27.2.07

BLOOPS! Part V - Cleanup

For the character cleanup I really wanted to retain the loose, sketchy feel of my rough and Chris' overall design style, so I dug out my Rocky & Bullwinkle books and DVDs for reference. If you've seen Chris' storyboard for the commercial, you'll know that this look is important to the whole retro style of the commercial. However, it's tricky to translate the roughs to clean without losing some of that wonderful life! Back in the day - whether intentionally or not -the artists managed to keep the same sort of wacky, rough style in the cleanup by keeping it fairly loose as well (see image right). That is, not worrying about lines being a little wobbly, intersecting corners, and perfect circles not being... well, perfect! The drawings were still tight and everything was there, but the artists weren't so concerned with a picture perfect cleanup. When I cleaned Cap'n Bloop here I kept that in mind, did it freehand and kept it quick and loose. I could have probably even been a little more sloppy! One example of what I'm talking about here is if you look at the little finger on his right hand, it overlaps his middle finger. That's not right, is it? Shouldn't his middle finger be IN FRONT OF his little one?? awww who cares!? Stuff like that is interesting, organic, and really lends itself to this wacky style of cartooning. For this kind of cleanup you must as Yoda says 'unlearn what you have learned'. There's a few other cleanup no-no's in there as well. Can you spot 'em?

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