Beatle 'Toons 2: The Putting Off-ing

While I was looking through my blog archive resizing the pictures plus some cleaning out of my old binders from high school (FYI, it wasn't *that* long ago) to really put where my art has progressed into perspective. Not to belabor it or anything but I went through a really bad "EVERYTHING I DO SUUUUUUCKS!"-depression which passed but mostly it was looking through my past posts and seeing how little I brought up my little Beatle 'toons project  with cryptic "For reals this time" and how few of my NUMEROUS doodles of them I posted here. (I threw a lot of them away because what's the point of keeping an otherwise blank piece of paper with only two or three small doodles on the outer margins? Plus they're smudgy)

Anyway, point is a lot has changed since and not just how I drew the characters so I thought I'd sort of re-assess what I'm trying to and sort of spoil any plot stuff. ^^

I had it in mind to do it as a Flash cartoon and some of the earlier "ideas" (I can't really call them scripts but that's what they are, basically) are set like episodes with a beginning, middle and ending with gags thrown in. The most episodic are one based on the song "Octopus's Garden" (with the ending being "All a dream" or something) and another one as a take-off of the Japanese kaiju film genre involving the Beatles turning into giant monsters and destroying Tokyo. I have a whole litany of things that could work if it was in either a comic format (an opening with a very manga-esque panel arrangement) or a cartoon format (a whole gag with the Beatles as giant radioactive monsters talking in these very deep Japanese voices and some badly translated English subtitles at the bottom.) I guess I could do one and then the other and have the comic be a sort of well-drawn and colored storyboard but eh.
There isn't a problem with any of these 'episodes' but I have this whole problem with that is me second-guessing myself in thinking I can't do anything longer than a page and still thinking in terms of cartoon-length Beginning-Middle-End. I've been reading webcomics like Hark! A Vagrant,  Oglaf (NSFW) and Kinoko Fry and seeing what can be done in the medium of comics about length and not thinking I need to pad anything out if I only have one exchange or one joke. Not to say I'm not going to do longer storylines but to sort of go "Well, if I have JUST have one joke, I don't need to build a whole thing around it to make it fit or stick it somewhere." BREVITY, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Another problem I sometimes have is sort of imagining what the Beatles would say or do in a certain situation and have it be in character. I know the creators of the cartoon had the whole Standards and Practices thing to scoot around and the set Beatle archetype of Paul the Cute One, George the Quiet One, John the Smart (more like Smart-ass one) One and Ringo the...Ugly one? But I don't have that problem and then there's whole Should I Put Dirty Jokes In, Y/N? dance I keep doing. I mean, it goes without saying I'm wouldn't be doing it out of malice or to 'cheapen' them or 'take the Beatles down a peg'. I just thought the Beatle cartoons were funny and goofy and wanted to do my own so I guess its an Affectionate Parody of it, if you want to put a label on it. Then there's the whole based-on-actual-people-thing. I know its something I shouldn't actually be worrying about but I know there are people who have this image of the Beatles in there head...and it doesn't involve the Beatles swearing, smoking (cigarettes AND pot!) and having sex. Y'know, like they did IN REAL LIFE! GASP! (I actually had one idea where they are asked to talk to some aliens and stuff but they happen to be high so they just giggle through the whole thing and John and Paul are trying to drive a flying saucer and use it to bother Brian Jones. )
There is the problem with going too far in that direction (maybe I could get an editor?) without leaning too hard on the dick jokes. Thing is, my unrefined humor (the jokes that just come out without be worked on and tweaked) is a lot of stoner/fratboy humor. I had an idea of breaking the fourth wall and just getting all the "Family Guy" cutaway jokes out of my system in one go.

I'm losing steam so the only quibbles are:
-I had this idea of using the comic to break the fourth wall as if the Beatles were being filmed or doing a comedic sketch (glancing at the 'camera', messing up their lines, holding up scripts and complaining about the writing) but doing it as a long-running thing might be problematic.
-In the cartoon, they all have black hair even though everything else is in color and I didn't know whether to color them with their actual hair color or keep it all black.


So if anybody has anything thoughts, I'd sure like to hear 'em. :)

Unicorn Rampant

 

Angus (my younger brother, who has a totally different approach to art) got a book on flags and heraldry and there was a really cool illustration of the unicorn and the lion flanking the King William the Third's coat of arms, hence the line next to the horse's leg on the far left. 

Yeah, it looks good when you stand back a little but if you see it much closer, you can see my sloppy cross-hatching. But otherwise, I like how it turned out. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, maybe just fill in the unicorn's golden collar and chains and his horn with my cheap-o markers. 

Also, I've been thinking about making my own Etsy but I know nothing about selling my art (plus I actually need art to sell >_>) and pricing. Plus, what if someone actually buys my merc? I'd need to buy postage and ship it to them and barely know anything about shipping artwork God knows where. 

Mehhh, I'm in a cruddy mood. X_x

Model Cheats

Yay! I found it! My friend Christine (I hope she's okay with me referencing her as my 'friend' :)) had this posted about a year ago and I saved on my other computer (long story, it doesn't work) so I can at least know where it is and savor its goofy cartoony goodness.
You're probably asking "But WHAT is it?"
It is the model sheets for the Beatles cartoon by Al Brodax...even though on the sheet itself it says "Blueprint". Whatever. Its a MODEL SHEET.

I'm wondering what they (the writers, animators, Al Brodax himself, etc.) watched to come to the conclusion that this is how the Beatles act, walk, and carry themselves. Did they just watch "A Hard Day's Night" and go "Welp, that's all we need to know about that! Start drawing!"?

I get the feeling this "blueprint" was lost repeatedly because the quality of the Beatle cartoons tends to fluctuate.




Notice how Paul is drawn in a different way than in the first video? See, its aggravating for me drawing the Beatles in this style copying from the cartoons because I watch one of the cartoons and realize that I've been them WRONG. I had to change and rework Paul alone about three or four times. These model sheets are the closest thing they had and they don't even had the center lines on the head or the standard 'pears and balls' body construction. (See here) If I was going to describe these Beatle 'toons in anyway, I would say they're made up of 'sticks and rectangles'.
Legs-straight sticks
Bodies-boxy shapes or rectangles

That is a big reason why I didn't copy the Beatle cartoons EXACTLY. I mean, early on, I tried but it got to be a pain in the ass when the finished product didn't look a thing like the thing I was copying. So I just took what I knew the cartoons where trying to convey about how they looked (John has a boxy jaw and an arrow-shaped nose, etc.) and adapted that using my own style, which I don't know how you would describe it.
That's why its been an uphill struggle with these 'studies'. My way of doing things is to copy things best I can and do things my way, which is apparently wrong. (at least when it comes to copying the Preston Blair studies.)