Animation Hellhole Memories Part 5

Full two page spread below. Some story ideas and more memories from the Animation Department over at Allan Hancock College.

The one page was loosely based on when friends would skate over at the Oak Knoll Bowl / Orcutt Bowling Alley shopping center. I don't remember if they ever tried to do tricks off the elevated foundation and walkway. Either way it probably wouldn't be possible to do what I drew as he'd land straight into the railing after clearing the steps. But maybe that was the point.

The other page on the right was a memory I had of a bunch of us jammed into the Animation Hellhole, working on lame Monty Python-style cutout animation on one of the test machines. This was probably late November or sometime in December, before winter break and all of us going our separate ways til the next semester, so it has that bit of a holiday nostalgia filter for me. All of us laughing like idiots making dumb cutout characters doing even dumber things, improvising most of the action and voicing over the dialog whenever we'd play it back on the crappy little tv they had in there. Sometimes good memories are hard to come by depending on what transpires after the fact, but this was one I was able to hang on to for whatever reason. 

Another redux of stuff I posted earlier. Wasn't happy with some of the poses I did in the previous version - I'm not totally happy with what I have here either - but well, what can you do other than try to not get too lost in nostalgia while drawing and to keep going. 

That was always something that tripped me up, up until maybe a few years ago, the excitement of having an idea or wanting to finish a drawing (or just being under some arbitrary deadline), but not having the patience or discipline or time to really look at what I was doing and think "Maybe I should do a couple more takes on this drawing or pose and really figure out what the hell I'm doing or trying to do." Anybody from the Animation Hellhole days can tell you that I locked myself into the testing room more than a few times to try to finish a scene. I instinctively knew like most everybody else would in that kind of situation, I needed to block things out in order to get things done. But that realization would get lost later on down the road once I started going to a "real" art school and doing time at studios. Alot of intuitive things would get muddied during and after the Hellhole days.

 [Older sketch from a few years ago.]

Haste makes waste as they say. I'd say being overwhelmed in whatever way you can imagine while simultaneously trying to "make it" is another surefire method to totally miss the mark while being blind to your own mistakes.

Childhood Nostalgia - The Local Bowling Alley

(Did some revisioning on the original, mainly the one kid in the foreground. Shapes should flow or at least have some kind of balanced rhythm, no matter what the pose or clothing options.) 

Hazy memories of the bowling alley our sleepy little town had, off E Clark Ave if I remember right. Was torn down and replaced with an Albertson's and extended strip mall years ago, and as far as I know no pictures of it exist online. Remember it having a really nice arcade in an area leading down off the main entrance, and that me and several others spent an entire day in playing TMNT when our grade school class did an end-of-year trip there for whatever reason.

I also remember several of us stealing bowling balls out the side entrance during the high school years. Alley bowling mostly, though one of them ended its existence by being blown up with an M80 inside of a garage.

And as one of my childhood friends pointed out, endless prank phonecalls to the main desk. Half the time some of us would be hanging out there only to hear over the intercom "Ray Paguy. Mr. Ray Paguy to the front desk please."

Post Halloween Environment Design

This got a higher-than-average number of likes over on Instagram for some reason. Played around with having a larger drawing as if it were shot through a long lens to see if I could cut in closer to the characters and get decent or interesting compositions without having to rely on a) action poses and b) wide angle perspective tricks. Individual close-ups below:

(Cheated this one with a blur filter to give it some atmosphere.)