THE FOUR MAIN ELEMENTS OF COMPOSITION
1.) PICTURE AREA
2d animation 9290866647 mdkhajapasha123@yahoo.com, mdkhajapasha22@gmail.com
Sunday, May 10, 2009
The Original Art of Basil Wolverton
from the Collection of Glenn Bray
September 1 - November 11, 2007
Opening Reception: September 1, 7-10 p.m.
Grand Central Art Center
125 N. Broadway,
Santa Ana, CA 92701
General Phone: 714.567.7233
Coincidentally, last week, archive supporter Marc Schirmeister stopped by with a stack of rare fanzines from the late 1960s and early 70s. Included among them were two great issues of Graphic Story Magazine devoted to Wolverton. Here is an article Wolverton wrote in 1948 for the Daily Oregonian...
ACOUSTICS IN THE COMICS
By Basil Wolverton
The so called comic strip on my drawing board showed a heavy horse stepping on a bozo's bean. The horse was tramping on the guy's head in a delicate way, of course, so the situation would be more entertaining than grusome- depending on the reader's sense of humor. But, like an old silent movie, the cartoon needed something, and that something was sound. There had to be a heavily lettered word oozing out from the exact point of contact between the horse's hoofs and the man's head. Thus the reader, pronouncing that sound word to himself, would actually hear within his mind the excitingly comical noise that would eminate from such action.
Summoning both brain cells hurriedly together, I tried desperately to imagine just what sort of sound would ensue if a nag were to step on someone's skull. The word CRUNCH popped into my mind. Then CRONCH. Then CRANCH. I settled for CRANCH because somehow it seemed more refined. But before I could letter the word on the cartoon, I suddenly recalled my latest unhappy interview with the person who publishes my comic strips.
"I want realism!" he had bellowed. "No more of this wild imaginitive stuff that's causing some people to want to ban our comic books! From now on, get that realism in there, and your strips will be horribly funny! Then the readers will go into hysterics and laugh like crazy, and our books will be acclaimed the most laugh provoking on the stands!" That meant that an imaginative word like CRANCH was taboo. It was up to me to get the real sound word. I looked furtively about as a preposterous plan permeated my pate.
It was easy to rent a horse. It wasn't as easy to argue my brother in law into placing his pan on the pavement, and letting me ride the nag over his noggin. "Horses are so heavy!" he foolishly kept countering. "Besides, I have a cold sore." As he waddled away, I realized my plan was hopeless- until he stumbled over something in the street. Before he could pull his chin out of the asphalt, I had steered the rented mare over him, and her hind hoof scored a bull's eye on his bare bean.
The sound? It was far from CRANCH. The real thing turned out to be SLORNK. It was a sort of a slippery liquid sound. That was probably because my brother in law has oily skin and a thin skull. With the noxious noise fresh in mind, I streaked into my studio and feverishly lettered the word SLORNK boldly across the cartoon.
Weeks later the fan mail began pouring in. They all said the same thing. In fact, both of them were worded the same. The first one read "I want to congratulate you on that completely true to life cartoon you drew of the horse stepping on a man's head. The word SLORNK describing the sound was absolutely accurate. I know, because I am always getting my head stepped on by some careless nag." The second letter was the same as the first, except for the signature. I figured when I wrote them that there should be some difference. Otherwise the publisher might get wise when I showed them to him.
He was dumbfounded when he saw them. After recovering, he slapped me on my sunburn and rammed one of his dollar cigars into my mush. Unfortunately, he stuck the wrong end into my mouth. Besides, he was smoking it. "Two fan letters in eleven years" he murmured incredulously. "My boy, you have arrived! It's just like I predicted," my publisher beamed, "your horribly realistic sound words are paying off!"
I leaped on his desk. "Then I'm ripe for a raise?" I queried. peering so anxiously and closely into his red-rimmed readers that I could detect his wife's fingernail scratches on his contact lenses. Anticipation was causing me to quiver like a rat terrier with radio-active fleas on a cold day. The suspense was terrible. Finally he opened his trap. He was grinning. This was the day for which I had waited eleven long years. "It does not!" he roared, brushing me off his desk. "I was merely feeling pleased that at last you may be worth almost as much as I've been paying you!"
While I gathered my teeth up off the floor, he pointed at me demandingly. "If you want a raise, every one of your sound effect words will have to be absolutely authentic! In other words, don't draw a single sound word into your strips until you've actually staged the cartoon situation with real people and things!"
(Incidentally, you readers should stop worrying about my brother in law. Ever since the day the horse stepped on his head, he has had nothing but good luck. Why shouldn't he, what with a horseshoe embedded in the back of his bean? Furthermore, he's the only living person who can slide his head inside those record-in-the-slot phonographs without crushing his ears.)
September 1 - November 11, 2007
Opening Reception: September 1, 7-10 p.m.
Grand Central Art Center
125 N. Broadway,
Santa Ana, CA 92701
General Phone: 714.567.7233
Coincidentally, last week, archive supporter Marc Schirmeister stopped by with a stack of rare fanzines from the late 1960s and early 70s. Included among them were two great issues of Graphic Story Magazine devoted to Wolverton. Here is an article Wolverton wrote in 1948 for the Daily Oregonian...
ACOUSTICS IN THE COMICS
By Basil Wolverton
The so called comic strip on my drawing board showed a heavy horse stepping on a bozo's bean. The horse was tramping on the guy's head in a delicate way, of course, so the situation would be more entertaining than grusome- depending on the reader's sense of humor. But, like an old silent movie, the cartoon needed something, and that something was sound. There had to be a heavily lettered word oozing out from the exact point of contact between the horse's hoofs and the man's head. Thus the reader, pronouncing that sound word to himself, would actually hear within his mind the excitingly comical noise that would eminate from such action.
Summoning both brain cells hurriedly together, I tried desperately to imagine just what sort of sound would ensue if a nag were to step on someone's skull. The word CRUNCH popped into my mind. Then CRONCH. Then CRANCH. I settled for CRANCH because somehow it seemed more refined. But before I could letter the word on the cartoon, I suddenly recalled my latest unhappy interview with the person who publishes my comic strips.
"I want realism!" he had bellowed. "No more of this wild imaginitive stuff that's causing some people to want to ban our comic books! From now on, get that realism in there, and your strips will be horribly funny! Then the readers will go into hysterics and laugh like crazy, and our books will be acclaimed the most laugh provoking on the stands!" That meant that an imaginative word like CRANCH was taboo. It was up to me to get the real sound word. I looked furtively about as a preposterous plan permeated my pate.
It was easy to rent a horse. It wasn't as easy to argue my brother in law into placing his pan on the pavement, and letting me ride the nag over his noggin. "Horses are so heavy!" he foolishly kept countering. "Besides, I have a cold sore." As he waddled away, I realized my plan was hopeless- until he stumbled over something in the street. Before he could pull his chin out of the asphalt, I had steered the rented mare over him, and her hind hoof scored a bull's eye on his bare bean.The sound? It was far from CRANCH. The real thing turned out to be SLORNK. It was a sort of a slippery liquid sound. That was probably because my brother in law has oily skin and a thin skull. With the noxious noise fresh in mind, I streaked into my studio and feverishly lettered the word SLORNK boldly across the cartoon.
Weeks later the fan mail began pouring in. They all said the same thing. In fact, both of them were worded the same. The first one read "I want to congratulate you on that completely true to life cartoon you drew of the horse stepping on a man's head. The word SLORNK describing the sound was absolutely accurate. I know, because I am always getting my head stepped on by some careless nag." The second letter was the same as the first, except for the signature. I figured when I wrote them that there should be some difference. Otherwise the publisher might get wise when I showed them to him.
He was dumbfounded when he saw them. After recovering, he slapped me on my sunburn and rammed one of his dollar cigars into my mush. Unfortunately, he stuck the wrong end into my mouth. Besides, he was smoking it. "Two fan letters in eleven years" he murmured incredulously. "My boy, you have arrived! It's just like I predicted," my publisher beamed, "your horribly realistic sound words are paying off!"
I leaped on his desk. "Then I'm ripe for a raise?" I queried. peering so anxiously and closely into his red-rimmed readers that I could detect his wife's fingernail scratches on his contact lenses. Anticipation was causing me to quiver like a rat terrier with radio-active fleas on a cold day. The suspense was terrible. Finally he opened his trap. He was grinning. This was the day for which I had waited eleven long years. "It does not!" he roared, brushing me off his desk. "I was merely feeling pleased that at last you may be worth almost as much as I've been paying you!"
While I gathered my teeth up off the floor, he pointed at me demandingly. "If you want a raise, every one of your sound effect words will have to be absolutely authentic! In other words, don't draw a single sound word into your strips until you've actually staged the cartoon situation with real people and things!"
(Incidentally, you readers should stop worrying about my brother in law. Ever since the day the horse stepped on his head, he has had nothing but good luck. Why shouldn't he, what with a horseshoe embedded in the back of his bean? Furthermore, he's the only living person who can slide his head inside those record-in-the-slot phonographs without crushing his ears.)
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Creating Grass Land Using Pflow in 3dsmax
First of all, let's start by creating a cone of sides: 6 radius1: .6 radius2: 0 and height: 40. A bend modifier should be applied to the cones. You can even go lesser on the sides if it gives the result you want. you can also create another cone bend in a different angle. Now we have a Cone01, Cone02 and a Plane01. You may name these to Grass1, Grass2,Terrain respectively since I strongly would advise you all to use naming conventions whenever possible, which can save you a lot of time. Using a cone gives you a three-dimensionality to the grass, instead of using a plane. Also create a plane with length: 200 Width: 300, Segments 12*12 and apply a noise modifier with the settings as shown below. Also apply a turbosmooth modifier to it.
2. Create a particle flow source. In the Main menubar - Create>Particle>particle flow source (Particle flow is an event driven particle system and it gives us more control over the particles than the ordinary particle systems in max which are non-event driven) Press 6 or select the pflow icon and go to the modify panel and click on the particle view button. You will get a window as shown below:
3. These are the default operators that you get in particle flow. We shall replace some of those with operators from the operators depot to get our desired result. I have marked in the image below where all operators have to be replaced with new ones. For example, the Position Icon operator will be replaced with the Position Object operator by left clicking and dragging the Position Object operator from the operators depot onto the Position Icon operator in event 01. You will see that a red line appears on top of the Position Icon operator, release your left mouse button then. Similarly, change the Shape Operator with Shape Instance operator.
4. First click on the Birth operator and change the emit stop to 0. Now all 200 particles will be emitted at once rather than one by one. Also give a particle amount of 1000 ( Depends on how much you need and how much area you need to cover).
5. Click on the Position Object operator, on the right side you can see its properties in the Emitter objects rollout. Click add and select the terrain. You will see that the name of the plane (Terrain) appears in the dialogue box there. See to it that the Lock On Emitter option is also ticked or else the particle will fly off when you play with the animation slider.
6. Change the Shape operator to Shape Instance operator, after that Click on the Shape Instance operator in the event and in the properties on the right side, click on the none button under particle geometry and select grass1. You can see that lots of ticks get scattered all over the plane. Click on the Display operator and in the type select Geometry which will reveal the grass mesh. You can also change the color to green or apply a material by adding a material dynamic operator
You can see that all of the grass blades are bent in different directions and some even go under the terrain. To rectify this problem, click on the Rotation operator and in its properties change the orientation matrix to world space. This aligns the particle according to the world axis and makes it stay perpendicular to the terrain.
7. This seems a bit unrealistic cause all grass are standing upright and steady like an army of soldiers smile so to break the monotony you can first click on event 01 and right click, select copy and paste it anywhere in the open space nearby - this will create another event 02. Delete the birth operator of event 02.
8. Add a Split Amount operator to the event 01 below the birth operator. Create a connection from the Split Amount to the event02. In Event02 select the shape instance and select grass2. Now you can see how much the scene has changed. Cool isn't it? You can even copy the Event 02 and create another Event 03 and add split amount to Event 02 and connect the Split Amount to Event03 and select another grass3 as object instance.
9. In the shape rollout of both Events, you can play with the size and variation to create your own realistic grass scatter.
10 . There are also some specialties about position object operator, select the position object operator and change the location from surface to vertices or edges... try it out and see the difference. There is another option below location called density by material, tick on it. It will be grayscale by default. Apply a checkered texture to the terrain and see what happens (you will have to move the animation slider a bit to see the result).
11. Drag a material dynamic operator into Event 01 open the material editor by pressing M and create a material for the grass select the material dynamic operator, which will reveal the operator properties on the right side. From the material editor, click on the material slot you created and drag it on top of the none button in the material dynamic property. A command will pop up which says instance or copy select instance and click OK cause whatever change you make in the material editor will be in sync with that of the material dynamic in the particle view. For the other events do the same. Variate the color of the grass material a bit, which will give you a more realistic look.
2. Create a particle flow source. In the Main menubar - Create>Particle>particle flow source (Particle flow is an event driven particle system and it gives us more control over the particles than the ordinary particle systems in max which are non-event driven) Press 6 or select the pflow icon and go to the modify panel and click on the particle view button. You will get a window as shown below:
3. These are the default operators that you get in particle flow. We shall replace some of those with operators from the operators depot to get our desired result. I have marked in the image below where all operators have to be replaced with new ones. For example, the Position Icon operator will be replaced with the Position Object operator by left clicking and dragging the Position Object operator from the operators depot onto the Position Icon operator in event 01. You will see that a red line appears on top of the Position Icon operator, release your left mouse button then. Similarly, change the Shape Operator with Shape Instance operator.
4. First click on the Birth operator and change the emit stop to 0. Now all 200 particles will be emitted at once rather than one by one. Also give a particle amount of 1000 ( Depends on how much you need and how much area you need to cover).
5. Click on the Position Object operator, on the right side you can see its properties in the Emitter objects rollout. Click add and select the terrain. You will see that the name of the plane (Terrain) appears in the dialogue box there. See to it that the Lock On Emitter option is also ticked or else the particle will fly off when you play with the animation slider.
6. Change the Shape operator to Shape Instance operator, after that Click on the Shape Instance operator in the event and in the properties on the right side, click on the none button under particle geometry and select grass1. You can see that lots of ticks get scattered all over the plane. Click on the Display operator and in the type select Geometry which will reveal the grass mesh. You can also change the color to green or apply a material by adding a material dynamic operator
You can see that all of the grass blades are bent in different directions and some even go under the terrain. To rectify this problem, click on the Rotation operator and in its properties change the orientation matrix to world space. This aligns the particle according to the world axis and makes it stay perpendicular to the terrain.
7. This seems a bit unrealistic cause all grass are standing upright and steady like an army of soldiers smile so to break the monotony you can first click on event 01 and right click, select copy and paste it anywhere in the open space nearby - this will create another event 02. Delete the birth operator of event 02.
8. Add a Split Amount operator to the event 01 below the birth operator. Create a connection from the Split Amount to the event02. In Event02 select the shape instance and select grass2. Now you can see how much the scene has changed. Cool isn't it? You can even copy the Event 02 and create another Event 03 and add split amount to Event 02 and connect the Split Amount to Event03 and select another grass3 as object instance.
9. In the shape rollout of both Events, you can play with the size and variation to create your own realistic grass scatter.
10 . There are also some specialties about position object operator, select the position object operator and change the location from surface to vertices or edges... try it out and see the difference. There is another option below location called density by material, tick on it. It will be grayscale by default. Apply a checkered texture to the terrain and see what happens (you will have to move the animation slider a bit to see the result).
11. Drag a material dynamic operator into Event 01 open the material editor by pressing M and create a material for the grass select the material dynamic operator, which will reveal the operator properties on the right side. From the material editor, click on the material slot you created and drag it on top of the none button in the material dynamic property. A command will pop up which says instance or copy select instance and click OK cause whatever change you make in the material editor will be in sync with that of the material dynamic in the particle view. For the other events do the same. Variate the color of the grass material a bit, which will give you a more realistic look.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
How to Paint Darks and Shadows in Watercolor
Painting darks and shadows in watercolor is really easy. It just takes practice.
I’ll start today with drawing a figure of a woman from my imagination (Don’t worry about this part because I’ll teach the basics of drawing people in another lesson).
You will need watercolor paint, paint brushes, paper plate (or watercolor palette), big mouth containers of water, paper towels or rags, #2 pencil, a soft pencil (#4, 5, or 6), eraser, Hair blower (optional), and the color wheel you made from my previous lesson.
Start by making a drawing of a stick figure on scratch paper. Add the contours of underlying muscle covered with skin, and crisscross marks on the head for placement of facial features. Draw indications of clothing. Then erase the stick lines of your figure.
Refine the lines of the clothing. When you are finished turn your paper over and scribble, covering the area under your drawing with a soft lead pencil (#4B, 5B, or 6B). Then take a wadded up tissue and smear it all over by rubbing it. Now you have a carbon transfer sheet.
I like to do all my preliminary drawings on a separate sheet of paper before transferring it to watercolor paper because I do a lot of adjusting, erasing, changing, etc. and all that business would ruin the surface of the watercolor paper.
Turn your carbon/drawing right side up and place it on top of a piece of watercolor paper or illustration board. Tape it down at the top. Now trace the lines of your drawing onto the watercolor paper with a ballpoint pen or hard pencil (#HB). Remove your drawing and you are ready to start painting! If some of your pencil lines are too dark take a kneaded eraser to lighten some of them up with a gentle blotting motion. Now, choose only one color to paint with. I have chosen yellow-orange (see my previous post on how to mix this color from the basic primary colors yellow and red). But you may choose any color you like!
Squirt a little paint on your plate and mix with a little water to make your desired color – not too thick or too thin. Wash out your brush. Set your paint mixture aside for a moment.
Now paint just the hat and dress with clear water on your drawing. Add more water if any part dries up. Gently squeeze out the water from your brush with a paper towel without scrunching or pulling the bristles and “suck” up any excess water with the dry bristles. I am doing this near the bottom of the dress here.
Now load your brush with some of your pre-mixed paint and begin applying it to the wet areas of your drawing. Just watch what it does…this is really fun!!
Let it dry completely (You may use a hair blower on low to speed things up a bit).
Now look at your color wheel and find your color. Now find the color straight across from it. Hurray! That is called its complimentary color (If you chose green its compliment would be red. If you chose purple its compliment would be yellow).
Now, on my paper plate, I’m going to mix just a little bit of bluish-purple to my mixture of yellow-orange (because that is it’s compliment) to make it darker. And I’m painting a little sample on a scrap piece of watercolor paper to see what it looks like.
Do you see where I’ve added a little sun up in the right-hand corner of my picture? I’m imagining the shadows from that light as I paint a little of my darker mixture on the under- side on her hat. Now, quickly clean your brush in clear water, dab it off a little on a paper towel and run the brush along the sharp edge you painted to soften it. Paint dark paint in other places where you imagine the sun casts a shadow. Rinse your brush, dab, and soften the paint edges with your damp brush. Turn your paper if you need too!
Right about now I’ll bet you notice that your painting is a bit rough and messy! There are streaks of paint that are too dark and streaks that are too light. That’s actually a very nice style! But if you want it smooth you can blot away the dark streaks.
Wet your brush with clean water, shake off the excess or touch the brush on a paper towel to remove the excess water, and “clear water” paint onto a dark area you want to make lighter. Take your paper towel and blot that spot. Notice that it’s removed some of the paint! Continue until you have it as smooth as you like. Add more paint if it becomes too light – back and forth.
Now pencil in and shade the woman’s features (or paint it if you’d like)!
Just keep practicing and you will get better. I’ll give you other lessons to practice, some easier, some more challenging. It’s nice to look at a photo also, so you can actually see how the sun shines down on the subject you are painting.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
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