Swipe File : House Interiors, Howie Post

Swipe File: Howie Post Exteriors

A lot of artists keep "swipe files" for reference. Kirby and Wood used to talk about it. No one knows what everything looks like and an organized swipe file of photos and other artists' interpretations of things is handy reference.

I am not good at drawing backgrounds or coming up with interesting camera angles. Howie Post is a great reference for me. He has already done all the work of studying what the world looks like and has simplified it. When I look at a real scene - like a park, or a street or a living room, my brain is confused by all the clutter of the details and it's hard for me to see the simple shapes that hold all the details together.When I look at Post's scenes, the world makes more sense to me. He has eliminated the clutter of real life and boiled it down into bite sized easy to digest chunks. He also draws the simplified shapes with flair and cartoon license. Nothing is on a straight line. Everything is swollen in old style cartoon fashion.
He doesn't generally stage things left to right - which is my natural tendency, having been bred in Saturday Morning cartoon studios.
I like the way these 3 girls are grouped together in perspective. Their feet are not lined up in a horizontal plane like you see in most TV cartoons. Howie breaks up his comic panels into multiple angles and shots to keep everything lively and natural.
He has also worked out a handy 3/4 walk position.
Doing quick sketches from these panels helps add variety to my own finite collection of poses and angles.
Howie draws nice sidewalk and street scenes. He varies the types of fences. Here's a stone fence. I usually resort to drawing the stock wooden plank fence when I draw a fence. Maybe now I won't.
If you ever wanted to draw a nice stone hole, now you can.
Simple cartoony trash basket.

I don't suggest stealing these layouts exactly for your cartoons or mine, but sketching them and trying to understand the general shapes and concepts makes it easier to create new scenes.

I think I'll keep adding to this online swipe file. It'll be an easy way to find reference quickly.

Johnny Hart's Cartoon Physics

Johnny Hart's drawings look simple on the surface but they are very clever, I think. He has a great natural sense of cartoon physics or cause and effect - how one event leads logically (or illogically) to another.
It looks like he could have been influenced by Roadrunner cartoons.
His drawings have a lot of tension and feeling in them too. Each drawing contains a lot of complex information. ...and the continuity of the successive drawings is brilliant. He only has a small number of panels to describe a lot of action. Making the decisions of what parts in between the action you can leave out and still get the idea and gag across is very brain-intensive. I have trouble with that. I want to show every tiny fraction of action in my continuity and it tends to drag out the cartoons longer than necessary.
On the other hand, Hart is one of my biggest influences and largely sub-consciously. My storyboard scribble style is much like his finished drawing style. Fast and just what is essential, without worrying about making a perfectly polished drawing.
This is how I see the function of storyboards-to convey the continuity and essential part of the gag, feelings and story.
What's really hard is hanging on to these essentials from department to department in an animation studio, where the successive polishers smooth out the finish, but sand down the guts.

Look how much information and feeling is packed in that middle panel of the Dinosaur smashing into the tree. You see the impact as the main action. The tree is being ripped out by the roots as a secondary action and the roots are dragging in the opposite direction of the tree. On top of that, all the dirt is flying off the roots. The leaves are being smashed against the top of the tree in heavy bunches and a few individual leaves for texture.

Then the tree impact is causing Peter to fly out of the leaves on a raft (why does he have a raft in a tree?)

Hart is conveying pacing in still drawings, without the luxury of animation and real time. Very impressive.

You have to be a very good editor to draw powerful comic strips like this.