Dilettante Masterpiece

Every now and then I happen to stumble upon my old gallery folder. I thought it would be a nice thing to share a few of the pictures I made years ago. I had what one would call a 'creative streak' at that time. I like these pictures in particular and they also mark the time I started to flesh out my Photoshop and animation skills, which I could always put to good use over all those years. I hope you like them and get inspired to learn to work with Photoshop as well, perhaps? 🤗

With this one I knew I had mastered the basics and was learning the rest by doing. Coming up with a solution to implement, what I wanted to draw, felt natural and intuitive. I remember being proud coming up with a way to draw grass and how I learned to use the vector tool for creating the cable-shapes.

While this is one of my first pictures ever made with Photoshop, it is also my all time favorite. I wanted to capture the impression you would get, whenever you drive past these ironmen and their cables. That swooping moment always caught my attention as a kid. I'd basically follow the lines with my eyeballs swooping up and down and past them, while sitting in the back of the car, driving on the Autobahn. (I always imagined a little running man jumping and sliding on the cables like in a Parkour, did you do something like that as well? No? Oh...never mind then)

Another thing I wanted to express with this picture, as the name suggests, was the fact that these ironmen actually are part of our environment, while completely unnatural. Usually frowned upon or ignored, I always thought of them to be aesthetic and their particular form made me feel like they're actually conscious, like old hanging trees or sleeping giants. I just looked up the English word for it and the name "ironman" suggests, that I am not the only one, who got that feeling. In German we call it "Strommaßt" (electricity pylon).

One might've guessed it. I was terribly in love with that girl. Fortunately this was just an early love and dates back long enough now, so I can speak about it without feeling awkward. Her name is Sina. She inspired me to this painting and I am pleased with this 'warholesque' picture (I just hung it up my wall in my new flat) as well as with the fact, that I managed to express her personality... at least somewhat😅. And I like the coloring as well. I always tend to use warm colors, if you haven't noticed already.

Looks much better on dark background by the way.
Dark Theme for articles, anyone?

While there is a lot of botchery going on in this one, I still was impressed with the result. I don't consider myself a good drawer or cartoonist, but I think one can see some skilled touches with this one. It reminded me of short animation films I would see on TV channels like Arte (Youtube wasn't that big yet) and ultimately inspired me to do an animation clip around that character myself.

It was actually very sweet, funny and in the end also sad.

I think I have lost the data as well with a few other animation and video editing clips due to my drunk neighbor breaking my external hard drive. Well actually it was my dog. But my drunk neighbor was chasing her for a cuddle, that she did not want... ah well, drunk people. Thinking back, a totally unnecessary loss. 😓

This is Misan. He got his funny shape because originally I just wanted to draw a shoe sole. The picture turned itself into a monkey -I kid you not- and I got inspired for this little animation concept art. I never made the animation, so no sad data loss story there, but let me tell you a bit about this Monkey.

You see he is somewhat of a special monkey. He of course is an obligatory Kung Fu master but this is not the important part of him. Over the course of the movie, he will master Sign Language. He's from Thailand, or Indonesia, can't tell. Anyhow, he's in a place where the monkeys roam among the village people. And since all his other monkey brothers are somewhat seen as a plague, he usually gets attacked and chased away by humans.

One time the second leading character, a deaf boy, is introduced along with a band of misfit local kids, who start to throw stones at Misan. The group, all older than the deaf boy, quickly realize, that he refuses to join in. While they are not exactly bullies and somewhat of social outcasts themselves, they don't know any better, than to mimic their elders and force him to throw stones as well. Which the boy ultimately does, leading to a heartbreaking moment. And Misan leaving into the woods.

Long story short, due to an accident the boy and Misan get into contact again deep in the woods and get to know each other (The boy gets attacked by a wildcat, Misan saves him with his Kung-Fu; Zack-Pow, best friends! yada yada. You know the deal).

Over the course of the movie Misan shows the boy how to stand up to bullies with some serious Monkey Style Kung Fu and the boy teaches Misan sign language. Some "Coco Ball" sports event is also thrown in at some point (that's why he's holding a coconut in the picture I guess🤷🏻‍♂️), and the kids, who were bullying Misan in the beginning start to band together to form a team and ultimately win the tourney as the underdogs. With a lot of help from Misan of course, who basically carries the whole game .

That story was intended to spread awareness about the deaf community and inclusivity and one interesting quirk of that movie would've been, that you would actually see sign language in action, during the conversations of the two.
Deaf people would understand them naturally talking in sign language, while not having to read the subtitles and on the other hand, hearing people would have to read the subtitles to get all the details. Genius*

But ultimately a pain in the butt, if you would have to draw each frame of a sign language conversation. Unless you'd rotoscope it of course. Which I was a big fan of. It is a powerful yet often unnoticed animation technique.

One of the few animation clips I still have. I happened to have uploaded this little clip somewhere years ago. It's actually my first time trying rotoscoping, you can even see the brushstrokes changing in the first two frames as I was finding a suitable stroke shape and size.

A very quick and rough showcase of rotoscoping. I tried to show my buddy in the video how all of this works. You'll see I've kept the original footage in the beginning. Caution: It might get loud*

I've grown up very close to my cousin, who is deaf himself. He is actually a developer for interactive / gaming solutions or something along those lines. When we were small we actually developed our own "sign language". If you would watch us it'd look like Tom and Jerry having a conversation. You'd be surprised how many words you can learn from them to use in day to day conversations. Generic stuff like "food is ready" or "that was super fast". Animations and the the gestures of cartoon characters really are powerful on so many levels.

By the way, there is a rule of thumb for animations, that goes like this:
With a good cartoon you should be able to get the gist of what is being talked about even when the audio is muted. You can try this out with any good animation cartoon. And of course, cartoons like Tom&Jerry never head any dialogue, to begin with.

Nowadays we usually chat online, but up until mobile phones we really would have to talk in our own limited, yet absolutely self-made language and finger alphabet. I tend to forget these wonderful little things about my life until all the memories come back to me in one swoop making me realize what I actually can look back to have experienced at that time. Inventing your own sign language based on a foundation of cartoon mimicry? I mean, come on!

By the way, I would LOVE to be able to share talks related to cryptocurrencies or BCH, that are properly subbed. Never forget, who you can reach, that others do not even think of. Interestingly this is kind of getting my mantra around here and it seems to have been for a long time. 🐬It's my Dolphin Mantra I guess. It sounds esoteric, but it isn't really. Check out Cain's recent post. It's fun and eye-opening.

So, that's all.

I initially just wanted to drop a few pictures with short comments on them. But this quickly turned into an oversize blog post.

And yet, it was nice to talk about my old ideas, as I don't think that I have ever properly shared them with anyone like that outside of a very few people perhaps, who wouldn't really listen.

I guess this was indeed a highly creative streak I had. I wonder what would've happened if I actually decided to go on making animation videos. I remember being absolutely in awe at the works of Pixar, when the first movies came out and how I aspired to work in their studios at some point.
People take these kinds of 3d animations for granted these days, but I remember what masterpieces like Toy Story or Monster Inc. felt like, seeing them for the first time. If you haven't watched Monster Inc. yet or you have kids, who haven't watched it; You know what to do.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this post and learned a bit about me and my pretty botched and yet creative expressionist side. And about the power of cartoons.

And next post will be about BCHGhana again, I promise.

Thanks for reading.
Kousha