Summertime with Phineas and Ferb

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SHORT SUMMARY:

Been marathoning this show.  Love it to pieces; it goes in my best cartoons of all time list.  See full description for more details.  As par the course for me, this is my taking a show and throwing my own artistic twist on it.  This took a long time due to experimentation with vector drawing; this whole piece is digital, save for the buildings in the background which were taken from a screenshot of the episode depicted in the artwork.  Otherwise I'd be at this another age.

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LONG DESCRIPTION:

So . . . much . . . time . . .*faints*
Ugh, this took FOREVER.  And why?  Because I got the smart idea to try to make my artwork more like the show in aesthetics.  While in my art style.  AKA, I tried to color the lines.  If anyone has a shortcut method for this, PLEASE point me to the tutorial in case I feel like trying this stupid idea again.  Because I vector drew each individual line color coded, and had a million and seven layers by the time I was finished.  Oh, and it took over a month of intermittent free time usage.  A lot of vectoring, using the eye dropper tool for the right outline color that the show used, erasing where lines went over, and other odds-and-ends.  Only to find out, when it was all done, it looked TERRIBLE in my art style.  For starters, all the shading was practically the same color as the outlines, which didn't work at all.  Also, the show outlines white with black, which stood out GLARINGLY against the colored outlines.  If I'd spared a moment's comparison, I may have realized this and changed it to a mid-grey, but I didn't.  In the end, I flattened the whole dang mess together, threw a black hue over it, and turned all that work into something that would have taken only a week of free time loss by comparison.

So yeah.  If you've been wondering why no art for a while, blame this.  And my second PPG artwork, which got sidetracked because I got addicted to watching 10-12 (what ARE their ages anyways?) year-olds break the laws of physics over and over again to music while a platypus proved that "Loony Toon"-esque slapstick violence can still get past the censors (and bless them for it).

I love this show.  Its adorable.  I love how it advocates getting children off the couch and making the most out of their day while not being preachy about it.  I love that the humor is appreciative of adults as well as kids.  I love how they can SOMEhow slap two whole storylines into 10 minutes.  I love how they have deconstructed practically every form of music from the past 100 years and still come up with something catchy every blinking episode.  And I love how, for ONCE, there are NO DUMB CHARACTERS.  One of the creators even pointed this out, and I agree that trying to avoid moron-humor ups the class of this show.  So many shows I've liked have had clueless idiots, and while they can be funny in their own way, it is nice to see someone prove you don't need a humor crutch like that. 

Even more surprising for me in this show . . . I can't think of anything I don't like about it.  I love EVERY character, which is saying something.  No one annoys me at all (looking at YOU Billy from Grim Adventures, most annoying character EVER).  I love the animation, even though I thought it odd at first, and I especially love when they lampshade it like with Candace's neck length or Phinneas's head shaped like a triangle.  I love the episodic, 10 minute nature of the majority of the episodes, and I'd usually find that irritating but they MANAGE IT and its COOL and then its even MORE cool when the story spans the whole ep or, heaven forbid, TWO EPS!  I love the music, and even don't mind the ones that I would normally find annoying or cringe-worthy (this series made me rock out to RAP for crying out loud.  Heck, Norm's "Real Boy" is one of my favorite songs of the show, and my favorite music video).  I love the humor, the plots, the ideas, the stories  . . .  yeah I could gush about this forever.  I think the ONLY downside is that later series have been getting a mite on the preachy side about some things, but eh I've seen worse.

Enough about the series; ON TO THE ART.  Well, I already whined like a little girl doing chores about the lineart, so . . . not much else to add actually.  Used vectors also for shading.  Oh, and I did vector draw one of the buildings with a screenshot over top of it for reference, but the difference was so very little in clarity, and I like the sort of blurry-distance-perspective aspect from the original screenshot, so I just used that.  If the show doesn't like that, I'll . . . *sigh* spend another month vector drawing each individual building you see there.  But until they do, know that I'm not to thank for the beautifully artistic buildings in the background.  I got them straight from the show.  Thank them.  Hm . . . used brushes for clouds, and that about covers it.
Oh one more thing.  I used this to practice some figure drawing.  As you can see there's some wonky poses going on, and I used some references from manga books and pictures.  Some successes . . .  some uh, falling short of success but its the thought that counts.  I'd point out places that make me cringe (now that its all colored and shaded) but then if you're like me, that will be all you see.

Ferb rocks a guitar.  'Nuff said.  Oh, except that (and I've said this on my other artworks )I love inventor-geeks, and this show is LOADED WITH THEM!  Yay.  I used Disney-style for Perry's bill; figured that would be relevant given that Disney owns this show and that worked better for a more realistically animated anthropomorphic semi-aquatic egg-laying mammal of action.  Yeah . . . Perry rocks.  And Candace and Doof have the best voice acting.  Period.  And Doof is done by one of the creators; how cool is that?

Scene was inspired by that episode when they hit trampolines with an anti-grav ray and started bouncing all around the neighborhood sky.  I would have LOVED that as a kid, and the image stuck in my brain as I was thinking of how best to depict the show.  I think it's a good example of the physics-breaking, super-smart, fun-loving, and ultimately pointless ways they spend their summertime.  No point of the episode looked EXACTLY like this, because Candace was inside trying not to float away during a brunch, but I wanted to depict most the main cast (except Doof . . . not sure how to draw him, to be honest, or how he'd fit here anyways) in mid-antics.

OK So all credit for this series goes to DISNEY and their cable channel (don't kill me over the screenshot thing plz) as well as co-creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh.  If anyone can fill me in on what's up with the nickname "Marsh"? . . .?