Craig Mccraken And Thurop Van Orman

The person who I can thank for getting me into drawing characters is Craig McCraken. McCraken is an animator, director, and storyboard artist that derived his style from Hanna Barbara cartoons along other 1970s influences like the movie “Yellow Submarine”. With extremely simple and stylized geometric backgrounds, this made the actual cartoon characters stand out. How he uses certain color choices of what mood reflected the scene. Its as wonderful as his close friend’s, Grenndy Tartakovsky, stylistic color choices he uses. He is also an animator, director, and artist who started up the same time as McCraken. Tartakovsky uses color and brushstrokes to portray certain moods in his backgrounds. Soft lines and organic shapes for calm and nature;
The show’s background really got me to think about mixed media. With it’s use of ink and watercolor backgrounds, using computer animated characters and to blend it all in was to match the color tone to the background so it would match up was amazing. That effect to give it it’s own individual styling and its dynamic characters and mood really affected me in how I should try to go outside my comfort zone of drawing. A recent animator that is the first woman to produce and direct her own cartoon, called Steven Universe, is Rebecca Sugar. The way she uses certain brush details to her painted backgrounds and extreme detail to color choices bounces nicely off her simple designed characters. Along with a great story pacing, attention to musical choices use throughout the whole series, and going into subjects that aren’t normally discussed in cartoons on children networks, its an amazing show and I really look up to Sugar as a great influence to
Even though Japanese animation or “anime” has a certain viewpoint and reputation, their understanding of color combination and contrasting to compose scenes is eye catching. Anime came out when I was growing up and it was a culture shock to me. I was exposed to another type of animation. How scenes are drawn, how characters where written, and just the general feel of the cartoon. Japanese comics or “manga” had the same effect on me. One artists who got me to start looking more at the composition of mechanical machinery and how clothes are drawn is Akira Toriyama. He’s a very shut in manga artist who was fascinated by cars and motorbikes thanks to his mechanic father. His environment influenced how his characters interact and what world he’s crafted did make me think of how one grows up can reflect what characters act like in a story.
Another manga artist who also did the same is Araki Hirohiko. He drew inspirations from his living environment but also from fashion, American music, and fascination of American culture. His character concepts and constant production of designing in general has granted him commissions from actual major French fashion designers, like Guuci. to do exhibitions of his illustrations in Guuci wear for displays. Hirohiko did show that using influences, weather music or fashions, outside of my country is a good way to make your characters stand