVE A FEW FRIENDS THAT I CAN HIRE TO CREATE THAT.   I KEEP MY FOCUS ON THE ROUGH/TIGHT DESIGN WORK AND ART DIRECT THE FINAL VECTOR PIECE IN THOSE CASES. 

What do you believe will change over the next few years in the field of character design?

I CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING, REALLY.  I THINK WE WILL STILL NEED TO CREATE CHARACTERS (OR AT LEAST IT WILL BE FASTER) WITH PENCIL AND PAPER (OR CINTIQ) AS WE DO TODAY- BEFORE THOSE CHARACTERS GET MODELED FOR A COMPUTER ANIMATED SHOW, FOR EXAMPLE.  THE RESULTS OF TRYING TO DESIGN YOUR CHARACTER IN 3D, ON THE COMPUTER, WITHOUT PRE PLANNING IT TRADITIONALLY SHOULD MAKE THAT METHOD NOT VIABLE IN THE FUTURE JUST AS IT IS TODAY.

What do you think about 3D speed modeling? Is there already a competition in the industry between 2D and 3D concept art?

I THINK I JUST ANSWERED THAT QUESTION ABOVE.  MY BELIEF IS THAT YOU WILL EXPLORE MORE OPTIONS (SHAPES, SIZE RELATIONSHIPS, RADICALLY DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS) WHEN YOU HAVE THE FREEDOM OF PENCIL AND PAPER.  WORKING WITH THE "CLAY" OF 3D MODELING TO "FIND" YOUR CHARACTER INHIBITS THE POSSIBILITIES, IN MY OPINION.  

NEXT Live WORKSHOP is AUG. 23rd, 8PM Central!

I just wanted to post a quick blog note to let you guys know that my THIRD LIVE character/drawing workshop is AUG. 23rd, 8PM Central! If you subscribe to the www.charactermentorstudio.com website emails, you won't ever miss out on any news regarding the workshops. Go now! I will be emailing out the assignment shortly. Also, I looked up how my two art instruction books (Creating Characters with Personality and Character Mentor) were doing in the AMAZON.COM ranking for the 100 top books in CARTOONING and below is their ranks! They seem to be staying within the top 10 or 20 depending on the day and that makes me proud. What I love about this image is that they just happen to be sandwiched between two of my ALL TIME favorite books too! If you don't have those, get them! (and mine too, if you don't have them also....)

Bunches of stuff

I've been doing lots of commissions and 'gift drawings' over the last month or two so I thought I'd post a few. Enjoy and let me know what you think! _Tom

Barbarian Woman sketch

I wanted to do a warm up sketch then remembered the awesome PoseBook App from Stephen Silver, so here's one from that awesome artistic tool! Tried to "improve" the pose but lost some of the richness. Dang it.

Come Meet ME and TONY in CALIFORNIA

I will be appearing with my twin brother, Tony Bancroft, in California on Sat., June 9, 2012 from 3:00 to 6:00 P.M. at a "Wine Tasting and Meet and Greet the Local Artist/Writers". This is an ADULT ONLY event held at St. Isidore Historical Plaza, 1096l Reagan St., Los Alamitos, California 90720 (562-596 9918 Office #) This is a fund raiser to save the Plaza as a historical site in my home town of Los Alamitos, California. The price of admission is $30.00 a person/$50.00 per couple. At the door it will be $35.00 a person/$60.00 a couple. You can mail in your check in advance to the Plaza, Atten: Cori Crismon. Make check payable to Comite' del Amor, a non profit organization formed to save the Plaza. Check out their web site: St. Isidore Historical Plaza.org Tony and I will be doing drawings and they will be auctioning them off. In addition, I will have my new "CHARACTER MENTOR" book with me and I will sign them with purchase. Come on down to our hometown!

Pirate Mermaid and Zantanna sketches

I've recently gotten some requests for commission sketches. These are fun to do because the people making the request ask for a certain character and its usually one I wouldn't pick and have not drawn before. That challenge often makes for a fun experience. Apparently there is a subculture out there that loves mixing mermaids with pirates, because that was my first request: Pirate Mermaid. So, here she is protecting her booty (pun intended).

The next one was for a sketch of Zantanna the magician superhero from DC comics. I had never drawn her before so that was fun to research and draw. I had to stick a talking bunny in there. Just had to.

Timing Charts for Traditional Animation

I was digging through one of my boxes from my traditional animation days at Disney Feature animation and found tons of notes I either took or gave out depending on the class. Disney was a great time of learning for us all. They really put a lot into training us- especially during breaks between films. Sometimes I would be attending a great lunchtime talk by a visiting artist and other times, I was the one giving the talk on a certain subject of animation. The notes I post today are from the latter, a talk I gave on the subject of "TIMING for Animation". Remember, these were the traditional (hand drawn) days of animation. These are dinosaur notes about the way we worked back then. I'm not saying that some of this isn't still interesting and maybe even a little useful for the CG animators out there. BUT, what has made me want to post this is because I've gotten asked about charts so many times through the years. Yes, its a smaller, traditional-animation-hungry crowd with a fair amount of knowledge about how animation is done, but nonetheless, there is interest. These notes are on small, yellow, lined paper so I hope they are clear enough to read. I may have even photocopied these and handed them out, I'm not sure. At any rate, they do help describe what the charts were for and what they were describing. Now that I look at these notes, I think page 4 should be the FIRST page. It helps to give a visual of what a chart is if you haven't seen them before. Look at that one first. To be honest, charting is more of a "feeling" you are trying to express in a technical way. Every animator hated handing off their scene for someone else to inbetween because as the animator, you really felt like you knew how each drawing should be drawn, felt, and move. You were then giving the half completed (though 100% thought out) stack of drawings to an assistant to finish up. This was a necessity because of the sheer volume of drawings that needed to be completed for each scene, for each character, for each special effect, in each sequence in each film. You had to go onto the next scene while that one was being finished up. That usually meant you had the rough inbetweener or clean up assistant bring the scene back to you when it was completed so you could "roll through it" (that's like flipping it, but on the pegs)and check all the arcs, timing, drawings, etc. Corrections could be made by you are by made into a "teaching moment" for your assistant if there was time in the production. I held the job of rough inbetweener for Mark Henn and learned most everything I know about animation- and especially how he organized an animation scene- from that experience. How I charted a scene is very close to how Mark charted. Except for the exception of the animation behind the charting. He could place the drawings (spacing-wise) so that most of the crisp timing was already in his keys and breakdowns. This made most of his charts, even "halves"- since he just needed a drawing there to evenly keep the pace of the animation. I never mastered that ability. I relied on throwing drawings onto "1s" (one frame of film shot per drawing, rather than 2s which is exposing a drawing for 2 frames of film) or getting very creative and complex in my charting so that I could get more time out of a pose and a crispness as the character was leaving that pose. Most of us animators relied on those "tricks". To be honest, had I not worked with Mark Henn, I would never have thought of charting as anything but where the "real" animation timing comes from. But, through working with him, I discovered that the timing isn't in the inbetweens, its in the breakdowns. Eric Goldberg is a good example of that. His most important "animation drawings" (not poses- those are the key drawings) are his breakdowns. His inbetweens (that he charts) then become mini-breakdown drawings also. He is making keys and sub-keys (to make up a new term) rather than breakdowns. Those are in his charts. Sorry, this is way too complex to explain without having visuals. To be honest, the notes below may do the same thing: raise more questions than answers. I hope you get something out of them. All you really need to know is that every horizontal line on the chart (or "graph" for math people) represents a drawing. The numbering system that correlates with each drawing helps you know weather or not the drawing is on 1s or 2s. If they are all odd numbers (like in the first example) then they are on 2s. (Mark always had a way of getting his animation that was on 2s on odd numbers- no matter how many times he would switch to 1s inbetween animation sections. I think it was just a pet peeve of his,there was really no reason they had to be odd numbers.) On page 3 you will see the more complex charting examples. Believe it or not, as a rough inbetweener, you could get a scene on your desk that had 2,3, or even 5 charts per drawing on it! Ruben Aquino was a master at the multiple chart keys. What this meant was that if it was (for example) a human character turning from right to left, he would have a seperate chart for the head, one for the right arm, one for the left arm, and another for the hair overlap. ESPECIALLY for the hair! (Ruben is excellent at overlap animation and ALWAYS has the hair moving at a different timing than the body that is leading it.) In doing this, he could make (in one drawing/inbetween) the head move out of the key faster, the left arm evenly, the right arm favor the key, and the hair REALLY favor the key. In the end, I think I charted more like Ruben Aquino than like Mark Henn. Of course, it doesn't really matter how you do it, just the result you get when you shoot it. Or as we would say when we were tired of a scene and just wanted it done- "IF ITS MOVIN' ITS GROOVIN'!"

Little Panda sketches

These are some sketches I did the other day inbetween real work. Often times, while working on one project, I have the urge to draw the "side project" that is on my mind. This is one of those. I'm thinking about a graphic novel with a version of this panda in it. It's tentatively titled "The Panda and the Pea". (You'll see some peas in the sketches too.) I won't give away the story, but it started as a children's book idea but became more serious with lots of symbolism about a persons decisions they make in life- and what drives them to make those decisions. Its a story I want to tell for myself too. I hope I actually do it. By the way, I'm not sold on this design just yet. Still working on it.

Welcome Back (to me)!

After almost SIX YEARS, I'm back to the Tom Bancroft Blog! Its not because I haven't been blogging, its just been that I've been doing it elsewhere. I know have a DeviantArt page that is very active. Check that out also. And there's the Facebook "fan page" I share with my brother Tony called "The Bancroft Brothers". Like that too. But now I ALSO have this blog that will go to Facebook (I hope) and to my new website: CHARACTER MENTOR STUDIO! My hope is that this will be the place for me to communicate with all of you about all things related to what I'm up to, character design instruction, the animation industry, updates about my books, appearances- you name it. Oh, and post whatever new drawing or sketch I have to post. That's the main point, really. Here's some color marker illustrations I've done for people recently.

This one is of the golden age character "The Spirit"

And this one was a development drawing for a guy's animated short film. He gave me the script and a description of his "QUEEN" character and this is what I came up with. I did it in markers on a textured paper I got recently. It was fun to do. Below is the sketch I did first, then he asked for some changes that I changed in the final piece.

That's all for now. Be back soon with more! Send me a note, I always like to hear from everyone!

And NOW for something completely different.....

These are just a couple spot illos of preteen kids "being active". Rob had done some preliminary poses, and I created the final sketches and inks. It was a fun job because it felt like I was designing characters for fun in my sketchbook- but for a client. Weird. Anyway, here's the lack of process that went into it: Colerase blue sketch and Pitt brush pen inks. Done.

More posts coming for our secret project as well as another BIG announcement or two! Oh, and art to go along with it. Stay tooned! (Corney, I know....)

Chris Sanders-ish

I just got the Chris Sanders Sketchbook that he was selling at the San Diego Comic con. It's nice to have sitting around for a week or so as I'm snowed under with work. I pick it up from time to time and get a inspired. The other day, I did what I wish I did more often, I did a little 'warm up' sketch. A lot of these great comic artists seem to have time for 'warm up' sketches before they start their busy day. I do that and I feel guilty somehow. I guess that's the difference between being the business owner and working for a big company with deep pockets. :) Anyway, Chris is very talented and an interesting person. In my opinion, he's a genius when it comes to story. I'm not always sure they are stories that the average person will want, but they are always well crafted and slightly skewed. I don't mean that in a a mean way, it's just his viewpoint is different from most because of what he likes and doesn't like. 'Course, that's all of us isn't it?

I enjoy analyzing peoples styles and drawing techniques. That's what this sheet is. Just fun.

Testing, testing...

I've been trying to upload some new stuff and Blogger keeps shutting off or just plain not uploading the images. It may just be these perticular images are corrupt or something. This blog is just a test using some image I've posted in the past that I know worked. If this goes up, then I know it's just these images and not a Blogger issue. Sorry, I'm just testing here...

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: Shhhhhh!

We at Funnypages Productions have been working on a few projects that we can't talk about for quite awhile now. A few of them are starting to get to a point where we can start "mentioning" them. Probably the biggest one, an anime influenced (note, I did NOT say it was anime) animation series for worldwide distribution, is not quite ready to name, but we have permission to show some images. For this project, Rob and I are co- directing and co-art directing. We have a team of people all over the country contributing to various pieces of the project from Character designs, storyboarding, layouts, and backgrounds. Again, I am not allowed to say what it is just yet, but I'd love to hear what you all think of the characters and backgrounds. I know this isn't much, but maybe I'll post some more soon.

BTW, I'd love to say Rob or I painted those backgrounds, but we didn't. And no, Miah and Heath, they weren't created in Illustrator! Old school or no school!

Mamaw and Bigfoot pages 3

Last one for a bit on this project. I liked how the inks on this page came out. As with before, the first image is the (very) rough pass and then I used that as the basis for the final. I repenciled it in blue on the final board, then inked it. My process is based on drawing a page as few times as possible. I find it keeps me less bored with the progression of the work and it helps me actually get it done. :)

Mamaw and Bigfoot pages 2

Well, this may be all from Mamaw and Bigfoot for a bit. My wife and kids were out of town for a week recently and that is how I was able to get these pages done. They are back now and that means my "free time" goes back to them and sleeping. I will get this story done, but it's gonna slow down a bit that's all. Anyway, this is the roughs and final inks for pages 2 of the story I'm working on for the future PARABLE anthology. I saw Mike Kunkel (Herobear) recently and he said he had been asked to work on this project also. I didn't hear alot of "I'm gonna do it!" in his voice so go to his blog now and bug him to do it, okay? I know I'd like to see what he comes up with! Come on Mike, just two pages or so! Back to Mamaw, someone in the last post asked if I inked these pages or did them in Illustrator. The answer is inked. I used a PITT brush pen for most all of it. I love brush inking, I just wish I was better at it. Guys like Steven Silver and Bruce Timm are just incredible with these great disposable brush pens! They make them look like they were using Windsor Newtons. One day, one day....

Mamaw and Bigfoot page1

Here's a semi-progression of one of the pages from the Mamaw and Bigfoot story I'm picking at. This is the rough and the final inks for page 1. More to come!

BIGFOOT sketches

These are a few designs for the Bigfoot character in the 8 page comic I'm working on for the PARABLE anthology I mentioned in my last post. The story is called "Mamaw and Bigfoot" and it's a short story told in rhyme about a little Southern boy that walks to his Mamaw's house to see her and an unexpected visitor knocks at the door. The title kinda tells you who it is, but there's a nice point to the story about how the Grandma excepts this strange visitor that the boy just sees as scary and different. So, above are some designs for Bigfoot that I did with the last one having a strong influence by Rob. The Mamaw design and boy design are Rob's in kinda a simple "children's book" style. I really liked that, so that's what I was trying for in the Bigfoots I did. I ended up grabbing elements from some of the rough ones (noses, feet, hunch backs) and coming up with a goofy looking version that I thought was close enough to jump onto the final boards with. That's all for now, I'll show a couple pages in development soon.

PARABLE! a comic anthology

I've been asked to contribute to a comic anthology called "Parable". It's going to be a Christian world view comic so it may not be for everyone, but it's one that I'm looking forward to seeing completed. They are trying to go for a "FLIGHT" feel and the linup of creators is quite interesting. Very indy feeling (except me), but in a good way! (You know what I mean by that, you know you do...they can draw!) Check out the bios of some of the folks involved and go to their websites: http://www.parablecomic.com/creator-bios/.

I'm trying to squeeze in time to do a 8 page story for it. I'm excited about it because my pally Rob Corley wrote the story and I'm illustrating it. We've never done that before since we are both artists and when I've done comics in the past, they were stories I wrote. It's a story that has a lot of fun to it and has a good message too. I'm hoping to post some of the development of the pages as I do them, but not enough to give away the story too much. (I want you all to buy this thing when it comes out!) More soon.

Thundercats!

This is another unusual oldy. Through the San Diego comic con, I became friends with Alex Sinclair, the extremely talented colorist at DC that works with Jim Lee on most of his work there. He is a great family man and we got along great. He's also a big Disney and animation fan. Because of that, he really had/has a dream of doing "all-ages" comics that have a more animated style. He said he'd love to work with me on a comics project someday. That day came when he was promoted to editor at Wildstorm/DC. One of the books he was put in charge of was Thundercats. I was never a Thundercats fan actually, but it sounded like fun. He had a short back up story he wanted me to do and asked if I'd do some samples of "my version" of some Thundercats characters. That's what the sheet above is. Some yucky stuff going on here and there, but I thought some of you all might like it. In the end, the story that came my way was a back up about an obscure villain and what her origin is. I really had some problems with the story content and they were nice enough to tone it down some. Even still, it really wasn't my cup of tea. The fun characters above weren't even in the story, dang.