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My friend, Jean Marzollo, an editor and the author of the I Spy books for children, wrote a lovely remembrance of Simms on her website. http://www.jeanmarzollo.com/simms.html

]]> Sat, 07 Jan 2012 00:29:28 EST http://www.drawger.com/greenmonkey/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12988 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ElwoodHSmithAtDrawgercom/~3/tuqNaYzFYrk/index.php Greenbelt Land Trust in Oregon called me in late May of this year, asking if I'd be interested in creating a short animation for their website. GLT Executive Director, Michael Pope, and Development Director, Jessica McDonald, were looking for something that would, in thirty seconds to one minute, show what they do. They wanted to to be fun and not pedantic. Although I'm not a pro animator, I was intrigued by the subject matter and thought about it for a few days. As a long time professional illustrator, I have the necessary skills to submit sketches and, when the client makes changes (which they most often do), I whine for a while, but I always come through with the goods. However, since I've only created my hand-made animations for myself. Which, of course, means I can enter into the project with an idea in mind, but, since I haven't shown storyboards or even an outline to anyone, I can change course at any point in the project. That's why, despite all the work involved in making motion pictures, I've enjoyed creating them over the years. With that in mind, I decided to write to GLT with this proposal (edited): I've done some animation commercially, but only as a designer, meaning I provide characters and backgrounds, etc. A professional animation company creates the finished animation. The animations that I've done entirely on my own that have been created as personal projects. I'm not faced with a deadline and there's no client needs to be met. Since there is no input from others, I simply do what I want to do. All of my personal animations are done in traditional 2D style. They are loads of work and, despite all the great computer software now available, all animation takes time to produce. I'm also a musician, so I get the opportunity to create the music and soundtracks. If you are still interested, I'd be happy to make a fun, Elwoodian animation for Greenbelt Land Trust, but unless I were to hire a pro animator to do the actual animation, I would want lots of freedom to do what I've done in my own personal animations. You'd have the right, of course, to decline what I come up with. I'd want some kind of small kill fee for the hours spent on the project if you reject it, but we can discuss that fee to make it fair. Michael and Jessica loved my 2D animations and were game to give the project a go-ahead as I presented it. I worked on ideas off and on while finishing up final art for a kids' book and began working on the project in earnest about two weeks after I accepted the assignment. In this article, you can view some of my early sketches for the Cave Man and the Modern Man. I initially tried to create the art in Photoshop's frame animation program (which I'd only recently discovered), but found it unwieldy. Partly, I'm sure, because I don't really know the software. I may return to it one day. I ended up going with the great vector software, Toon Boom Studio, my old standby. I normally output the work as a QuickTime movie, which is bitmap, but beginning with vector allows me to output a variety of file sizes, from HD to tiny iPhone movies. Link to Toon Boom Studio http://www.toonboom.com/products/toon-boom-studio/ I used a borrowed Wacom Cintiq 18SX tablet, drawing directly into TBS. (Maggie bought me the amazing Cintiq 21UX for my birthday, but the unit was back ordered. Sadly, I wasn't able to use it on this animation, but happily my new Cintiq arrived last week! Link to the Cintiq 21UX http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Cintiq/Cintiq21UX.aspx I exported a large QuickTime of the animation from TBS and imported it into iMovie "11 for final editing, including adding the sound effects and musical score. I created the music in GarageBand--where, much to my amazement and delight, I can create symphonic music, even though I can't read a note of music!) Here's a link to my Mac MobileMe Gallery where the animation now resides: E.S. GLT Animation (If you can't play it, just upgrade your QuickTime player to the latest version.)

Oops! I just realized that I'd forgotten to add some images and descriptive text. Sorry about that. I guess I tossed out my rough sketches, but here's a first run at my caveman. He's closer in feel to my normal illustration style and, while I liked him, I wanted the art to be simpler and more rolly polly and squat.

Ditto for my Modern Man.

Here they are, basically the same characters I used in the final animation. These are drawings I wanted to use as my models in my failed experiment using Photoshop's animation program. I love the watercolor texture in these, but since I ended up doing the art in Toon Boom Studio, it became vector art, which in Photoshop would have been bitmap. I'll have another go at the Photoshop system as soon as I have time.

Unlike real animators, I don't create pencil tests or do storyboards. One can argue that my animation suffers because I bypass that important process, but it's how I've chosen to do these things and, while I know there is lots of room for improvement, I'm happy with my results and, over time, I know I'll get better. However, I do write a short outline for myself and I work out rough sketches and a timing sheet. The one shown here is a more finalized timing sheet, done after I'd worked up a nearly final animation in Toon Boom, but hadn't yet added color. I used this sheet to create my soundtrack and it gave me an idea where the sound effects would fall.

The Attacker characters as drawn using the vector animation software, Toon Boom Studio.

Foliage elements created with pen on watercolor paper that were never used, but were models for the final animation.

A screenshot of my Toon Boom Studio workspace while working on the GLT project.

Screenshot 2 of the GLT project in TBS.

GLT Soundtrack in GarageBand.

If anyone wants to see larger images of any of these, let me know and I'll publish them as images only. -ES

]]> Sat, 03 Sep 2011 22:19:54 EST http://www.drawger.com/greenmonkey/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12621 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ElwoodHSmithAtDrawgercom/~3/2WuRpLFQQM8/index.php Elwood's World at The Norman Rockwell Museum Joe Donahue - 2011-03-24 Audio Interview ALBANY, NY (WAMC) Elwood Smith speaks with Joe about his work and his current exhibition at The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA.  

]]> Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:27:53 EST http://www.drawger.com/greenmonkey/index.php?section=articles&article_id=12150 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ElwoodHSmithAtDrawgercom/~3/bDKxp0imXko/index.php


]]> Sat, 12 Feb 2011 05:08:07 EST http://www.drawger.com/greenmonkey/index.php?section=articles&article_id=11927 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ElwoodHSmithAtDrawgercom/~3/E1ryb73caso/index.php

FULL CIRCLE by Elwood H. Smith (Comments taken from my monograph for my upcoming one-man show at the Norman Rockwell Museum) I grew up in a home, in Alpena, Michigan, without paintings on the walls. My parents didn't attend chamber music concerts, read Shakespeare or own a record player. But they owned a radio and we received daily newspapers and various magazines. Those were my conduits to the arts. Some of my earliest memories are the sounds of nasal hillbilly singers, local polka bands and jazz orchestras like Benny Goodman transmitting from WATZ, my hometown radio station. Long before I began school and discovered Huckleberry Finn, I was poring over the Sunday Comics in the Detroit Free Press. I spent hours studying the colorful halftone images. I remember comparing the cartoonists’ drawing skills, separating the great ones from the lesser ones. Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom were fun stories, but the art, according to my rating system, wasn’t as good as the work in the strips at the top of my list: Prince Valiant, Krazy Kat, Popeye, Barney Google and Pogo. No one else in my home or my community shared my enthusiasm for the genre, but I was content traveling about in the world of comics by myself. I have no idea when or why I began rating the comic artists, but the hierarchy I’d created improved my eye for quality. Producing quality in my own work was a much more difficult matter altogether. Another rich source of art flowing into our household was the Saturday Evening Post. The magazine featured cartoons by the likes of John Gallagher and Henry Syverson (my two favorites) but nothing excited me as much as the arrival of a new Post cover illustrated by Norman Rockwell. It wasn't until I met my high school art teacher, Nancy Boyer Feindt, that I stretched beyond my narrow, but carefully constructed world of art. As I said, my parents weren’t familiar with the arts but they were genuinely supportive of my determination to be an artist and, later on, my desire to play the guitar. My father worked as a foundry foreman in a factory. He built my first electric guitar with wood supplied by his pattern maker. As foreman, he often visited the drafting department and the clean, well lit workspace prompted him to encourage me to study mechanical drawing course in high school. Which I did and did poorly. After a two year struggle to learn drafting, I switched to an art class, where I met the new teacher, Nancy Boyer Feindt, who had arrived fresh from New York City. Nancy and I remained friends over the decades and, two weeks before she died, she told me that I was the most stubborn student she'd ever taught. Luckily for me, she spotted talent behind the stubbornness, saw possibilities in my amateurish squiggles, and took me under her wing. Mrs. Feindt prodded and encouraged me despite my resistance. She saw hunger and curiosity lurking behind the fear and ignorance. She slyly eased me into the world of fine art by first introducing me to illustrative artists like Saul Steinberg, Honoré Daumier, Leonard Baskin and Ben Shahn. It wasn't long before she was showing me prints of Vincent Van Gogh, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso. As my high school graduation drew near, she asked around and found an art school in Chicago that offered a course in cartooning. Thanks to Nancy Feindt, I was on my way. It has always been my impression that my life as an artist was like a Conestoga wagon (B-Western movies were a big part of my childhood) traveling along a road, taking me from those early comic days in Alpena, down to art school and my early career in Chicago and then across to my heady New York City days and finally to my Rhinebeck years and my show here at the Norman Rockwell Museum. However, as I began writing these notes for the monograph, I realized that my career and, indeed, my life, wasn’t a linear journey, but instead an ever expanding circle. Those old swing tunes and Nancy Feindt and Barney Google With The Goo-Goo-Goggly Eyes are here, right now, in the circle, not lagging behind in the dust of the past. Norman Rockwell, who was there, guiding me in my earliest days, is also in my life right now and has been in it all along. So it makes perfect sense that this collection of my life’s work exists, at least for a while, in Mr. Rockwell’s museum, a stone’s throw away from his marvelous paintings.  

]]> Tue, 25 Jan 2011 04:55:23 EST http://www.drawger.com/greenmonkey/index.php?section=articles&article_id=11871 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ElwoodHSmithAtDrawgercom/~3/WDBHD642ARE/index.php I've long held the view that my work is not about technique. However, my technique has, in many ways, defined my style. A Short Overview of My Traditional Work Illustrators and cartoonists who work in line, like Peter DeSeve, Ed Sorel and the astounding crosshatch king, Jack Davis, can draw circles around me. (Why they spend their time drawing circles is beyond me, but it happens all the time. I find it nerve wracking, to tell the truth.) However, I draw well enough and, while I am not a true watercolorist like Jim McMullen, I apply it well enough and with the two techniques under my belt and a measure of good fortune, I have made a living with my "technique" for many years. Also, like many other artists, I love my tools. I am enamored with the texture and feel of quality watercolor paper, the rich, flat colors I get from gritty watercolor pigment. I love, but can no longer find, Kolinski sable brushes that hold their point and rich, black, really waterproof India ink that flows well. Most of all, I value a pen nib that flows and flexes without complaint. I have written articles here on Drawger about my various quests for tools that work for me, like my trusty old Pelikan 120 fountain pen and the very best ink of all time, the original carbon formula FW, which is no longer being made. My articles have continued to get responses from pen and ink enthusiasts over a span of many years. I use the computer and the Wacom Cintiq drawing tablet, but I still get a genuine thrill when I feel my Pelikan nib flex against the Arches cold press watercolor paper. My pencil sketches have a vitality that is lost in the final inked art, but something else is gained with the application of black India ink; a gutsiness, a boldness of intent. And there's the delicious variation in line that takes place as I lean into and then back off the flexible nib as I draw. I'm myopic and, when I remove my glasses and get up close--about 8 inches from the paper's surface--I can see a magnified view of the pen nib as it makes those thick and thin marks on the soft, textural, handmade watercolor paper. There is no other experience quite like it. Years ago, as I studied the technique of the old cartoon line masters, Elzie Segar (Popeye), Billy DeBeck (Barney Google) and George Herriman (Krazy Kat), I came to the conclusion that their choice of drawing tools was the core, the soul of their creations. Sure, they were funny writers and the characters they created and the world the characters inhabited were hilarious and original, but it seemed to me that the thing that made their work distinctive--that made their creations come alive--was the way in which they used their tools of choice. (Okay, I'm exaggerating somewhat to describe the enthusiasm I experienced back when I began to use those old Hunt and Crowquill dip pens.) I could plainly see in Segar's pencil sketches, the soul of Popeye The Sailor Man, but the India ink applied was the breath into the clay. The art remained incomplete until that small metal nib added its old black magic. Change Happens I've since adjusted my lens. In recent years, thanks to computers, I've been experimenting with motion pictures and those explorations have altered my earlier views of where the soul of my creations reside. I guess I needed to work in another medium to see that my well-honed technique was only a small part of the soul of my work. Of course, not everyone agrees with me. When I posted a link to the first animation I created with 3D animator, Brian Hoard, two scenes from Mondo Luigi, some of my colleagues here were disappointed that my specific, hand-drawn, gritty technique was nowhere to be seen. Sadly, they lamented, my characters had taken on an almost porcelain-like appearance. Very un-Elwoodian. But I'm the expert on Elwood H. Smith, and I approved. I was delighted to see my characters wearing new skin. Which brings me to my latest effort, The Amazing Elwood, another collaboration with Brian Hoard. I'm not talking about myself, no sirree, I'm referring to another Elwood, an odd, enthusiastic fellow who has his own forum, one he shares with a rabbity sidekick, his "beautiful assistant, Pickles Pickard." I met Brian many years ago when I was struggling to learn the exellent vector animation software, Toon Boom Studio. Brian reached out to me via the Toon Boom User Forum with clear and sage instruction when I was overwhelmed by the initial complexity of the program. In time, we became friends and, some years back, we drove together up to Canada to attend the Ottawa International Animation Festival. On the way home, Brian expressed an interest in working together on a project. I had made several 2D animations and he was a 3D animator, working for the government. He liked my stuff and thought it would look great in 3D. I was not a huge fan of that style of animation, although I do like some of it now, like the excellent The Incredibles. But I like experimentation--in music and in art, so my interest was immediately piqued. I was delighted at how the two scenes of Mondo Luigi turned out. Thing is, all animation is time consuming, despite the wrongly perceived idea that "computer" animation is easy. Brian's job began wearing him out and he found it hard to come home after a day of working in Maya and sit down to work on our projects. He asked if I had a more simple story he might animate and I'd just begun dabbling with a new animation that fit the bill. I sent him my short QuickTime of the opening of The Amazing Elwood and he loved it. I'd written the story and recorded my reading of the narration in a voice that I thought portrayed an ecentric funny elderly man. Maggie (my wife, rep and creative partner) hated that voice at first, but she's learned to like it. Or at least tolerate it. I've never wavered in my affection for the guy. Now back to my original thought. The Amazing Elwood is an example of my creations--my "world" might better describe it--transcending my particular technique. Brian has, to my mind, captured the essence of Elwood and Pickles completely, using a technique unlike anything I've ever done or am unlikely to do. When Pickles blinks and looks up at Elwood and when she waves for just a little to long at the end of the movie, she is Elwoodian in every respect. Sometimes the characters in my illustrations are very active, but much of my work is inhabited by characters who are worried or forlorn. They know the other shoe will drop, it's just a question of when. And where. The world I create for my characters is unsafe. Little wonder, since that is how I view the real world. One must remain vigilant. I think Brian has captured that sense of my characters carrying on, sometimes with great courage (or stupidity), despite an inner sense of fearfulness. The Process Once Brian was onboard, I worked up simple storyboard in Toon Boom Studio--somewhere between an animatic and a storyboard--and he began building the characters in Maya. We decided to keep it simple and part of the plan was to mix up my 2D art with his 3D stuff. Also, I love the stop-motion work of Richard Goleszowski, who created one of my favorite series of all time, Rex the Runt. It was an Aardman Animations project created for the BBC in the late 80s. It differs from the Nick Parks stuff (Wallace & Gromit), which is 3D claymation, in that the work is more Gumby-like, somewhere between 2D and 3D. The technique is called Clay on Glass and I asked Brian to try to get that feel in his 3D. Also, I wanted a freedom one gains by avoiding normal perspective and props, so I wrote it with that strategy in mind. Brian is good at following my intentions, but he often adds his own little touches that enrich the story. For instance, he added the "dream" phasing to take us back in time and the short garage door bounce. Right after we first began this project, Brian was hit with another heavy workload at his job, so The Amazing Elwood was shelved for a spell. Then, one day, out of the blue, he wrote to say he'd pretty much finished the project. I only needed to tweak a couple of things, select and add the sound effects to a rough QuickTime, which he then added to the final in Maya. I also had to work up finished art for my pieces that appear in the movie and I created the 6-seconds of music for the opening title in GarageBand. I'm proud of this piece and, although it's my brainchild, I must give Brian the lion's share of credit. He did a ton of work to bring this short piece to life. Here's a link to a page Brian created to show the making of the animation. You can click there to view the final animation and a wonderful eBook he created based on it. Enjoy. The Making of The Amazing Elwood





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