Chicken Running

Hey-howdy-hey friends and neighbors! Today I have an animated gif for your viewing pleasure.

Earlier this week I was working on my next Sunday Sermon Series illustration. I realized yesterday that I wasn't going to finish any time so soon I switched to working on the concept you see here which was mentioned by Pastor Shaun. He mentioned in passing (I don't remember it as one of his main sermon points, but it stuck with me as you can see) that the church without Jesus is like a chicken with it's head cut off. There is simply no point to Christianity without Jesus.

So of course I quickly drew a chicken with it's head cut off, spastically running along, dead as a mackerel even though the chicken doesn't know it. The chicken is supposed to be moving in a hurky-jerky manner. I couldn't tell if the shadow on the ground was distracting or not. Without it I thought it looked a bit like the chicken was just floating. Either way, this short animated loop serves as a nice interim post while I finish off the more involved illustration which includes sirens, the singing mythical half bird/half fish creatures. Ooooo! Look for it next week sometime.

This pencil sketch was done with a Pentel .7mm P207 mechanical pencil in a Pentalic Sketchbook on 70lbs. paper. It was scanned and then colorized in PhotoShop. The animation was also done in PhotoShop. I use Photoshop for straight forward frame by frame animation quite often. As always I hope you enjoyed this post. God bless, and have a great day! --Ryan

Pitching Sequence Third Pass

So here is the last pencil test version of this animation. I've roughed out all the frames I need to create a compelling and convincing animation. It will take me a couple weeks at least to produce the 34 final drawings of the main character, and then I still have to put a little action in the crowd in the background.

I hope you've enjoyed reading about and watching this process, and the end result when I get it posted. Have fun and God bless. -- Ryan

Secondary Pass

As promised here is the second pass of the pitching sequence animation. With my schedule the way it is anymore it took me a few days.

When I was finally able to view what I have here I realized that his back leg lands right next to his front leg, and if he were really throwing a pitch the follow through would carry his back foot way out in front of his front foot. Also, I need to speed up the second half of his motion, to give his pitch some ZIP. SO... I'll need to re-animate the last few frames, and add some more. Then I can get back to the crowd in the background. Once I get that doped out I can start on the final drawings. Easy Peazy.

Pitching Sequence

Here is a pencil test for a new project I'm working on. I threw the background in to make it a bit more interesting for you the viewer. I'll do finished drawings for the pitcher next, maybe add a little more exaggeration, and then I'll draw the crowd a couple times over, to give them a little movement, not much but just enough so that they aren't frozen. That crowd part will probably be take the longest.

I'm going to add a few in between frames to this, but I like the flow of his pitching action, so I don't think I'll make any big changes.

This is a small part of a bigger project I'm working on, a children's book and animation. With digital books/apps being what they are these days I'm excited about adding little clips of animation that the reader/viewer can activate within the story. I'm hoping it will add to the experience.

Speaking of children's books, remember you can still get "The Little Leaf" (written by Jairo Penaranda Illustrated by yours truly) at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. If you have an iPad you can get an interactive version of my book "The Searcher" (written and illustrated by yours truly) via iBooks. As always thank you for stopping by, and have a terrific day.