TUFF-GIRL vs. ED BENEDICT
Ed Benedict was an animator and layout artist who, in his work for
Hanna-Barbera Studios, helped design many of its early television series
including
The Flintstones.
Character design and animation of
this period had almost everything to do with economy, or in other words
solutions to limited television budgets. As result you have a lot of
characters who stand and talk, characters in lengthy walk cycles and
running cycles (against repeating backgrounds) also usually talking, and
characters with convenient accessories of collars and neckties that
clearly define the body and a talking head.
This design is a
caricature of anatomy and not very reliant upon a working skeletal
structure. Peculiar to
The Flintstones, for example, are Wilma’s and
Betty’s skirts which operated more like puffs of fur from which their
legs may protrude in any direction without, for the most part,
disturbing the puff’s shape.
A large part of the joy of drawing
The Flintstones are not only the fanciful dinosaurs but even more fanciful
low-tech gadgets. How is it possible to cobble together a motor bike
using stone wheels, logs, a tortoise shell and bee hive? If only real
engineering were as easy and fun.
In the concept sketches, I
tried giving Wichita a saber-tooth look which only complicated the fuzzy
muzzle I wanted to keep in the design. The layout on the whole is not,
admittedly, consistent with the original Flintstones series in which all
action takes place parallel to the screen, left, right, up and down.
Fred always made U-turns off screen. The change from a running dinosaur
was to better fit it in frame without worrying about its tail, and
benefitted from having a more interesting twist in its posture and its
head popping out over the hill in groundhog fashion is a better visual
than merely a hungry dino.
[final color art]
TUFF-GIRL vs. CRAIG McCRACKEN
A lot of the designs of
The
Powerpuff Girls (
PPG) were co-developed by both Craig and Genndy
Tartakovsky (
Dexter’s Laboratory). With both having worked at
Hanna-Barbera on
Two Stupid Dogs, it’s not surprising that both their
first shows,
PPG and
Dexter’s Lab, carry on the H&B style. I
describe much of the style as a theory of letting shapes be interesting
first and descriptive or representative second. So there are irregular
zig-zagging lines which could be a row of teeth, fingers or a torn shirt
and loopy curls which could be puffs of hair, a tree canopy or a bunch
of flowers.
It’s possible that from his work on
Batman, The
Animated Series, Genndy imbued strong lines of action to character
designs, often as unbroken arcing lines on one side of an arm or leg.
As
a pre-wide-screen series, rarely did
PPG have more than three
characters in an action scene, and as such, this layout is too busy as a
faithful show set-up. This is really two scene squeezed together.
Although I’d like the focus up front, but it’s kind of better to flatten
the space to have Tuff-Girl more fighting along side all three
Powerpuff Girls.
My first concept sketch is a post-battle,
victory scene. This is what I do when I haven’t figured out what the
characters look like. Once I’ve a design (and in a sense am bored with
it), then more interesting poses come out as an expression of “I wonder
what else this character can do?”
My
Dexter’s Lab styled
Tuff-Girl and Wichita would probably be the same as this. And I probably
change little for a
Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends style, also a
show by Craig.
[final color art]
TUFF-GIRL vs. MAN OF ACTION
Ben 10 was created by a group by the
name of Man of Action (Duncan Rouleau, Joe Casey, Joe Kelly and Steven
T. Seagle). Although drawing upon stylistic influences of comic books
and Japanese Anime, much of what ended up on screen became less
stylized, more rounded and generally having less of a distinct style.
This then became my biggest struggle – what does a
Ben 10 styled
Tuff-Girl look like? My solution mostly relies on a bigger head and an
Omnitrix hour-glass motif worked into her costume.
My choice to
draw Diamondhead as Ben’s alien-hero transformation did come from his
sharp, crystal edges being a reasonable contrast to Tar Bear’s
sloppiness. It is also a reflection of how much more comfortable I am
now drawing him than seven years ago. Diamondhead was mostly designed to
be seen in certain angles that allows his brow/ visor to naturally form
a “V” for an intense gaze. There are other little details of his design
that don’t work in three-dimension, so half about Diamondhead is
figuring out a cheat for a better, stronger pose.
I like having
Tuff-Girl (and Wichita) chasing Dr. Animo. Story-wise, once T.G. catches
Animo the fights over and the action’s done and that’s not what you
want on your comic book cover. Having decided to change the layout to
have T.G. in the foreground, Animo still had to be in the fight.
[final color art]
TUFF-GIRL vs. PENDLETON WARD
Pendleton Ward created
Adventure
Time. Although he worked as a storyboard artist on
The Marvelous
Misadventures of Flapjack, there is perhaps no one source of stylistic
influence for the show’s design.
For sure there are a lot of
small button eyes, big round heads, rubber-hose arms and legs, small
3-fingered hand and a general absence of noses. Although none of these
are shared by Tuff-Girl’s traditional design, it’s perhaps due to these
that so much fell into place quickly. A lot of stylized Tuff-Girl draws
upon the Fionna character design as opposed to series regulars like
Princess Bubblegum or Marceline the Vampire. Stylized Wichita is
somewhat based on a wolf cub that appeared in an episode. Stylized Eagle
One could be based on any of the rugged warriors that pop up in the
series.
The back story also seemed to fall in place quickly. As
the last of the four scenes I was creating for this celebration, the
victory moment also seemed appropriate.
[final color art]
TUFF-GIRL vs. IWAO TAKAMOTO
Iwao Takamoto was a Japanese-American Animator who was a production and character designer for Walt Disney Productions and for Hanna-Barbera design characters for such shows as
Scooby-Doo.
My exploration here is a slightly shorter Daphne in a simplified Tuff-Girl costume. Given how this basic girl design served as the house-style over many years, there wasn’t any reason to push it further.
Wichita is her same silhouette with Scooby eyes.
TUFF-GIRL vs. GLEN MURAKAMI
Glen Murakami is an animator, animation director and producer known for his work on
Batman Beyond,
Teen Titans and the Ben 10 series
Alien Force and
Ultimate Alien.
My exploration keys in on Murakami’s signature style of strong posing and lines and sharp definitive corners. A finer tip pen would have helped. Her costume has much larger areas of black than I usually design just to take advantage of Glen’s sense of using strong black shapes in his designs.
Wichita’s design is almost all made up as his designs for terrestrial, four-legged creatures is rare, especially small, furry ones.
