Cartooning - Creating Motion Blurs

Introduction

I know we've all seen the whiz-lines cartoonists use to make things look like they're moving. They're simple but effective.

Motion Lines example taken from wikipedia

The joke in my latest comic relies on a background that looks like it's moving, but while this whiz-line technique is great for objects, it doesn't work so well for the whole background.

What Does a Moving Background Look Like?

It's easy to find photos with motion blur, and these are a great source of inspiration. The image looks like it's been smeared sideways, this tends to destroy detail and soften the focus.

Image from Dan Milnor's Photography Blog

Recreating The Motion Blur Effect

Start off with a relatively simple background, maybe add a few vertical elements so that the blur will be more noticeable.

My Starting Image

Then do the following:-

• Selected a thin blur tool, then using the line drawing constraint, stretch lines across the page from left to right. (ensure all in same direction)
• Add thin grey lines running across the page, but don't be too perfect here.

Motion Blue and Whiz Lines Added

It really captures the sideways smearing caused by movement, with the grey lines borrowing from the whiz-line technique in a subtle way.

Now, when I add a cowboy riding a rodeo bull, it gives the feel of movement and speed.

The Completed Image

The completed cartoon can be found here --> http://area5-1.thecomicseries.com/comics/81/

Area 5.1 - Mos Eisley (A False Hope)

Introduction

I was watching a Youtube video the other day about the changes Lucas made to the original Starwars film. As they were showing the Mos Eisley scenes, it struck me how empty the streets were for a busy space port town. I'm guessing George was going for a western sort of feel, but in our modern world of traffic filled roads and congested cities it looked very alien. It's the same when you look back at the intro sequence to The Prisoner which was set in 60's London. (see for yourself)



It got me thinking, what would Mos Eisley look like today?.. and sometimes that's all the inspiration you need!

Then And Now

I started out with the video frame below, and borrowed one of the land speeder images I'd created for my Starwars themed Area 5.1 cartoon - Trooper Trouble.

A Mos Eisley scene from Starwars

The challenge was to take this simple scene and make it look overpopulated and tainted by modern life. To me this meant:-

• HGV / Trucks and delivery vehicles.
• Cars (or equivalent) and I mean big ones like SUV's.
• Removal of pedestrians.
• More buildings, and bigger buildings.
• More aircraft / spaceships - (it was a spaceport after-all)

What didn't make it into the mix was pollution and graffiti.

Adding the Congestion Layers

Finally after adding those elements I needed to add the text, and my immediate thoughts were to use the Starwars font, but in the end I settled for a NASA style font. I must have used that before because it was already installed on my computer.

Here's the final cartoon,.. nobody has mentioned the two objects I'd added that don't belong here, perhaps not as obvious due to the size reduction required.