bonzlydoo:SO, it’s week six and the final week of our Draftsmanship studies.During this class

bonzlydoo:SO, it’s week six and the final week of our Draftsmanship studies.During this class our assignment was to do a traditional full body turnaround of our character, and then draw 5 full body images of the character (expressing different emotions).“But we’ve already done a head turnaround of our character, surely that’s the hardest part.” I thought to myself ignorantly. NOPE, this was way harder. It was almost as thought all of our structural issues were emphasised at this stage, and if you cut any corners, it really stood out. This exercise was uniquely challenging, and like before I’ll be summarising my lecture notes in this post.I’ll start out with a great quote that Don gave us at the beginning of the lecture, (Which I write up because I really want to remember it).“Because art is such a subjective medium, there is no right or wrong way to do it. However, if you were to go work for someone, you are working to their subjective preference.” Keeping this in mind is so very important. Recognising that you as an artist can do whatever you like, embrace that artistic freedom when you are working on your own time. When you are working on someone else’s time, however, to their project, to their artistic preference, your skills are a tool to be used by them to better the concept. Remember this. Your ideas are to be used to create something better than the sum of your skills, because it is a combination of everyone’s skills/knowledge to develop the concept and better the product.  If everyone in a team works this way, and with a bit of luck, you get something quite wonderful.`My AdviceSo, based on the work that I did for this class, as seen above, here is the advice that I received.1) The Head. Implied shape. I was told to keep the ‘skull’ shape of my character clearly implied in the design. Firstly to prove that I understood, it, but secondly and more importantly, to make it easier for other animators to replicate accurate form. Have clear understanding of the structure of your character, everything on top (in this case the hair) is like icing on top of a well made cake, and icing always comes a secondary priority to the foundation of what you are making.2) The wings. Keep anatomy implied. Again, it’s the same as the advice that I received about the character’s head, but the flaw was so much more apparent on the wings. In my design, this was one area that I particularly goofed on. I didn’t fully understand the form of my character under all the drapery/feathers. This is particularly evident in the hands (if you can call them that). Are there hands under the feathers? Where does the muscle end and the feather start? How many feathers should be drawn? What does the constructive form look like? Honestly, I didn’t think it through, and even now I wouldn’t know unless I sat down to refine the design. I just thought “Hey that looks cool, lets go with that.”. Because of this the character’s consistency (particularly in the later emotional images) really stands out. Don’t do this. Think about your form! Understand it. Represent it. Keep construction clear, keep anatomy suggested clearly. What I should have done, was I should have drawn the hands, understood how they work, and then added the feathers on top. I was told, “If you tried to animate this character you’d have a tough time, because it’s more like an illustration drawing, than it is a drawing that could move from one page to another. The more you will have a good, appealing, animatable character.3) I was told to avoid parallel lines, especially in the legs. I emphasise more on ‘why’ this should be avoided, further down in this post, but in short, it looks boring. It is far more interesting to put the legs at an angle. It feels more natural and alive and adds to the character. After seeing this visually represented, I absolutely agree.Model SheetsHere are some tips/feedback I picket up about the model sheet process.Usually a model sheet will encompass basic information such as, Character name, a brief explanation of them, instructions how to construct the character, what they look like from multiple key angles, how many heads tall they are… it may have more professional looking aspects such as a boarder and studio/production info. Mine did not have all of these things, but if I were working in a studio, I would be expected to include at least most of these qualities.Character turn arounds are not about showing character emotion, they are about showing proportion and anatomy clearly so that other members of the production pipeline can replicate the character exactly. This means that you have to fully understand your character, how they are constructed (the from under the details), to be able to clearly represent it others. Going back to my example of how my character’s wings weren’t fully understood. They looked good in some drawings, but when you really think about it, they didn’t make sense, and if I were to hand these references to an animator, it may not make sense to them. This is the difference of character design for animation and illustration, my character made a good illustration but was not considered in enough detail for animation.“Don’t sacrifice construction for design” is what I was told. Construction of character is SO important in animation. Understanding how your character is structured, keeping that structure consistent, and implying that structure wherever possible. Pose SheetsA pose sheet is different to a model sheet. Here it is all about emotion. At this stage we are testing how the character moves, discovering their personality, how we want them to interact with the world, the way they show their emotions. With a pose sheet (or expression sheet) you are creating a reference for your character expresses them self. Studying model sheets, I find so much fun, studying acting both in animation and live action film. If you want to be a good animator, watch live action films! Take inspiration from everywhere you can to help diversify the way that your characters act. “The body is a language as well as the face” is what we were told. Imagine a faceless character, no, imagine just a hand. Think how many emotions that one limb can show all on its own. Tense with anger, limp with sadness, shaking with fear. Now bring in the whole body, how much emotion you can show even without the face. Learn to master the face and the body, with both in consideration your character will become all the more alive.Other more general drawing tipsWhen drawing remember to consider; all of these tips are designed to help improve the CLARITY of your drawing. The readability of it. The faster/more easily your audience can read your pose, the more easy it will be for them to feel what you want them to feel when looking at your image. Clarity of pose/emotion is especially important in animation because characters are always moving.We need to be able to read their emotion/what they are doing quickly in order to empathise with them and their situations. Keep these things in mind while drawing.Line of Action - which usually travels from toe to fingers. If you want good examples of what a line of action is, please check out Preston Blair’s completely free resource [Link]. Some of the best examples of a clear line of action in real life can most easily be seen in dancers. If you would like to practice this skill, try drawing some dancers off youtube videos. It is particularly clear in ballet. A clear line of action ads to clarity of emotion/pose. It is also worth nothing that a line of action can carry through an object that your character is holding. it sort of acts like a line depicting the force represented in an image. If your character is a rabbit pulling a carrot out of the ground don’t just draw them limply tugging at the root. Give your image can look EXTRA emphasised by emphasising your character’s line of action. Guide your audience’s eye through the image. Starts at your character’s feet, travels up and around their arched spine, up and over into the rabbit’s hands/mouth pulling at the carrot leaf with all of it’s might. Carry that line of action through the figure into the carrot, stretched and about to burst out of the earth! You are taking your reader, your viewer on a journey through the image. Make the reader really feel your character’s tension, their effort, by making their eyes travel strenuous bends, romantic ’s’ curves or action packed sharp jolts through your picture. This is good composition of form. Lead your viewer’s eye. This all gets taken in subconsciously and it always makes a difference, you can always feel it, feel how other’s work makes you feel, and remember, it is your job as the artist to think about it consciously and really make the viewer’s experience a memorable ride.Avoid Symmetry - Consciously tell yourself to avoid symmetry. A symmetrical drawing is a boring drawing. We as humans like asymmetry, the world is asymmetrical. Having too much symmetry in a drawing also creates a lack of depth in your work, sometimes this is desired, but most often not. If you have a character jumping in the air with all their joy, if you draw both hands in the air, make sure both hands are at a slightly different angle, one slightly more raised than the other. The legs should also be non-symmetrical. Everyone has a dominant leg, so naturally one leg will be left stretched and the other may be raised up higher.  I guarantee that doing this will look more interesting, more alive. Humans don’t move symmetrically, your characters shouldn’t either.To extend this point, try to avoid parallel lines in your art. Things get much more interesting  when  two legs are slightly bent rather than perfectly straight. It’s harder to do, but try to put things at an angle when you draw them, be aware of weight and how it falls un-evenly in the figure. Here’s another great quote that Don left us with in our last lecture.“I think [for animation or illustration] graphic drawing is like music, if you make the lines harmonise together, work together to form graphic harmony it is so much more interesting to look at, the lines can dance on such a drawing.” Try to do any kind of variation you can to avoid parallels. This includes parallel curved lines. DOn’t have two of the same type of curved line next to each other, juxtapose them just a little.Silhouette value - Let me tell you about the art of creating a good silhouette (a skill I have a lot to learn about). With a good character silhouette comes clear fast readability, possibly (in my opinion) faster than any other technique. It encompasses all of the previous mentioned rules. Ask yourself, with all of those details removed, can you understand the character’s emotion just by their silhouette? I’ll tell you someone fantastic to look at for studying this, Marilyn Monroe. She was a model and a master of her own form, she would apparently spend hours just looking in the mirror, understanding how her poses looked from every angle. Because of this she (apparently) could envision how her pose looked from the angle of the camera, and she knew how to work to make the pose look best from that angle. You look at a photo of Marilyn Monroe, you see a clear, readable pose, you instantly know the emotion she is portraying, all even without the details of her face. I would like to do some studies of this personally. As we’ve talked about before, how readability is so important in animation, your character’s silhouette is an absolute contributing factor to this fast readability. Analyse the animations, artists that you like, see if they do this too.(Funfact, it is also equally important when creating memorable character designs. I believe it was Alfred Hitchcock who believed that a memorable character silhouette made all the difference when your audience is remembering a character. Again, it’s that subconscious thing the thing that sticks in the back of your head, the way you take in visual information and remember it. Look at any Pixar character design, you will see that they do this too. Silhouette, silhouette, silhouette..)That’s all for now, see you all next week.-I am also on — [Instagram] | [Twitter] | [Deviantart] -- source link

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