The Process of the Planet of the Apes

Like many sci-fi fans, Michelle and I are hyped to see Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. A nice, long, wordy title but it still doesn’t beat The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Nevertheless, I think the ape movie might be the better film. So we’re gearing up for it by doing some ape art.

In this week’s video, I do an ink and watercolor illustration of the movie’s antagonist, Proximus Caesar. He’s a big, scary ape and he fits right in with our channel’s usual monsters-and-villains theme. And in keeping with our share-the-knowledge theme, we recorded my process.

In the video, I take you through my entire illustration process from digital sketch to pencils to inks and finished watercolor. My way is certainly not the only way to do it, or even the best way. But in searching for the best way to do things, Michelle and I enjoy watching process videos by different artists and learning all the options. If you like that stuff too, maybe you’ll enjoy this video.

Have you seen the trailers for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes? I’m always on YouTube so it’s kinda’ hard to avoid them, and any accompanying spoilers from the peanut gallery. For the past six months everyone and their brother has been speculating on the plot, the characters, whether or not there’s time travel, whether or not it’s a reboot of the original 1968 film — enough already. It opens this Friday and I’m gonna plug my ears until I see it.

If you’d like to see our completely spoiler free video where I draw Proximus Caesar, the link is below.

Unearthing the Bones of J. Giggles Flintstone

This week I had to work on a commission, and since it aligned nicely with the usual cartoony-spooky-vintage stuff we cover on our YouTube channel, we recorded my process. The medium is colored pencil, and the subject of the commission is the late J. Giggles Flintstone, a minor Season Five character who bequeaths Fred his entire fortune, on the condition that he stays one night in the old, haunted Flintstone estate. See? Told you it fit right in with our other videos.

The video isn’t just a rundown of my process, though. Michelle and I also discuss the episode in question, A Haunted House Is Not A Home, and recap it for anyone who might not instantly recall the 60-year old cartoon. It’s one of our favorite episodes, due in no small part to the malevolent staff who are also spending the night at the mansion, Creepers, Potrock, and Wormstone. If you think they look a little shady, keep in mind that should anything happen to Fred during the night, these stone-age weirdos get the fortune to themselves. Now, it’s a party!

The Flintstone commission is only the second time I’ve tried using solvent with colored pencil. It was a special request by the client, and I was happy to give it another try. And, as usual, in the spirit of passing on any knowledge we acquire by trying these things, I try to drop as many tips as I can think of while I work.

If you haven’t seen how solvent smooths out the texture of colored pencil, it’s really kind of magical. The colored pencil pigments are carried in the wax core of the pencils. When the mineral spirits of the solvent are brushed onto the wax, it melts, releasing the pigments. The result is a much smoother blend of colors.

If you’d like to see more of this solvent effect, you can check out our original Velma and Black Knight video from 2022. And if you want to know if Fred makes it through the night alive, you can watch this week’s Flintstones video at the link below.

If You’ve Had A Dose of a Freaky Ghost

Who you gonna call? Not Michelle or I, that’s for sure. We don’t want anything to do with ghosts. Unless, of course, the ghosts are part of some cute and creepy art project like this week’s Ghostbusters Mini-Puft Sculpt-Off!

To hype ourselves up for the opening of Ghostbusters:Frozen Empire, we challenged each other to sculpt one of the tiny marshmallow mini-pufts from the movie. Michelle chose to work with felted wool, and I decided to sculpt my spook out of clay.

There are pros and cons to each medium. Michelle benefited from being able to alter, change, and repair her sculpt right up to and through our video/photo shoot. I couldn’t do that with my solid rock of clay.

On the other hand, my clay sculpt didn’t confuse the camera the way the fuzzy wool edges of Michelle’s sculpt did, and I was able to finish my sculpt well before she could. The needle felting process consumes time the way Slimer consumes hot dogs.

The bases we decided on are just simple black plinths with the classic Ghostbusters “NO” logo on top. That way they retain that black/white/red color theme of the original logo, and the mini-puft ghosts look like they’re popping out of the logo to come to life.

One final element we added to match the violent streak these malevolent marshmallows posses is weaponry. In the movie, these creatures are always putting each other through devastating physical distress: burning each other with fire, running each other through with skewers, liquifying each other in blenders. But our creatures aren’t marshmallows, they’re clay and wool. So their weapons reflect their art supply origins.

If you wanna see Michelle and I try to defeat each other in this Ghostbusters Sculpt-Off, the video is linked below.

Making A Mini-Comic: The Sequel

If you’d have told me two years ago that I’d have to spend time making a sequel to our popular “How To Make A Mini-Comic From One Sheet Of Paper” video, I’d have whined and complained for hours. But as it turns out, Michelle said that very thing to me just a couple weeks ago and I had the exact same reaction.

It’s not that I don’t like making videos…or mini-comics. But I thought we’d already answered all the questions about how to do that. Then Michelle pointed out the literal arm-long list of questions in the comments section of that video, and I agreed that maybe a followup would be helpful.

Since some people like to work digitally, we did a deeper dive in the second video on the different drawing apps you could use to set up your mini-comic. I dusted off my iPad and dug into Procreate for the first time in way too many months. Actually had a lot of fun working in that app and I look forward to experimenting with it a little more.

We also covered using different-sized paper, adding pages, and before it was all over, I’d put together two different new mini-comics to use as examples. Granted, one was just a portfolio of horrendous caricatures of Michelle, but what do you want? I was under a time crunch!

We also brought back our friend, voice actor Owen McCuen, to do some voicework on a dramatic reading of my new mini-comic about public domain cartoon characters. So if you want to see that, and maybe learn a little about making mini-comics, the video link is below.

And for anyone who missed the first part (nearly 3 years ago) here’s a link to that video too:

Our Holiday Tribute to Rankin/Bass

If you’re old enough to have watched all those great Rankin/Bass stop motion holiday specials when you were a kid — or young enough that your parents force you to watch them because “that’s what Christmas was like when I was your age!” — then you might enjoy our holiday card for this year. It’s an illustration of some of the worst creeps and goons Rankin/Bass ever animated.

Creeps like Professor Hinkle, for example. The failed magician who ended up stalking a small child through a frozen wasteland only to lock her in a greenhouse while her magical snowman friend melted into lukewarm water. Nice guy, right? And a wonderful thing for children to watch. It really helped prepare us for the real world. Never trust a magician.

And, of course, you have the Miser Brothers, Snow and Heat. These two petulant monsters argued constantly to get their way and threw tantrums when they didn’t. A great example of now NOT to solve conflicts. These Rankin/Bass specials really were valuable on so many levels.

And that’s why we decided to honor those fantastic holiday specials with a collage of their villains. We did it in watercolor — no colored pencils or inks for linework or details — and tried to capture that holiday magic that Rankin/Bass imbued all of their stop motion specials with. Well…maybe not Little Drummer Boy. That one always put me to sleep.

If you’d like to see us put this holiday illustration together, you can watch the video below. And since it’s just a couple weeks until the end of the year — Happy Holidays! We hope you have a wonderful holiday and best wishes for 2024!

Emmet Otter’s Other Christmas

Most of you have either seen Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas or read the original children’s book by Russel and Lillian Hoban. It’s a Christmas classic about a mother and son trying to celebrate Christmas, and make ends meet on the banks of the Frogtown Hollow River. But for our holiday video this year, Michelle and I rowed down a different branch of that river.

This year, we’re breathing life into the long lost, controversial, alternate ending to Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas. What? You’ve never heard of this so-called alternate ending? Well, neither had I until I found some old papers hiding in a dusty box I got at an estate sale years ago.

Is it legit? Who knows? Maybe it’s just some stuff I typed up and dunked in coffee so it would look vintage. But Michelle and I ran with it regardless. And we used illustrations, needle felted sculptures, and dioramas to bring this alternate ending off the page and capture it on video.

I created the illustrations digitally because deadlines are tight, and digital mistakes are easier and quicker to fix. But I had the easy part. Michelle had to needle felt not one, not two, but three characters from the story. We each put our own spin on the characters, and I’m pretty happy with both the 2D and 3D versions.

This diorama was a challenge too. Another time-consuming cog in this chaotic machine. But to tell a story this epic, we had to go big. And that means going small, and filling this miniature set with miniature props.

So, whether or not this alternate ending is real…it’s the ending we need. And it rights the injustice that occurred at the Frogtown Hollow Talent Competition all those years ago when the Mayor let those goons from Riverbottom into the contest at the last minute. And it reminds us all of maybe the most important lesson you can learn at the holidays: Hit them before they hit you.

Have a wonderful holiday season, stay safe, and have fun. Here’s the video: