Sketchbook Pro

Okay, here is part two of the MIGHTY B! episode “Ben Appetit”. In these boards Ben tries to get Bessie to sample the disgusting soup du jour he just created. Of course, now that Ben has overcome his food phobia, it’s only fitting he gets a little payback for all the tormenting Bessie has dished out on him. And what is a good story without a bit of irony?

The now (frustratingly) defunct Nickelodeon show THE MIGHTY B! is one of the best shows I’ve ever worked on. As the storyboard supervisor, show co-creator Erik Wiese gave me so much room to be creative with lots of latitude from which to set up the individual episodes based on the scripts. That made all the difference in the fun department and more importantly, took some scene planning burden off of our amazing crew of board artists.

This was boarded digitally using my Wacom Cintiq 21UX connected to a 12 inch Mac Powerbook G4 running Alias Sketchbook Pro circa 2007. Notice that I spent some time articulating and animating pose to pose. This is tedious but a necessary evil when it comes to generating clear animatics for pre-production. What this does is essentially control the quality from the top. Clear posing means that these drawings can be indicated and specified on the exposure sheets, thus making the animation process overseas a bit more controlled. Without these extra inbetweens, a lot is left to chance. A drawing that is clearly on a storyboard can be called out in re-takes and the accountability lies with the overseas studio. As for the drawings themselves, these were a joy to do mainly due to the fun aspect of these characters and the great voice acting performances that are generated. Credit for that on this show goes to co-creator Cynthia True.

Here’s a new group of sketches from Monday’s GESTURE DRAWING CLASS. As usual I had my Modbook in tow loaded with the new Autodesk Sketchbook Pro 2009. (Click HERE for my complete review on Modbook Junction) These where all done predominantly on 4B pencil.

They work cheap. Won’t you hire them?

I had the privilege of attending a costumed gesture class at work today, taught by the talented artist and story supervisor Dave Pimentel. This gave me a chance to test my Modbook in a “drawing class” environment and I am happy to report that it was a huge success.

For this session I chose to use Autodesk’s Sketchbook Pro mainly for it’s simplicity and functionality. For the quick 1 – 3 minute poses I used a graphite pencil at about HB to 2B hardness and a chisel-tipped pen set to the minimum point size of 2.0 I tilted the Modbook upright (or Portrait mode) occasionally to gain more drawing space for standing poses.

I did grab a wad of sketch paper and a drawing clipboard in case this experiment went south but sketching digitally was a cinch.

Putting technology aside, it’s been quite a while since I’ve done any king of drawing class so getting some much needed pencil (or stylus) time was a welcome experience. Capturing these quick gestures is a great exercise in laying down attitude and action without heavy pencil mileage. This is especially helpful during the rough stage of boarding or during the hectic hustle of re-staging sequences for reels.

I definitely plan to attend many more drawing classes as schedule permits, and post the resulting sketches here.

For additional technical details and images, click HERE for my companion post on Modbook Junction.