Hey it's Hyperjam here, it's been almost a year since my last post and like the last post never really had anything to say until now-especially in my own art and how i see it, but i'll elaborate on that later so let's jump into it.

Appeal in art

Appeal is something i think is necessary when your making art, but recently i feel like there's many artists who try to make everything they make "cute". This isn't to say you can't draw cutesy but i feel like as an artist you need to have flexiblility and have the ability to draw ugly, all the nitty gritty details that all the other artists ignore. Whenever an artist tries to draw a gross or gritty looking city it never looks real, it always looks like what someone who's never been in the city thinks is gritty. But on the opposite ends of the spectrum you have films with grit like Heavy Traffic, Akira, or MFKZ. You can tell in these films that a city is a place that's just as sprawling and unpredictable as it gets. i can't properly put it into words so i feel like these 3 quotes will better exemplify what i mean.

Source-http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

Source: Here

Source: Here

I'm also guilty of never really drawing what's around or in front of me, always trying to show the necessary qualities in a drawing, but i feel like learning to draw the gross, unappealing, yet genuine look of some things whether its people, animals, or certain environments is something i need to improve at, and since i'm already talking about my own personal art i might as well transition to my next topic.

Anime and Style

This may come off as pretentious but for the longest time i always tried to stay away from anime whenever i was drawing. Even though there's a ton of anime I like and some of my biggest inspirations are artists like Go Nagai and Katsuhiro Otomo, manga and anime is something I just attempted to look the other way to. The real reason for this is in hopes it made my style stick out more, whenever i heard people talk about Trigger or Gainax or wherever big anime or manga artist are out there, there was always this voice in my head going " God these people are idiots, why can't anybody today look at artists like Milton Caniff or Bruce Timm or Alex Toth"-as well as believing more and more artist opting for a more "anime" art style and a less western one, i even looked as some Euro comics just on the basis that it was European and not Japanese art. Looking back it was pretty damn lame and i should learn to embrace different styles and artists in the future regardless if they are Japanese or not. Recently I feel I haven't been the draftsmen i thought i was and understand that I need to learn real principles like perspective, anatomy, and posing and not just rely on quirks from other artist. There's this Shane Glines presentation and he basically said in one part that he always took certain quirks from different artists and that never really felt genuine to him. Here's the clip for anyone interested Youtube.

Theres also this fantastic spumdonor tweet that i couldn't agree more on

My Goals

Another recent thing is that I feel like I do a lot of flip flop from what i think is cool. One day i could see a really realistic and heavily shaded piece of animation and think "I wanna do that one day, that's my end goal" and the next I see some really cartoony and exaggerated piece of animation and think the same exact thing. The whole reason i even started my own personal animation playlist so i couldn't have to scroll through hundreds of my likes just to see something I thought looked cool again. If I always try to imitate or replicate some of my favorite artists but i never really try to draw with my own flow, and with my birthday passing recently i now have this need to improve as much as i can before my next birthday. There's this think one of my friends said that was along the lines of " When i draw i don't compare myself to other artists, i try to compare myself to my art the year before" and I feel like that's a much more personal and honest way of drawing. there's always this idea that everyone is better, you need to imitate or do what everyone else iis doing but I feel like it's appropriate to close of this post with probably one of the most inspiring pieces of advice i've read by Shane Glines.

Sorry of this came of as rambely, just needed to get my ideas out there quickly, anyways cya.

Hey its been a while, i haven't posted on here in the past couple of months since I haven't had anything to say that I couldn't just say in a paragraph on twitter, but now i'm back from the depths of hell to talk about the shit thats been on my mind.

Update

There isn't much to say, I've been working on cartoons with my friends a lot and with luck you can see most of them this year, but who knows.

I've also been doing a lot of drawing since the last post, i feel like my art has really improved, but theres also a lot of aspects that I need to improve on. I've also had this idea that More details=Better and I feel like thats kinda wrong. Appeal in art is more important, something that sticks in people head. I've been thinking about artist like Katsuhiro Otomo and Todd McFarlane who add a lot of detail to their art and i feel like it just adds up to years of experience. One of my favorite artists Alex Toth spent his entire career trying to find that fine line of only showing only the necessary details in a drawing and i feel like these two conflicting ideas of less detail and more detail has been making me feel off putting as an artist. Like I said before appeal is the most important but I'm still trying to find that balance between appeal and detail. it took artist years to find this, so maybe i'm just coming off as impatient. the only way to find out is to just just keep drawing, so hopefully i'll get this mentality out of my head soon.

Online Presence

Everyone is so eager to to grow up when there also just as immature and dense when they where in middle school. these people are so eager to get into the animation or art industry fresh out high school and when they can barely draw. Artists need to slow the fuck down and have fun, theres plenty of time to get into any industry without sacrificing your sense of humor and creativity. Artists like these will belittle you for making a shocking joke but at the same time still do the retarded and immature habits they've been doing since they where 15. These people are so scared to do anything different or say anything that may provoke someone, they build an ego. These artists act like their revolutionaries for making fun of Disney when i reality that probably where they want to work the most. This mentality will only make you grow and ego and have a superiority complex over your peers . obviously I'm not expecting industry people to say the n word on their public page but its just embarrassing when you see someone tell you to grow up when there just as immature than you and over 6 years older.

Need to make something big

Theres always this need to make something big when your a young artist (im guilty of this), that when your just a we little lad you need to make the next big franchise that will wow people. The next Star Wars, the next Spongebob, the next idea that'll fling you into public recognition, but i feel like this mentality goes against everything that means to being an artist. Artists are so eager to make something there hoping other people will enjoy instead of making something for themselves. Artists like Ralph Bakshi or Go Nagai didn't make their films or manga's to provoke people and scare parents, they just wanted to make something they wanted to see that noone else was. theres always this need to make a big story when in reality when you start it young i'll just be nothing of a shitty mess .Emrox said it best where "Same with anyone else I've ever heard talk about their big epic masterpiece at age 16 - they pretty much never get past 10% completion." and i couldn't agree more. George Lucas didn't make the first Star Wars film until he was 33. Otomo didn't start writing Akira until he was 28, and Jamie Hewett didn't help co-create Gorillaz until he was 30. This also isn't including the years of experience all of these artist had in there respective medium. Its always nice to see when someone sold an idea when they where 19 and 20 but those don't happen alot. its best to improve as an artist, view media that inspired you whether its movies, comics, or books, instead of just making a shitty derivative story not even you will like in retrospect

I'm not trying to act like i'm superior or better than people for these ideas, I've also had dreams or making my epic, but thats not gonna happen soon, and its best to make the stuff i want to see now than a big epic story that spans years of production.

Thats all i had to really say, so cya.

hey everyone, just wanted to say that I made a Halloween one shot comic you can read it here

If it ever gets taken down for some reason heres the zip file

Heres another post, I like using newgrounds as a blog, might use it more often in the future.

This is mostly a rant about animation, mostly how i animate. The way I've been animating is that i draw out the poses and I add about 2 or 3 inbetweens in them, add a smear frame or bouceback and ease in/out off frame if needed, and repeat until the cartoon is over

Animating like this isn't fun, its boring, basic, and makes the animation look stiff. i've been doing this method for about as long i've been animating, and the problem is that i always do pose to pose, and never thing about that really is important in a cartoon like line of , posing, composition, and animating straight ahead.

Whenever I thing about cartoons I like, (especially the more limited ones above), i always try to thing "How did they do that, what was their thought process behind it". But something I know whenever I see a cartoon like these i can always tell that they had fun making these, or at least had some artistic integrity making these, and that something i cant really say about anything i've made outside of tornada bumps. i love making bumps, there a great way to experimental and I'm always excited to show people when i'm done, but when i'm making something now (especially something that isn't a animation test) it feels like a chore and never something out of fun or interest. I'll never forget the time about 1-2 years ago when i was looking at animation livestreams to see how they animated, trying to find a different workflow then the basic '2-3 inbetweens between these 2 keys evenly"

The cartoons above also feel "complete", idk how to describe it but the way the animation, backgrounds, and composition come together looks good and that something I've always had a problem with on my own cartoons, whether its the background or framing of the characters.

This isn't to say i hate animating or cartoons but with the process and workflow I have i feel like animating will not be fun at all, especially if I want to make more cartoons in the future. i need a different workflow to animating, and i'm going to try and find one, as i want to make cartoons that are fun more then ones that look nice. If anyone has any tips feel free to comment.

This is long overdue but I want to thank everyone for the positive response from Baystaters and Psychic Psycho got, from the comments, the extra animation done by BigtexasTony, Huntercomics, Proud9000 and especially Jaster , if it wasn't for him i most likely would've completed both animations through his encouragement.

Baystaters

I also wanted to talk about my series Baystaters, its this series i've been making recently with the help of some friends, a slice-of-life show fallowing the lives of the main characters living in Worcester. It came a long way since I had the idea back in 2016 and 2017. But a problem i've been recently running into is not giving it the proper attention it deserved. While working on episode 2 (which is currently being worked on) i've had ideas for other animations i want to do, some that i probably won't even have the opportunity to make until next year, as well a barely talking about the show or drawing the characters, so i figured i'll change that for better now, as my mind wondering on cool stuff i want to make is getting really distracting.

I've also been working on the show for a while, so redesigns and art changed or inevitable, the show already looks nothing like it did in episode 1 now, as multiple characters have been redesigned and changed for the better, i need to redesign more characters in the future but this is what i've done so far

they look a hell of a lot better then their first incarnation, back when my art was a Matt Wilson clone

Art and Animation

Like i said before my mind always wonders on creating new content instead of working on the stuff i have, this is because of a sort of work process i have. i feel like i need to be constantly animating something, and if i'm not i'm wasting my time. So whenever i have free time i feel like i need to work on something, whether its a friends project, a test animation or something else, i most haven't taken a solid 1 month break from aniamtion int he past 3 years, and i'm ok with this, but the problem is with my free time as an artist. i want my art to impove, or at least try soemthing different, so whenever i have the freetime to draw and try something different i either do it for 5 minutes and stop or give up and ask if someone needs something to be animated. this may seem like i'm taking art to seriously or trying to hard but i think my perspective of art has changed in the past 3 years when i started drawing. I've read more comics, seen more movies, and gained a lot more inspirations then i did back then, i made this image back in august of 2020, and since then i had a lot more fun drawing and animating and trying new things

once i'm done doing the work for my friends i need to sit on my ass and do art, even if it looks like shit at least i'm trying something different, especially with animation as there are different techniques and ways of animation i want to do that i've been inspired by, and i need to just sit down and improve my craft, i know it won't happen in a week or maybe even in a couple of months, but i feel like it would be worth it.

Hobbies and Skills

During the past couple of months i recently took an interest in 3d, after i gave up on it a couple of years ago. I'm glad i'm doing something different, even though it seems really daunting i'm willing to try 3d, and i feel like it could be really fun to do, as well as incorporating it in my animation. I've also taken an interst in video editing, nothing crazy, just simple stuff what i can do if a want to make a ytpmv or something, i feel like i need an interest that isn't related to art, you could say video editing is art but i feel like its different enough to feel less derivative compared to me modeling a charcater or drawing an in-between, ya know?

The Future

You probably won't see an animation thats longer then a minute anytime soon, especially one that isn't an animation test, bump, or stupid joke, so if you where waiting for the next beautifally animated 15+ minute cartoon coming out your out of luck, i've just been busy with art, school, and my friends.

TLDR:

want to imrpove art, ty for the support, want to try new things in the future

that pretty much everything i wanted to talk about in this post, hope this doesn't make me sound gay or whinny but i feel like this was needed, cya!

I have a newground account now, I guess this is cool