#can you see vewn's influence

[filia-floris]

Playing with style with my beautiful daughter

[mysterycubes]

the way you draw faces and eyes is saur cute, I'm obsessed! what are some of your inspirations for how you stylize your art? is it just something you came around to over time or did you have any "wow I really love how that artist does that, I'd love to do something similar" moments that influenced you in a big way? lov your work have a good day ❤️

Thank you so much!! My favorite artist is Adam Westerman (morskystudios) and I was really inspired by him as a kid. I'm a big fan of tumblr user nahonora, but they seem to have cleared their blog... Vewn is one of my favorite artists as well. My favorite comic of all time is Bone. Girl's last tour is the comic that made me decide it was worth it to try and make comics for a living.

I get a lot of inspiration for my serious stuff from things that I've done in the past. Some of my serious OCs are redone from doodles I did when I was like ten... The last time I did a hundred-count of drawings was in like 2017, and you can check my archive and see what I was doing then. It was just random doodles with the goal of quantity and not quality, and it ended up being a bunch of ideas I really appreciate being able to reference now that I have more skill... Besides that, a lot of the time doodling I'll do something that randomly looks good and spend the rest of my life chasing that high. See here: https://www.tumblr.com/chocomoco/631447430341263360/ I will never figure out what I did that made this look so cool. And I'm mad about that.

Just do whatever and fill a sketchbook. Then flip back through it, and if there's something that looks good scan it and color it. If there's an idea you like, redo it again but better. Nine times out of ten your best ideas will be the random crap you come up with when there's fifteen minutes left in class doodling in a notebook, rather than the things you focus down. If there's something online you like, try and figure out what they're doing with their lines or lighting that you're not doing, and try to replicate the effect without ripping off the image. That's the only way I know how to evolve.

[canmom]

Animation Night 117: Independent/web animation 3!

Hiiii everyone, it’s Animation Night!

And tonight! We’re returning to the world of independent web animators - the subculture very dear to my heart. One we’ve visited a few times...

Animation Night 9 surveyed some of my favourite web animators and classic Newgrounds stuff,

Animation Night 48 caught us up on some more brilliant animators whomst I’d learned about....

on Animation Night 69, as part of our grand exploration of sexuality in animation, we looked at the end - if only briefly - into the vast world of nsfw web animation

Animation Night 89 caught us up on Don Hertzfeldt, who took a surprising turn from cynical absurdist humour to devastating existentialist sagas of the far future!

Animation Night 90 zoomed in on the amazing work of Jonni Phillips, with her new film Barber Westchester

Animation Night 102 introduced us to wildly popular Chinese web series The Legend of Hei, featuring a tiny adorable cat that’s secretly a powerful spirit...

Animation Night 108 showed the fascinating ‘gekimation’ animator Ujicha, with his delightful body horror film Burning Buddha Man.

Animation Night 109 showed the bumper crop of CalArts short films, caught the latest from vewn, Felix Colgrave et al., and added a couple more I’d discovered...

Animation Night 112 showed some of the work of the legend Bill Plympton, who was doing the independent animator thing before there was a web to be independent on

Now, most of the creators we’ve looked into here are solo animators, which is definitely the most independent you can be, but there’s another level that’s worth looking into here - the world of the crowdfunded animation project! Something that’s not quite the work of a regular animation studio, but is large enough to bring on multiple professional animators.

The idea of a traditionally animated web series on sites like Youtube and Newgrounds is not entirely new, but it’s had a bit of a rocky history. Frederator’s show Bravest Warriors, very much in the post-Adventure Time milieu, came to an unfortunate end when Youtube cut its funding program and the showrunners couldn’t quite figure out how to save it without unwise exclusivity deals with new streaming platforms; Rooster Teeth’s RWBY was more successful on a subscribe-for-early-release model. Outside of that... there wasn’t a lot.

But!  eventually Patreon came along! And that seems to have changed the game a bit...

The occasion for tonight is the release of the pilot of a new series called Monkey Wrench directed by Zeurel (Joshua Palmer), a fun action comedy about space mercenaries with some seriously impressive traditional 2D animation. Zeurel’s been at this for at least 12 years going by his youtube history, and it’s interesting to see his evolution from TF2 videos like this one with a big emphasis on extreme poses and squash and stretch to the slightly more naturalistic animation in Monkey Wrench.

Anyway, here’s the video! (For future readers, of course; we’ll be watching this live shortly...)

So the story behind this as expressed on Zeurel’s patreon is that these were OCs he’s been sitting on for a while, and he wanted to tell a story with them. You can definitely feel a certain influence of Cowboy Bebop, particularly in the design of Beebs, but it’s very much its own manner of stylisation. The roster of colorful mercenaries reminds me a little of @gooseworx‘s Elaine the Bounty Hunter setting (and she was in fact the sound designer for this one!), and among illustrators, @lil-tachyon​ and @tredlocity. It’s a flexible premise, and it’s used well here.

Production-wise, anyway, it seems the Zeurel led a team of some 18 rough animators and three cleanup animators (including himself in both pools), whose process looks pretty traditional. I can only conclude so much from the brief clips of rough animation shown at the end of the film, but it looks like - contra, say, the anime process - the inbetweens were generally all done at the rough stage, rather than during cleanup. Their effort paid off handsomely!

Of course, the giant in this arena is Vivziepop (Vivienne Madrano), who leapt into prominence in 2019 with the wild success of her web series Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss. Prior to that point, Vivziepop was a webcomic artist trained at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She ran the webcomic Zoophobia from 2012 to 2016, in which she established many of the characters who’d later feature in her animations - most of her early Youtube uploads are speedpaints from this period.

Madrano started animating during her time at art school, with a short film called The Son of 666...

...which suggests her interest in images of hell and demons goes a looong way back. She graduated with another short film, Timber. Upon graduating she seems to have basically lived on patreon money working on the webcomic... until 2016, when she ended the comic to focus on animating Hazbin Hotel. Throughout this period she continued to animate, making mostly short musical films close to the ‘fan animatic’ tradition, e.g. this FNAF one. Most of these were animated in Flash taking full advantage of its automated inbetweening.

But with Hazbin Hotel, she had the Patreon income to quite drastically step things up, bringing in a lot more animators. The animation process on the pilot episode seems to have taken about three years, with the 30-minute pilot finally dropping in 2019 (which Tumblr won’t let me embed for some reason!), where it became a major viral hit. It’s got a slightly convoluted premise: a demon, fed up of the demons of Hell being routinely culled to prevent overpopulation, opens a hotel where she wishes to redeem sinners so they can go to heaven. Gooseworx did the sound design, btw. She seems to be the constant thread for all of these tonight.

Millions and millions of views later, Vivziepop followed this up the next year with a 12-minute musical short Bad News Jack based on the webcomic, with Gooseworx providing the music. There she is again!

Now, Hazbin Hotel has so far yet to receive its planned sequel, but its success led to the funding of a spinoff, Helluva Boss, also released on Youtube. This one follows an assassination company, also in Hell with a lot of crossover characters, and has received nine episodes so far including the pilot. Some of these episodes include quite elaborate traditional action animation, but the general approach to character animation is I believe making a very effective use of puppet animation, with digital easing functions making the transitions between poses feel very snappy and energetic.

OK, so, what to say of Vivziepop? As is probably apparent from the rather dry way I’m writing, I am not actually at all familiar with her work. It’s going to be an interesting night to find out a bit.

So rather than comment on the content - which I’ll be sure to do later - let me instead briefly comment on the dynamics. The structure of user-generated content/‘platform capitalism’ sites like Patreon is that there is a tiny core of people who do very well, and a much larger ‘long tail’ of people who earn a small amount. And who ends up in which group is... well, it’s not totally random, there is no question that someone like Vivziepop works very hard to produce the sheer amount of material she has in the last decade, but it is also a matter of chance to catch the right feedback loops, and acumen to exploit them when you get the chance...

Which means... you have to work very hard, and yet whether your efforts will be rewarded with the dream of ‘living off your art’ is far from certain. But I suppose that’s always how it’s been, it’s just more visible now.

Who’s next? I think I may have talked about them before, but another webcomic attempting to make the transition to animated series is Lackadaisy Cats. The webcomic is one of the semi-old guard, the point where webcomic creators with art training started to become a thing - it’s a beautifully drawn story about cat people in the Prohibition era. Their pilot episode is still in progress, because they seem to be going absolutely all out on achieving Disney levels of traditional ‘full animation’. But there is a steady stream of previews coming out on their Youtube - a variety of animatics, pencil tests and completed shots. I have no idea how long they’ll take, but I’m excited to see what comes out the other end.

As our final Patreon-backed pilot, we have a CG one, Murder Drones. I heard about like an hour ago from a comment on Monkey Wrench and don’t know the first thing about it, but it looks cool so let’s go find out together.

That’s the new school stuff, but what about some of the classics? Well, one I’m excited to show is Savage Death Valley by W-P-S, a fascinating short film I saw on Newgrounds about two cavewomen that features an astonishing variety of animation styles. (There aren’t any gifs on Tumblr but the above is fanart someone made.)

Another is by request of an animator who came across Animation Night recently, who’s working on a series titled Rip the Falcon, about a bird (not anthropomorphic!) who fights monsters.

The animation is rough but it has a ton of charm and I’m looking forward to seeing Rip’s talents develop. They’re going to be dropping by tonight so please tell them what you like about this! ^^

Also on the docket is ‘mintsyrup’ or ‘ribboncutter’, the collab of Mentha Nolana (illustrator) & Ibis Sunrosa (writer), who have a delightfully atmospheric style accentuated by the computer generated autotune voice...

And finally on the list (until I think of some more, I’ll do a followup if we come up with others during the night!) is Remarin, a concept artist who recently turned to animation with this stunning short Vestiges about a ghost floating through a bombed out ruin...

I’ve gone way over time with the writeup, so please head over to Picarto.tv/canmom as soon as you can so we can make a start on Animation Night! We’ll be watching everything mentioned above, and possibly more if I can think of any. I gotta like, make a playlist or something...

[ynnastrash]

just finished rewatching sailor moon

insta:@ynnastrash

So here it is! the long awaited nostalgia piece heavily influenced by Victoria Vincent aka vewn. I think it looks really good. But there’s always an overloaded sense of confusion when I finish bc I continue to tweak the colors and the effects by editing it in the photos app and so then I end up with 10,000 diff versions only distinguishable by tiny little details and it’s hard to chose which one looks good and when to stop tweaking all together. But I finally chose one for this piece and it has been well recieved on tik tok and twitter. I made a tik tok documentjng my progress and it has gotten already over 100 likes can you believe??!! And it has a whopping 5 retweets and 8 likes on twitter! I know that doesn’t sound like a lot but it is to me. one of my friends even commented on my progression which, I appreciated the kind words. I’m always secretly looking for anyone to respond to it just so I can gauge how it is being percieved. And I think I’ve learned how to do art that is meaningful to me and understand that it’s not going to have the same affect to anyone that sees it but when people like it and they tell me something nice in regards to it, I like to take that information bc I can now seperate those two things whereas before, I couldn’t. And I would try too hard to please an audience that I could not comprehend but still wanted to please for some reason.

[holographings]

me being me, hopping on trends like 10 years late. i finally got around to making an influence map! i elaborate on most of these under the cut bc it’s LONG, but if you’re interested here u go!

Bill Watterson and the entirety of Calvin & Hobbes- I feel like i’ve droned on about this to anyone that knows me irl so i’m sorry but it’s the earliest comic strip i can remember reading, the lazy sunday collection has been passed around my family like a relic and it’s what taught me art can still convey so so much even if the art seems playful and kid-friendly. so good will never stop talking about it.

Junji Ito- the man the myth the legend, seeing his work for the first time when i was like 11, especially uzumaki, was like a revelation. i have an issue in life where i feel like some things are off limits/not allowed for me personally, even the smallest things like what you’re “allowed to draw”. and seeing his art flipped some sort of switch in my brain like. yeah actually you can draw anything you want and that means Anything. also how i got introduced to guro art.

Malcolm Liepke- god all of his art is so wonderful, the strokes he uses are so bold and raw but the figures remain very well defined. very influential to the way i’ve tried to work on painting in general.

Riyoko Ikeda- thisss womannn... all of her stories discussing gender and sexuality and how they overlap/their grey zones were a big BIG influence in my early teens, especially oniisama e. and her work was the first thing that made me see how much i love character drama driven plots. her + other year 24 group artists were a major influence for the kinda androgynous way i draw most of my characters

Early 2000′s dreamworks studio productions- ok i’m not sure if this one counts but even as a pre-schooler i had hyperfixations and movies like the road to el dorado/sinbad/the prince of egypt were the SHIT i can quote them word for word to this day, and literally everything about the stylization in the animation and the way it lends itself to the storytelling / early concept art is honestly something i strive for (and i doubt i’ll ever reach that level, but i try not to think like that!)

Moebius- fucking Impeccable artist, i think i’ve picked up the way i use lines in some of my composition from him, and his illustrations remain such a huge inspiration boost whenever i need it

Nitro+chiral studios- i should put this under the “things i discovered too early for my own good” tab, but in every single visual novel of theirs the character design is fucking amazing and, again, a level i strive to reach. every game of theirs is so stylistically well defined, and their dramatic/sometimes plain too much storylines is something i love. again. probably shouldnt’ve looked into visual novels at age 12. but i’m thankful nonetheless

Natasha Allegri- the woman that made me realize i wanted to do art!! her character design/storyboarding for adventure time is the reason i am the person that i am today and i say that with absolutely not a hint of hyperbole. i owe this girl an entire 8+ years of my life spent on art, and hopefully many many more

The rest are various online content creators/artists! i’ve mentioned this but i have no actual formal art education, so i was basically raised by the internet. people who posted their art online were, in a way, the most influential because i could often see their process/how they thought about art, and that made it easy to pick up bits and pieces of their techniques and adjust it or fit it into my personal style. most of them are no longer active online sadly, i’ve been following some of these people for YEARS and i mean like.. longer than i know any of my best friends. my love for them knows no bounds, i don’t want to tag them but if you want to look them up, some of the ones i featured in the map are c-bedford, turndecassette, tumblr user cawoshin, vewn, and rebleflet

[swampgoth]

Do you have any major inspirations for your art? Like any particular movie, show, song, artist, or whatever else or is it just influenced more by your aesthetics/preferences, or something else entirely?

i do! you cant really tell since my art is kind of all over the place, but i do have inspirations that u can see a Little bit

the short answer is all the things that inspire me to create are horror related.

oh man this got pretty long because i love stuff and had to make lists

movies inspire me a lot!!!! the biggest ones i guess r silent hill, queen of the damned (particularly the music videos. i fucking love german expressionism), constantine, 9 (2009), coraline, crimson peak. the ritual, hereditary. lots of them. i love movies

video games have been a big influence on me too even if i havent played them myself: ALL of the silent hill games, american mcgee’s alice, sally face, ghost master, OFF game, the evil within (i still have to play that one. god damnit)

music is kind of a weird one for me becos the inspiration from songs is hit or miss. sometimes they make me go buck wild other times not? but one song that always sends me thru the roof tho artistically is the mind electric by miracle musical

AS FOR ARTISTS:

a lot of my closest friends r artists and all of them inspire me SO MUCH please check out my pals tag 

As for not friends: slimyswampghost, vewn, sleeprealms, kadabura, drawkill, tons of others