Thank You Card No. 2 Of 2015

Quick Rig Test

Nothin' fancy. Just playin' with a rig to make sure it works.

Thank You Card

We got so many nice gifts from friends and family far and wide, I felt compelled to send them an original thank you card. Still waiting for baby Dom to get here, but I've gotta feeling we'll be meeting him this weekend.

 

How To Draw Super Heroes

As part of my drawing practice, I dug out this book I've had since childhood. As much as I wanted to, I could not draw super heroes well in 1983, and this book did nothing to help.

Thirty-two years later, I'm gonna finally show that I can draw Superman, Batman, Robin and Wonder Woman in their full '80s glory.

The book's inside cover.

As you can see, my child self's attempts to draw Superman were rather feeble.

Behold: 1983 Superman drawn in 2015 by my adult self. My Superman looks a bit less sure of himself than his portrayal in the book. I gave him different proportions as well.

Batman is next.

Smoked Salmon Dot Com

Smoked Salmon now has an official website:

http://www.smokedsalmoncomic.com/

It's still a work-in-progress, but it's a start.

Smoked Salmon No. 3

Smoked Salmon No. 2

Smoked Salmon Sketchbook Scribbles

Ladykiller: I Heart Comic Art 2015

Well, on a whim I submitted my one finished Smoked Salmon comic to Ladykiller's I Heart Comic Art benefit, and I'm now a finalist.

I don't know what this means other than I should probably do more cartoons ... like yesterday!

You can vote for me here:

www.facebook.com/ladykillerllc

Smoked Salmon

So I've been wanting to submit a regular comic strip to The Stranger (my favorite newspaper) for a long time, and I'm finally close to actually doing it. I'm calling it "Smoked Salmon."

The strip is an evolution from what I was doing way back in college, and one of the characters has even been resurrected. I have several more characters I'd like to feature, but here's where I'm starting:

I still have a bit of clean up to do on it, and now that I'm looking at the digital version, the next strip I do will hopefully look a lot cleaner.

Anyway, cartoons. I wanna do more.

Ben's Online Portfolios

Part of being unemployed means you have to time assess what you've done and see where the deficiencies lie in your portfolio.

In creating my new website, I first dumped everything I could think of on there, only to be given a soul-crushing critique by the great Horia Dociu (Art Director at Sucker Punch Productions), after which I pared it down to the bare essentials that sell me as a senior animator:

http://bhopanimation.carbonmade.com/

I've still got holes to fill there. The Life Drawing & Sketchbook section is extremely lacking, and I hope to remedy that by attending some life drawing sessions this weekend and next week.

More importantly, there are still some things I want to do to sharpen up my reel. I'm working on an extended action sequence featuring a soldier and a big robot, since it seems everyone wants to see a guy with a gun doing acrobatics.

And after doing 11 Second Club's February competition, I really would like to do another acting animation from an audio clip from the great '80s comedy, "A Fish Called Wanda."

Once I do those two things, I'm going to try to get some feedback from fellow animators and see if they can help me identify any other ways I can improve my reel. I do feel that if I do a good job on them, however, my reel will be in a good place.

For shits and giggles, I've also put my various graphic design-related projects onto a separate site:

http://www.benhopper.portfoliobox.me/

I sometimes have as much fun doing graphic design as I do animating, I just don't get as much practice as I would like. Hopefully that changes with all this free time I have now.

The latest cut of my reel includes my 11 Second Club submission, as well as some tightening up of the editing.

11 Second Club: Feb. 15 Final Submission

Pretty happy with how it turned out. Could have probably given it a bit more love in parts, but was just happy to get it in on time considering what a late start I got on it and my emotional state. :)

Feb. 2015 11 Second Club Work In Progress

Posting the blocked-out state of my submission before I start in on the polish phase ...

Signal Studios Animation Reel

Getting close to a final cut of my reel. The music is placeholder until my brother gets me another tune, and I still haven't settled on the clips included in this cut, but here you go anyway ...