"What the Hell is Updown Town?"

You know, I've been developing this whole Updown Town business for nearly eight whole years now, and though I've certainly shown a lot, I haven't actually told much. A few of my friends have been very interested in knowing what this little universe of mine is all about, and I figured I'd try to oblige them with a few blog posts.

Let me try to start out as generally as I can: Updown Town is a comedic action series starring a group of anthropomorphic animal heroes who keep the titular city safe from a cast of eccentric villains. I've taken a lot of bits and pieces from superhero media I've digested over the years, and I'm sure those nuggets of inspiration are visible enough if you look for them! I intend to turn it into an animated series, feature, or short one day, but we'll all have to wait and see how that turns out.

Updown Town itself is a fairly large, bustling city; think of it as a mix of San Francisco, New York City, and Los Angeles, all with a bit of futuristic tech thrown in for good measure. There aren't any humans in the UT universe, but I don't have a convoluted reason for them not being present other than some kind of alternate universe nonsense.

The heroes of Updown Town are the color-coded agents of the Updown Town Patrol (usually shortened to Updown Patrol or UP). Being a publicly funded agency, the UP deals with threats to the city that are deemed too dangerous for Average Joe police officers to handle. Usually, this means having to confront an assortment of odd villains ranging from a de-scented mad scientist skunk to a lover-boy marten who dabbles in corporate warfare for kicks.

Let's meet some of the characters, shall we?

Heroes:

Frankie Ancelotti [Agent Red] is the generally affable, anxiety-addled one-man bomb squad of the Updown Patrol and is Updown Town's main protagonist. He's always worrying about something or another and has developed some nervous tics as a result of his work with explosives. Though demolition and things that go boom are his forte, he tends to favor taking on more general field agent duties. He's also typically the first to report to the Head Agent when things go sour during mission-times.

Likes: A good cup of coffee
Dislikes: Loud noises

Rinaldi Vitello [Agent Purple] is second-in-command at the Updown Patrol and is Frankie's older half-brother. The no-nonsense, sourpuss attitude of his can be off-putting to some, though he manages to maintain a fairly healthy friendship with his teammates and an even stronger one with his younger sibling. His expertise in stealth comes from his days as a burglar for one of Updown Town's most powerful gangs; it's a past he's come to terms with but would rather not discuss.

Likes: Cool jazz
Dislikes: Obnoxious jerks

Suko Kiyama [Agent Yellow] is the team's resident tech guru and inventor. His happy-go-lucky demeanor and eagerness acts as a direct contrast to the short temper he has toward technology that doesn't function the way he expects it to. As much as he loves tinkering with existing tech and developing new gadgets, his love of sweets has outshone this passion on more than one occasion.

Likes: The latest model
Dislikes: Black licorice


Villains:

Victor Stunkov [Dr. Stunkov] is a villainous scientist with a penchant for dodgy English and maniacal cackling. Having lacked a scent gland since birth, he's always been an easy target for ridicule in the skunk community. Rather than dealing with his status as an outcast in a more level-headed way, he instead intends to prove his superiority by attempting to take over Updown Town with the aid of an acid-spraying gun and lots of shouting.

Likes: '80s New Wave
Dislikes: Most things

Spencer Finneau is the heir to one of Updown Town's most lucrative security companies and a smooth-talking Casanova-type. Being the business-savvy marten that he is, Spencer's worked out that it's much easier to make oodles of cash through causing chaos than it is through playing nicely. He splits his money evenly among the girls he fawns over and the most out-there weaponry money can buy, the latter of which he and uses to crush and/or extort the hell out of rival companies.*

Likes: Pretty ladies
Dislikes: People who mock his accent


Other:

Kiyone Ono isn't exactly a villain, but she sure does want to be one. Though she aspires to reach the same level of villainy that the likes of Stunkov and Spencer have achieved, she lacks the capacity to do anything that could be considered evil. As a result, her “crimes” consist of innocuous stuff like jaywalking, littering, and loitering where prohibited. Her cheery attitude and position as “Top Frogurt Seller” at her day job don't do much to help her achieve her goal.*

Likes: Strawberries
Dislikes: Being ignored

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There are several other secondary characters and a major villain I've yet to formally introduce, but you can look forward to information on those later. What, you thought I was going to give you everything in one go? You are a crazy person!

Check back soon for more on Updown Town; it'll be worth the wait!

*Kiyone and Spencer haven't received redesigns like the others have yet, but they may or may not get that treatment depending on what I feel like doing.

The Rise of Fall 2011: Animal Drawing

Man, I really am bad at keeping a regularly updated blog, aren't I? I've got nobody to blame but myself regarding these long stretches of inactivity, but at least I was doing some really productive things at school in the meantime!

My most recent semester at LCAD was an unusually breezy one; I rarely found myself on the breaking point of an anxiety attack unlike with some previous semesters, and the projects that were assigned across my various classes were all fairly easy to handle for the most part.

I have to say, though, I never suspected that my Animal Drawing class would have had as much of an impact on me as it ended up having. Little of the artistic growth I experienced as a result of my professor's teachings in there had to do with studying animal anatomy or figuring out how the muscles are arranged in a big cat's hind legs, though it still did play an important role in my learning how to draw non-anthropomorphic animals with confidence. What really contributed to this growth were my professor's lectures and demonstrations on classic draftsmanship. Having a sense of solidity in one's drawings lends even the most unbelievable subjects a sense of believability, therefore making having strong draftsmanship skills one of the highest priorities for traditional animators.

The final project for the class was pretty free-form. We were allowed to do whatever we wanted as long as it related to one or more of the major concepts that were taught in the class. Being the incorrigible dork that I am, I chose to redesign a trio of my Updown Town characters to look more like their respective species while taking some artistic inspiration from Team Fortress 2, Blacksad, and the work of Milt Kahl.

Frankie was the first up to plate (he is my avatar on the intertubes, after all), and I think he ended up with the most successful redesign of the bunch. He definitely looks much more stoaty than he used to, and a lot of his little accessories have helped sell more people on the whole "demolitions weasel" angle he's got.

He may not have changed too much from his original design, but I still think that the villainous Dr. Stunkov looks more like, well, a skunk now than he did before. Unlike with Frankie, Stunkov's real-life animal counterpart doesn't really have much in the way of physical features to exaggerate beyond the large, bushy tail, pink nose, and fur pattern. In the end, I decided to play up all three of those some more and make him a bit stouter for good measure.

The final candidate set for a redesign was Suko, a character who a lot of friends and family had mistaken for a fox for some reason or another. Raccoons have a very distinctive football shape to their heads, and I've found that giving him one has helped many more people correctly identify his species. Suko's role as the Updown Patrol's resident gadgetry expert and tech guru has also been made more clear through some of the changes in his costume accessories and that handy copter contraption.

These redesigns have done a whole lot to endear more people to my work and whatnot, but as far as I'm concerned, there are two versions of each character in my mind now: these new, redesigned versions, and the more human-proportioned versions that you've come to know me for.

I've still got plenty of room for improvement, but I can say with certainty that my spending those hours drawing nothing but cubes and cylinders has had plenty of positive results on my artistic output.

Be sure to stay tuned for some more posts regarding my thoughts on the semester! They'll be accompanied by more work than you can shake a stick at.

Welcome to Here!

Hey there, folks! It's about time I started up one of these, eh? Here's where you'll be able to see the sort of arting I get myself into, along with various other POINTS OF INTEREST.

It'll mostly be art-related stuff, but don't be surprised if you come across entries that don't fit the artsy criteria.

To start off, here's a few art-things I've scrounged together to give you a taste of what to expect (if you're new here, anyway).

This is a 30-second animation of my happy-go-lucky raccoon hero (what a mouthful!) Suko, who just so happens to have really bad luck with vending machines. The animation was the final project for my Animation 2 class over at Laguna College of Art and Design. I feel like the long hours spent working on it in the studio really paid off, though.

Mr. Pink Spandex right here is a new villain character I recently made up. He's a French-Canadian marten named Spencer with oodles of cash and oversized weaponry.

This chipper character is a redesign of Mr. Bean, the primary antagonist of Fantastic Mr. Fox (both the book and the film). He was final project in my Character Design class, where students were tasked with taking five characters from an existing story and redesigning them to fit a different genre, style, and time period, among other things.

Perhaps I'll say more about all this stuff later! For the time being, I just wanted to actually start up the blog after several months of deliberation.

Keep your eyes peeled for new stuff here!