I really want to return today to its sender---it's been a vexation since dawn this morning, and (as it will turn out) the sun will set on some of it.
What's going on is a disconcerting, as well as a little serious. I'll cover that after we first have a look at this card.
This is Sherman from the animated adaptation of the Christian radio program 'Adventures in Odyssey'.
The card was drawn via the Wallace Zephyr 3H pencil, and delineated with this 2 pencil by Jot. The lightly-filled areas were filled with the Zephyr, and the darker via the Jot. Jot is a stationery brand sold at Dollar Tree stores in the US ...to be as cheap as this pencil is, it's fairly usable (I like it!).
The Jot produces a dark line with minimal dotting, and that erases without too much fuss. The weight of the Jot is slightly above average, though the drag is fairly smooth despite.
Anyway...
Sherman was the first thing to annoy me this morning.
Originally, I was going to draw a character from 'The Storykeepers', but something told me draw from 'Adventures in Odyssey' (AiO) instead.
I managed to find some AiO clips on YouTube, and taking inspiration from those, I opted to draw Sherman. :3
I decided to draw Sherman sniffing at flowers. The ref I used was a screen shot from the show, of Sherman standing in 3/4. I can draw most any character in most any pose I like, so long as I can deconstruct the subject mentally and 'rotate' them in my head. Sherman appeared fairly straightforward, so I had no concerns going in.
Going in.
Not long after I started, I learned Sherman suffers from some curious design choices. Specifically, Sherman's head has some fairly extreme curves that don't compliment one another well: https://sta.sh/0hbt1l3k8e2
HYPOTHETICALWATCHER: "He looks like every other cartoon dog in existence, Chippy. Besides, genius, the character is made for animation---it's perfect for rotation!"
Mhm. I didn't say I couldn't rotate the character, but I found he doesn't look good from certain angles, though I tried my best here: https://sta.sh/01ifj5iwdlrl
(pardon the grease. I had to retrieve this from the rubbish bin. I had a sandwich delivered---the grease came from the paper it was wrapped in (now I'm having chest pain thinking about it). :P
Anyway, I gave up trying to draw Sherman from that angle---I just didn't like the result. I decided to go through more AiO clips from YouTube, to see if the animators had ever drawn Sherman from a similar angle
That's not a bad in-between shot, that's literally how the character would be drawn at that angle. It's just unflattering and appears incorrect when, in fact, it isn't (though I hadn't visualized it perfectly, mine looks slightly better than this, but it's still wrong---believe when I say that animator has forgotten more about cartooning than I'll ever learn, so we know who to trust here).
I decided to stop trying to be cute---to just look at Sherman and draw what appeared on the screen. So, I found a flattering image and drew it.
I dislike doing that, esp. when I have a better idea in mind (I'm a cartooner, not a Xerox machine), but I'd already given Sherman (roughly) an hour of my time, and didn't want to give him another without a payout.
The second thing to annoy me this morning was the lazy, condescending tone of this video uploaded by members of the Adventures in Odyssey staff (link tested 9/3/2020): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjDUxmvM3Yw
Nothing about their actual answers to the question are off-putting (it all seems pretty reasonable in fact, esp. if one consideres their program used to ar live on the radio), but the tone of it rubs me wrong.
Seriously, AiO isn't Shakespeare; human voice actors could easily play the parts of the uncommon animal character (any child can bark or meow) ...(and to suggest to me, a potential listener, to go elsewhere if I want to hear animal sounds, is rude and unnecessary. :p
And now for the more serious stuff (and the legitimate reason I'm unhappy yet)...
Someone has cracked my phoneline. Not just mine, but my mother's as well (and we can't deal with it for several days yet). I'm not going to say much about it here, in case the responsible party is reading this, but it's not a welcome thing what's been done (to put it mildly). If the perpetrator is identified, I will consider every legal option available to me (please take that any way you like).
