Cartooning Facial Expressions

Okay, you have to get past the fact that it's a comic about anthropomorphic cats acting all dramatic and flirty. Tracy J. Butler has some solid comics chops, and this is a great set of notes on cartooning facial expressions. In particular, it is a brilliant and necessary skewering of the lazy shortcuts we so easily fall into.

This is of particular relevance to the Comics 2 kids, but good for all of us.

Lackadaisy Expressions

Painting Procedural

Here's a dusty ol' series of posts detailing my approach to paint. I thought the Illustration 2 students might find this useful as they head into the home stretch with the Invisible City pieces.

This example is using watercolor and gouache, but there's not a thing in it you can't do with acrylic. Except re-wet your paint.

Cul de Sac, mapped

Some more Invisible Cities inspiration of a more whimsical sort from the always enjoyable blog of Richard Thompson.

BLDGBLOG

Bothering to scroll down a bit from the post just linked to, BLDGBLOG has revealed itself to be a great source of inspiration/blatant theft for the Invisible Cities project.

F'rinstance:

Paris, without Parisians.

Whatever this is.

Buildings on super-stilts!

Holy Wow! I could do this all day!

ONECITY

If you're in Illustration 2 and starting to think about Invisible Cities, you might find some interesting resonance with Will Insley's ONECITY project.


Here's a post that gives a nice overview of the project.

Here's the New York Times review of the original show of these peices at the Guggenheim, which includes this fun, Calvino-esque passage:

It's clear... that the city's inhabitants are segregated into day people, wholesome types who study at home with their children by means of electronic devices, and night people. "Tattered ghosts in phosphorescent clothing," the night people sound a lot like the more Felliniesque denizens of the Lower East Side, being given to masks and elaborate makeup; they "mutter a lot" and "often carry around personal abstract structures" that they exchange "according to mysterious rituals." And while they have homes in the Over-building, they frequently sleep in the cubby holes of the Under-building, ignored by day people going about their business.

And here's a post with lots more images to look at.

via Boing Boing