Cuphead in "Don't Deal With The Devil"

Since the end of June I've been helping out the team at Studio MDHR with the wonderful traditionally animated cartoon videogame Cuphead! A videogame with a 1930's cartoon aesthetic AND animated in 1930's style: drawn and inked traditionally on paper! Even the lettering and UI!

I've been looking forward to this game since it's first trailer and having the opportunity to have a hand in helping with its production is a pretty rad experience. It's also been really cool to be able to work on it right after it generated a ton of buzz this past E3. The team is spread across in different locations but I've been working directly under the art director Chad Moldenhauer, one of the brothers responsible for coming up with the idea. I've mostly been doing inking/clean up, colouring, some additional animation, as well as printing, scanning and filing the mounds of drawings they have and a bit more stuff. 

If you haven't seen this visually stunning game here's the trailer! Available when it's ready™ 2016 on Xbox One and PC:

" Cuphead is a classic run and gun action game heavily focused on boss battles. Inspired by cartoons of the 1930's, the visuals and audio are painstakingly created with the same techniques of the era, i.e. traditional cel animation (hand drawn & inked!), watercolor backgrounds, and original jazz recordings. Play as Cuphead or Mugman (in single player or co-op) as you traverse strange worlds, acquire new weapons, learn powerful super moves, and discover hidden secrets. Cuphead is all action, all the time. Do you have what it takes? "

Cuphead website:

http://cupheadgame.com/

Studio MDHR links:

http://studiomdhr.com/
https://twitter.com/StudioMDHR

https://www.facebook.com/studiomdhr

***

Above is a drawing I made of Cuphead and myself as a Cuphead character! MugMarco? Mugco? I drew, inked and coloured it the same way they do with the rest of the game.

An inked MugMarco! I made sure he was much of a caricature of myself as possible with a square head, glasses, a square handle to represent my earring and a rounded triangle for a nose. I also made it so his cup head is a pencil holder because I like drawing and I keep my art utensils in a similar fashion on my desk.

Coloured and looking jolly!

Different coloured variations with a bonus black and white version that I still like. In the end I just stuck with making it look like Cuphead in terms of a colour scheme.

I drew this Cuphead in the same pose as the typical Mickey Mouse pose you see on every shirt he's on. This was actually just a test to try out the style as well as the inking (I didn't have a 0.5 marker so I had to use my 0.3 to thicken the lines to achieve a similar look) before drawing the one I made of myself. 

Coloured with an opened eyes version, he was originally casually shooting a projectile.

A Familiar Adversary

Bolik comes across a familiar nuisance on the foreign planet...

I'm been trying to put characters in "moments" recently and this is just a start. I'll keep at it.

Life Drawing Catch Up! Part 1: Anatomy and Figure Drawing

WHOOPS

Looking back, my last life drawing post was last year! I didn't update anything about that this past year! MY BAD. So I dug up a pile of drawings that I kept, unfortunately I either lost or accidentally threw away some that I actually liked. So these will have to make do. 

BEHOLD PART 1: Anatomy and Figure Drawing

Anatomy

A few anatomy studies from the past year that I kept. I was scared to begin studying them since THERE IS SO MANY MUSCLES. But in terms of drawing them it wasn't so bad. The techniques we learned on how to draw them were extremely useful and made it easy. 

The muscle test on the other hand...having to remember so many had me nervous during winter break. But I passed the written test with flying colours! And I made sure I didn't cram for it and studied for it weeks beforehand since there seemed to be hundreds in the arm alone. We also ended up drawing real preserved human bodies at one point which was probably one of the highlights of the class for me. 

Look at them glutes.

Never skip leg day!

Unfortunately I cannot find my muscle test drawing (which I did extremely well on and got on the wall! WOO!) but here's an old picture of a drawing I did of the legs in the same view as the one I submitted for the test. Also unlucky me, I can't find this drawing either...and I liked both of them. I swear I kept them somewhere safe but they weren't part of the pile. 

Life Drawing

30's

1's

2's

3's

5's

Portrait

Overall I didn't improve as much as I would have liked. My limited time at school + insane workload + commuting pretty much required me to choose between extra life or doing homework that I can't do at home because I didn't have the tools or software. But studying anatomy has definitely helped me a ton and makes me view figures differently as well as making it easier for me to construct and rotate characters.

The class itself was a vast improvement over first year. It was much more relaxed with the teacher I had and it was more about how each person approached a drawing and not about how closely you can draw to the textbook examples that first year life drawing only seemed to have accepted. First year was such a depressing atmosphere for life drawing, it was extremely refreshing to have a class that accepts your approach and how to make it better. Hopefully third year is the same! 

Life Drawing Catch Up! Part 2: Clothing and Creature Design

Clothing

We studied clothing and clothing folds too! Super fun but difficult. I need more practice but I heavily enjoyed drawing and learning it.

I really enjoyed these early exercised and gestures that involved the model being under a large piece of cloth (Spooky!). The shapes they created were wonderful to just look at and draw. 

This one was a bit focused on depth with a foreground figure and a shorter time of 10 minutes.

I don't particularly like this drawing but I like how I did the pants in this one a lot.

Same deal with the previous drawing, I just really like how the folds look on this one. The proportions are off though and it's pretty messy. 

Creature Design

We practiced some creature creation and how to meld different aspects of animals and whatnot together! I loved doing these because your imagination is your limits and it's basically character design!

I definitely drew this one like one of them french girls.

Revamped Character Line Up

Cleaned up and redid my character line up a while ago but haven't had the time to post! Along with an all new design for Bolik!

The title for this is removed until I make a decent logo for it. The one I have now is a placeholder but I'd rather show something a little more final.

Behold the new design for Bolik! I was never satisfied with the original design as it was the weakest from when I originally submitted it. I still wanted to keep the spirit of the first design. I went back and thought about what kind of character he was. 

He's a smug character that enjoys his day to day life but was suddenly chosen to perform a space mission without prior training. So rather than keep him broad shouldered like before, which gave the impression he's done some training and was prepared for the job, I made him slimmer. Other improvements were based on how difficult it was to redraw certain elements when rotating or posing such as his collar and especially his head. The original design's head was extremely difficult to keep consistent. In the end I looked towards classic TV cartoons as inspiration and was heavily influenced by Looney Tunes for Bolik's design.

***

Apologies for the lack of posts even though I said I would go back to posting a tad more regularly but something awesome came up which I'll post about very very soon...

Cleaned Chad Axelrod

Took the time to clean up my character Chad Axelrod. I tried out a coloured lines approach with this one, I haven't really done it much before and I really like how it turned out!

 I also got some tips from a friend of mine with clean up since I'm not so good at it and applied it here. I spent the past 2 months trying to improve that with drawings and even clean up animation. Got to get better at it so I won't be freaking out in fourth year.

Doodle Round Up

Some few doodles I did from the past of week.

A doodle of a dude that looks like he's from Slytherin House.

A couple of sad fellas. 

Drawings of old stuff.

Got bored and started doodling these things. I don't know what they are but I really like the gestures of them. I can see some figures within them but they weren't intended to be anything at all.