Mystery Beach

[wackypackcolonel]

Thanks everyone but I can't take all the credit being that I do use photos of the women themselves to work from. I don't have the time like I did when I was younger to sit down and illustrate like I used too. I do however do all the surrounding work from scratch like the bogs, fallen limbs, buildings etc and all color schemes clothes, hair, skin from scratch also. I try to use the right perspective at all times and trust me I've done entire backgrounds that I later dumped because the perspective wasn't quite right. I have more unfinished pieces than not because of this reason or other reasons along the way. So what I'm trying to say to say is there is a little fakery going on but still a lot of my own creativity thrown in also. I hope this doesn't disappoint anyone I do try and put some time into this for all our enjoyment. My work is truly hybrid between drawings and fakes so it does make it hard to categorize it correctly because there is a lot of illustrating and coloring I do in these pieces. It's not hard to tell the differences in my 100% hand drawn work to this. I just like quicksand and beautiful women in it.

One thing that has helped me, especially on this piece, was working as a cameraman for Fred this summer at Studio 588. I can't tell you how much useful information that experience was. I did a lot of still photos while also manning the second video camera giving me a chance to explore many different perspectives and views. I really liked the low to the ground perspective like you see in this piece while taking stills even though i got eaten alive by the myriad insects out at Fred's while sitting or lying on the ground. I hope I get the chance to help film there again.

I hope this doesn't make anyone not like my work I, like all of you, love quicksand in all it's forms and interpretations and do love to share that because frankly there's not a lot of it around. And I do push myself to make them look better every time. Ok the cat's out of the bog berate me if you're so inclined.

[bbjohn]

So that's how you do it! I'm still very impressed. Making artwork that way requires a lot of skill, time, work and creativity. I certainly wouldn't sell myself short.

Your work reminds me of animated cartoons done with a rotoscope. This device was invented by Max Fleischer in the early 1900s as a way of creating more naturalistic animation by having the animator trace drawings from live-action movie frames. Fleischer and his brother, Dave, went on to produce the Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons.

The rotoscope never really caught on, as it turned out to be more time consuming than simply drawing by hand. Cartoons were also becoming more stylized and "cartoony" in characters and movements. Animators, particularly those at Disney, found naturalistic charcters could be done just as effectively if they were hand-drawn. Still, a good rotoscoped scene is a sight to behold.

Some examples: the Fleischer brothers used a rotoscoped Gulliver in their feature film, "Gulliver's Travels." Ralph Bakshi often used rotoscoped characters. Chuck Jones used rotoscoped animation in his Warner Bros. cartoon "Old Glory." In the cartoon "Daffy Duck Commando," Daffy bopped a rotoscoped Adolf Hilter on the head.

So, you're in good company, Colonel. Your work is very impressive. Keep it up. I look forward to seeing more.

Big Bad John

[Billie Bonce]

Honestly, it's not the news to me. I always supposed that you trace photos and then add the backgrounds. I consider it a normal thing, one of the many methods to realize creativity and to make realistic images.

There are some people on Deviantart (some of them are good artists) who pathetically (I'd say, hysterically) struggle against tracing. Under their pressure the rules of Deviantart were changed, and now tracing is not allowed (while photomanipulations are allowed). I can't understand that at all. It's strange. There are great artists there who say they used tracing before, and there are some great artists who still use this technique and don't conceal it. There are a lot of so called "stocks" on Deviantart with photos that specially intended for photomanipulations or tracing. Some of them are DiD images, with great facial expressions.

Well, one thing I wish - to see more of your works, I like them so much!

[wackypackcolonel]

Thanks everyone appreciate your support.