A very wise fellow (with impeccable taste) recently commissioned me to do a painting of a snail. This is what I came up with.

4" x 6" cel vinyl acrylic on watercolor paper.

It's official. Today is my first day of self-employment! I decided to break away from the stable work environment to focus more on being a painter and to take on freelance design work as needed. I'm very excited to do my own thing and ready to spend time becoming the artist I'd like to be. Expect more frequent art updates from now on.

Starting now:


A quick lunchtime doodle of my former coworker, Devi, on her last day of work. I almost got the likeness right. The moustache was her request. :)

I was curious to know more about the working methods on Samurai Jack and how the overseas painters matched the stateside paint colors, so I asked Scott whether they emailed scans of the comps, keys and backgrounds to Korea, or if they sent over the actual paintings. He was nice enough to reply and drop even more knowledge about the process.

Drake,

"...on Sam Jack when you sent the keys to Rough Draft, were you sending the real keys, or scans of them?"

We sent the original paintings and scans. I scanned all the keys myself and color corrected them so they were accurate. At the time I think most shows just made color Xeroxes of everything and then shipped the originals overseas.

Once the keys are scanned they are ready for the "Color Models" to be created. All of the character designs, props and effects (anything that will animate) are scanned into the computer and color-filled by the "Color Stylist". The color stylist can't really start until they have the scanned background to judge their work over.

Before Samurai Jack all shows had outlines on their animation and some shows like Dexter's Lab had very thick line work. The outlines are very helpful in keeping everything "reading" over the background, remove them and you've got problems. The thicker the line the more fool proof the read.

On Samurai Jack our characters had no outline whatsoever so it was critical for me to make sure that the original color relationship between the "color keys"and the "color models" would not drift apart. Now here is what I imagined could happen overseas - the overseas painter paints a final background trying to match the color key but the colors are a bit off. Then they scan their final background which will throw the color off even more.

To get back on track there needed to be a color correction step that matched the final bg scan to my scan of the color key. I actually saw this being done when I visited Korea during the second season of SJ. It was incredible, the final scan was so far off that the people doing the correction were individually selecting every color and forcing it to match the key. They were working so fast I couldn't believe my eyes!

Attached is an example of a color model over a bg key from the "Jump Good" episode.

-Scott

Here's the lovely example he sent over:



If any of you want more insider info about Samurai Jack, the round table discussion with Genndy, Scott and some of the other super talented folks on the Season 4 DVD is great. You should own it.

Scott Wills contacted me recently and was kind enough to set me straight on the artwork I purchased and the process behind doing backgrounds on Samurai Jack. As much as I wanted to keep this stuff to myself, I thought somebody else might be able to benefit from this info too. Especially considering the time and effort put into this detail breakdown.

Scott wrote:

Hi Drake,

The paintings that you bought are "production backgrounds" painted at Rough Draft in Korea. They were not painted by me or any of the other artists that worked on the color keys for Samurai Jack.

Let me explain the basic "color key" process on Samurai.

PICKING THE COLOR KEYS
I go over the storyboard and background drawings (layouts) with Genndy and pick which shots will need a color key. We discuss the mood and any color ideas (if any) that Genndy had in mind. On average we would do about 30 keys per 22 minute episode (some episodes got over 50).

PAINTING THE COLOR KEYS
A full sized (12 field) production background is about 11 X 13 inches. The color keys are painted much smaller, about 4.5 X 6 inches. The idea is to do small quick paintings that will later be painted full size, tighter and with more detail overseas. Often we would pick too many keys to paint in the time allotted so we would have to paint even smaller rougher keys we called "comps" (about 2 X 4 inches). In addition we would also paint a few full sized "Finals" to demonstrate the final technique.

Many episodes would also require special "how to" instructions to demonstrate a certain technique or theory.

The keys are not intended to be used as the final production BG that you would see on screen.

MATCH TO LIST
Since not every shot gets a color key a "match to" list is created to explain which key to use as reference for what shot.

Example:

Shot 1 - Key 1
Shot 2 - match key 1
Shot 3 - match key 1
Shot 4 - match key 1
Shot 5 - Key 5
Shot 6 - match key 5

and so on.

For "The Woolies" (episode 4) Jenny and I painted 41 keys, 7 comps and 4 finals in about 3 weeks. Jenny actually painted the "comp" for the BG you bought, not the "final".

Unfortunately by the time we produced Samurai Jack most of the good BG painters that had worked on Ren & Stimpy at Rough Draft Korea were gone. Many shows were being painted digitally with sterile and cold results. It was very difficult to get much quality at all. Often when we got the "work print" back from Korea I would be shocked to see the scanned keys and even comps on screen! They didn't even bother to paint many of the final backgrounds. But incredibly they would repaint some of the finals we sent them! You wanted to tear your hair out, that's TV animation for you.

There you have it! This definitely cleared up a few things for me, and was so great to hear directly from the source. Very cool of Scott to put such a detailed message together. And the icing on the cake? He sent some gorgeous examples of his work (plus one of Jenny's)!

Enjoy!



Final

Comp

Detail

Comp

Instruction note

So cool, not only to see the stunning finals and comps, but also to see the "how to" note!

Thanks very much Scott! Made my week!

I have recently acquired these beauties from Samurai Jack. The internet can be a magical place sometimes...

From Jack and the Hunters.

From Jack and the Woolies.

The precision with which these were painted is stunning. They are definitely hand done, but with an almost machine-like accuracy and control. Amazing to see in person! Btw, if anyone knows whether it was Scott Wills or Jenny Gase-Baker that did them, I'd love to know!

EDIT: The top was likely done overseas and the bottom one was done by Jenny herself! Thanks to Chris and Jenny for confirming!

EDIT EDIT: See post above for Scott's clarification.