These next character drawings are of Chester, Q. Harmony  McRat and Dr Beauregard. I always love these characters. They are so expressive.

Chester

Q. Harmony

Dr. Beauregard

Some notes as I work :  I need to remind myself to loosen up my individual penciling sketches. Drawing for years working on my Cintiq tablet, digitally, I got really used to drawing my lower levels very sketchy. Then I would tightened up on each additional level above as I moved up to my digitally inked final level.  Traditional cartooning drawings don’t naturally have independent sketching levels. As I am moving back to traditional pencil and paper, I have to fight my tendency to over work my individual drawings.

Animation Disc

When I was young, many years ago, I first learned classical animation techniques. I always drew on an animation disc, similar too the one pictured above. This promoted drawing with multiple independent drawings and then flipping for back-lighted development of additional drawings. I forgot that todays digital drawing applications include the same analogy as an animation disc. It’s built right into the software. Now, when I am traditionally pencil drawing, I get lazy and forget to take advantage of my light pad to simulate independent sketching levels like a back-lighted animation disc. Rough pencil sketches should be progressive sketches for developing additional layers of pencil sketches.

My Light Pad

The rotational portion of an animation disc is easy to simulate by just hand rotating my drawing as I work, but the back-lighting requires a light pad. The one that I use is USB rechargeable , 16″ x 12″ and has adjustable light intensity and light temperature (cool, warm, neutral). The light intensity brightness is great for viewing when using stacked layers of multiple thickness of paper including Bristol board or #140 watercolor paper.

More later.