Darren-
I changes my style in 2000 because I felt I had reached a plateau
with the older style. The artwork was becoming work, and I no longer
enjoyed drawing it. I revamped my style, spending more time on
details such as muscle tone, fur texture, and anatomical accuracies.
I changed the characters' extremities as well, since I never liked
the idea of feet with footpads but hands curiously devoid of them.
Plus, if a character had all-fur palms and fingertips, how would they
pick something up and grip it? It'd be quite frustrating!
The nose change came about because the characters needed nostrils
with which to pass air through. Call me a stickler for details, but
I couldn't tweak out everything else, and leave the noses simplified.
I also finally changed the characters' hands to a mixture of hand
and paw. I used to vary the amount of knuckles on a characters'
fingers from 3 (like us) to 2, with no consistency. I preferred the
2-knuckle version, as the curved claw could, in a sense, act as the
third digit. Plus, it looked a little more animalistic, more real.
I try to avoid drawing characters who look like little people in
costumes or who have amazingly smooth fur.
Another thing I'm still playing with is depth perception. Some
pictures are now drawn with an eye towards the moment. I had
discussed this with Pat Duke (Radio Comix) in the past, saying that I
wanted to not only capture a scene, but to capture the focus and the
moment. AFter all, when you look at something, the entire picture is
never in focus. That would be impossible. When you focus on an
object, the background and foreground become blurred a bit. That was
what I wanted to capture. That one second in time where the viewer
is focusing on one item and nothing else. An example of this
technique can be seen in the "Cervix with a Smile" picture. If you
notice, the only part of that picture that is inked is her thighs,
crotch and the speculum. Why? Because that's what the viewer was
focusing on at that particular moment in time. This same technique
is visible in almost all my folios since 2000.
Whew! Hope that explains it a bit!
--Jim Hardiman
--- In SkunkworksAMA_at_y..., "D. Smith" <Styx6000_at_a...> wrote:
> I noticed from past issues the girls noses, were triangles, with
> newest artwork the girls have 't-shaped noses'. Why the change in
> style?
Received on Tue Oct 02 2001 - 15:30:22 CDT