Around a year ago a good friend of mine (Andrew Campbell of Monkey’s Inc.),  recommended a couple short YouTube clips to me by LeSean Thomas (animator/illustrator/director/etc).

I found those vids pretty inspiring and have since subscribed to his channel on YouTube. He’s now in Seoul working on his own graphic novel. Somehow he still manages to find time to create nice short clips to motivate budding artists and fans.

His dedication and effort stand out as massive driving forces toward his success. What takes this beyond the informative value of a tutorial or biography is that you get to hear first hand how LeSean discovered new inspiration and the strategies that strategy that LeSean devised and still uses to measure and progress his level of expertise.

Enjoy:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Just found this – I wasn’t expecting that ending. Check it out – 24Hour Comic by Kajusx:

24 Hour Comic Book by *kajusx on deviantART

Prepared for quite a hours on public transport, I decided to give Autodesk Sketchbook a spin. I’ve had it a while now and purchased it shortly after seeing a friend demo it.

The app looks much like the desktop version with familiar intuitive and minimal user interface. Battery consumption is great was and didn’t crash once during 2 maybe 3 hours of use. However, despite being fairly robust it I would warn anyone using, or intending to use it in the near future to watch out for…

PHONE-CALLS!!

yup! Irony at it’s best – Whilst not using your phone as a phone, that unexpected call comes along and ruins everything!! Grrr!!

I’ve lost a few sketches this way, including one ill always remember as “my-best-ever-iPhone-Autodesk-Sketchbook-App-thumb-sketch!!”*** – thanks mum!!

Take-aways:

Tip 1: Save often…
Tip 2: Tell mum you’re safe before you start a doodle session!
Tip 3: Get SketchBook Mobile – Autodesk Inc.
Tip 4: Save often!

Think I’ll be thumb-doodling a lot more from now on!

*** I sometimes think in SEO long-tail keywords… Dammit!!

I stumbled across this artist around 2 years ago on one of my trips to Forbidden Planet @ Tottenham Court Road Branch . Unknown to me at the time, this artist had an affiliation with another of my favourite artists Tanaka Tatsuyuki via STUDIO4℃, a Japanese animation studio.

Get this book Now!!

This animator mainly works freelance these days making music videos and other shorts. He has worked with the Wachowski Brothers to direct “Beyond”, a segment of The Animatrix and is said to be working on another short movie ‘Sachiko’, his second feature-length film.

I love his style, probably more than Tanaka’s, and thats a feat! I like the way he plays on perspective and the way he constructs limbs that almost look disjointed, yet, seem to make perfect sense! His work carry similar sinister undertones as Tanaka’s and are expressed in some very clever page layouts.

For example one page features a neatly cut hole of around 2cm in diameter. The image surrounding the hole is completed by the image seen on the next page, seen through the hole. When you turn the page to see the reverse of the hole-page you realise that the page you saw 2-pages ago (i.e the page before the hole-page) now completes the image seen surrounding the hole-page’s reverse. (Hopefully that makes sense! )

His wacky illustrations are depicted with clean crisp lines of beige, red, turquoise, and black and his ability to render buildings and techie -devices is amazing! You should take a look at (or even better buy) his book Orange in order to fully appreciate his works.

More recently whilst Hunting down more works by this artist I found these animations on YouTube:

…Enjoy!!

A few of the scenes from this short are used in the book Orange. Nice paralax scrolling effect@1min10secs…. genius!!

Recent works:
http://www.catsuka.com/kojimorimotodotnet_news.php?news=1270491768

.Hack// intro:
http://www.catsuka.com/kojimorimotodotnet_news.php?news=1268002742

More on Studio4°C
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_4°C

Studio4°C Website (in Japanese)
http://studio4c.co.jp/top.html

Koji Morimoto (森本晃司, Morimoto Kōji) info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dji_Morimoto

Tanaka Tatsuyuki has to be in my artist top-10, and has been responsible for some of the most sophisticated animations in the industry. He forged his name in the late 80′s whilst working freelance as a key animator on the arm mutation scene in the cult anime classic Akira.

Tanaka Tatsuyuki

Since then he has joined with a few other artist (including another favorite of mine) at Studio 4°C. He now spends his time creating illustrations, manga, and short animations and other commissioned works.

His book titled Cannabis Works is a joy to read and study. It features works from across his career and continues in the theme of strange sinister acts in derelict surroundings.

The book features a lot of pastel colors, greys and black and pieces tend to have a green tinge finish. I’m not sure if this is his signature however videos I have seen produced by him have this weird finish too.

His backgrounds are as highly just as detailed as the main characters within any scene, some maybe more so. His ability to accurately render the technology and surrounding artefacts like pipes and bolts help to give this artists works a very convincingly macabre atmosphere.

If like me you love his style you may consider getting your hands on a copy of Comickers Vol 2 where he details his creation process. Be warned though, as he sketches don’t give much away. If you are looking for construction lines often left behind by other artists, forget it! His ‘ruff sketches’ are …. like finished works… they’re hot!!

See the arm mutation scene:

Related and juicy:

Akira (アキラ) Sound Clip by Geinoh Yamashirogumi Part 1

In the next clip pay attention to how the guy at 8min54sec hammers the notes off that instrument and mutes the ringout with the other hand whilst half asleep! – WOW!!!

Akira (アキラ) Sound Clip by Geinoh Yamashirogumi Part 2:

Loving Mr Yamashiros Apple Mac @4min 13.