A Look Back On The Pop The Top Cartoon: Part 1

     Lately, I've been in somewhat of a rut; I've been having artist block. After I finished my senior thesis piece, it was about another month before I even got back to doodling. This has always been a bad habit of mine. Any time I got a big project done, I'd pretty much stop dead in my tracks for a month or two before I finally moved on to my next project. At least in the past, I had several ideas in mind, so when I actually got started on a new project, I had a good idea what I was going to do. But lately, I haven't been able to get behind any new ideas, so I figured if I gave my thoughts and analysis of my latest cartoon, I could get closure and move on. This might take two or three posts.

A Brief Back Story

      This cartoon came about as a response to The Pancakes Cartoon, which I made back in 2013 or 2014. I've already gone into several posts last December about everything I thought about it, so I won't do that here. Basically I was pretty disappointed with the way it turned out, so I focused my senior year at the Kentucky School of Art (KSA) on improving my fine art skills. This is what lead to the animation tests I did all through last fall. After I had done some tests, I would use my new skills to work on a short cartoon as my final project at school.

     I started the cartoon in February and finished the cartoon in April. KSA works on trimesters (since it's a part of Spalding), so I split my work load over the two spring sessions. I spent the first six weeks drawing the whole cartoon, and I spent the last 4 weeks inking, doing backgrounds and editing the video together.

My Self Critique

     The whole idea behind the cartoon was to see if I could not only learn some new skills, but if I could tell a story visually. In other words, could I make an animated short that actually took advantage of being animated? That's why I chose the simple story of a kid trying to open an old soda bottle. It wasn't too deep or personal, but it wasn't really supposed to be. I just needed a simple idea that I could build on while I was applying those new skills. And, for the most part, I'd say it worked. But there was still room for improvement.

The Drawings

     The biggest thing that was pointed out to me during my critiques during all parts of production were the drawings. They were too weak. And I'd have to agree with my superiors on that. The drawings in this cartoon were significantly better than my older cartoons if only because they used construction and form. So while it was off to a great start, the drawings were still pretty sloppy.

The hands really look great in this drawing, but the body is too stiff and generic.

     The larger drawings at least feel a little more solid. With more room to work with, there's more room to balance the positive and negative shapes. In the larger drawings, the face looks more like it's on the front of the head as it should be. The construction is also clearer in the larger drawings, but some parts still don't make sense. I could never figure out how his head connects though the neck to the body. The smaller drawings suffer from feeling more cramped. In a lot of these smaller drawings, the face takes up too much of the head, which makes it harder to read.

The hands don't even look like they're on the same plane as the helmet.

     In any case, the drawings were my weakest element, which is pretty damning, considering that's the most essential part of animation. Most of the drawings started out with a structure, but some of the drawings look sloppy, like the one above. Even if the drawing's only on the screen for a twelfth or twenty-fourth of a second, it's still no excuse. Good animation can't save bad drawings.

The Backgrounds

     Originally, I wanted the backgrounds to be painted, but this fell through. Between trying to get another student to help (who couldn't) and trying to get quick drying gouache from a friend (who was out of town)  I had to settle for using lead pencils and colored pencils. It was amateurish as all hell, but I couldn't wait around any longer.

The sandbags in the foreground came from a suggestion from a mentor to emphasize space.

     My intent was to keep the backgrounds simple, like the rest of the cartoon. They also had to be open, so that the character would be the focus. I also wanted the colors to be very dull, so the the brighter colors on the character would make him pop out of the space.

I marked off for every frame where it would end when Tommy's skipping in the first scene.

     I also kept it simple, because I don't really think about backgrounds too much. In fact, the backgrounds were the last thing on my mind, which shows. I at least got some space into some of them, but it's still a stretch.

     But that's enough for this post. Next time I'll talk about the animation and the story. I also want to go over the general reaction the cartoon got and what I've been doing since then. Maybe then, I'll be able to move on to some new ideas.