NATIONAL CARTOONISTS DAY

Cartoonists Day, Free Comic Book Day Share Same Date: May 5, 2007

Lovers of comic books, comic strips and all forms of cartooning will have two reasons to celebrate these art forms this year when Free Comic Book Day and Cartoonists Day fall on the same date: Saturday, May 5, 2007!

So we'd better get some respect for a change goddamnit!

http://cartoonistday.com/

http://www.freecomicbookday.com/

Robotboy Season II premire

Robotboy Season II premires Saturday April 5th @ 11:30AM on Cartoon Network. This is a series that I co-directed with Heath Kenny.
Watch and enjoy!

LOG

This is one of the first things I wrote and directed.  I also wrote, the song which has some similarities to a famous toy jingle.  It looks really ragged to me now but it still makes me 

smile.   I did lots of fake commercials for R&St but I think this one is the most well known.  

                                            

Design tips

Got a question from Michael.

Michael said...

Hey Bob, I was wondering, what shapes do you generally use in your basic construction of your characters? For drawing heads, faces, bodies ect. I tend to keep drawing a variation of the same guy over and over. Are there any exercises or tips to break this habit?

Michael,
Shapes on character designs are all about caricature really. The more you know about anatomy and the human body the more you can apply that to a design. Then it's about exaggeration, simplification, and design, balance and style.

Practice your caricatures! Set up a stand at the beach and draw $5 caricatures all summer. I used to set up at bars and draw drunks all night for free food and drinks. Made lotsa cash that way too (and met a few girls too). I Worked at amusement parks, traveled all over the US and Canada doing caricatures at rodeos, fairs, birthday parties, you name it. Draw your friends. It's fun and you can piss them off and have a laff at their expense! Where ever I work I always draw all of my co-workers. Then it becomes a competition. Oneupsmanship! After drawing a guy a half dozen or more times you start to work up a formula. There's nothing better than being able to draw somebody from memory. This is especially valuable if you have a cruel sense of humor. Then without realizing it VIOLA! You can draw lots of different character types right out of your pointed little head!
Cheers.

More dad blasted pirates!

Shivver me timbers!

Fat Royalty

Here are a few more characters I did .

Rasputin the cat - Design theories

People seem to like it when I blab on about design theories so here are some more.
These are some cat designs I did for another movie concept of mine. I think these are a good example of doing your homework for a design. I had to look at lots of photos of cats and actually sketch my own cats from life. I wanted to have an evil looking cat. I've always like the angles that occur when a cat strikes a pose. I found a breed of giant Russian house cats that was very long and lean with very pronounced angular shapes. Then I worked out the shapes in rough sketches based on the anatomy then exaggerated and caricatured the subject adding the expression and attitude the character portrays.
And most important, especially in this case, the silhouette!