New Blog

Yey! I moved!

http://www.lostincleveland.com/wpnadia

Character Development _ Head Construction

I started head construction some days ago, and I continue it now through Preston Blair book.

- Circle for head and tilt (guide lines) easier to draw if first draw cross in the circle(head) and then draw another circle (tilt) around it and inside the head... Tilt circles will not look like perfect circles though and more like thin ovals, because of the perspective.

- Flexible features are: mouth and cheeck, eyebrows, ears - little flexible and base of the ears, base of the nose - not flexible.

- Head can be different rounded shapes, it depends on the character.

- Tilt always changes! It depends on the expressions, speech, angle of the head, where is your character looking.

- Tilt will help to see where bases of the nose, mouth, eyes, ears (if any) should be.

Character Development _ Body Skeleton

The hardest part for me in the skeleton foundation is to figure out length and arrangement of the body parts. Like, for example, on the second picture where the cat is throwing the ball. The leg is up in the air and hand should be behind it, but on the skeleton structure it's not clear (same where he is crossing his hands). When drawing the structure I should always keep in mind WHAT I want to draw, the finished pose, and trying to produce it on a paper with simple lines. It's like ripping it appart and leaving only base lines, the skeleton. Also, the head always looks wrong. Probably because head already have some shape to it... It is hard to connect shape and lines together.
I found that I don't like the skeleton foundation much, thought it is helpful to know it, and probably in some situations it will help me to keep proportions correctly.

Character Development _ Body built from circular and rounded forms

I got animation book by mail yesterday. I mean I got it today, because lazy post office worker couldn't bring his ass upstairs. Instead I got message in the mail that he/she missed me (I WAS HOME!) and I needed to drive to post office to take this package. My husband's package came in a same day, but it was smaller and it fit into the mail box :) Well, I get angry and upset easily, but can't really do any harm to people, so I cooled down in a couple of hours and brought myself to the post office today morning.
Here are my new pictures and notes. I started from the begining of the book and really like it so far! Also, as ususal, I added one picture of my own, trying to draw it with new concepts that I've learned.
Character development:
- think what type (ex. goofy, cute, screwball) you want to draw
- rough sketches (idea)
- add features and details
1. Cartoon construction:
- proportion is important! (use head measurement o.o)
- keep reference drawing of the character when animating
2. Body built from circular and rounded forms:
- circular, rounded form - general parts of the body, rest is around this parts.
- better on screen, easier to animate

Lesson #3 Body

This is the third lesson by Preston Blair's book. WEll, really it's number four, because I skiped one where I needed to redraw and correct the first one.... I hate to perfect my work doing it over and over again. It's so boring! Except, of course, if it's not my job when people pay me for pictures (I wish I have this kind of job though!). I really think that perfection comes with practice, and practice should be different and interesting every day. I draw couple body examples from the book today, and after that I draw my own character. That way I'm not just copying Preston's great pictures but trying to understand concepts on my own experience.

How to embed swf files into your blog

First what you need to do is upload your swf file to the internet. I used free hosting like www.hotlinkfiles.com . Then after upload, you will see the html link to your file It will look like: http://www.hotlinkfiles.com/files/name.swf
Second, use this code in your post:
<object height="340" width="150"><param name="movie" value="your file's name.swf"><embed width="150" heigh="340" src="paste your link here"></embed></object>
Done!
Example you can see in my previous post.

test swf embed

Lesson #2 Stretch and squash on heads

Drawing stretched and squashed circles first will help to understand how the head should look like. Also I catched myself on making faces while drawing. Probably, it helps me to feel the emotion better, I was trying to respond to the picture. If the dog is angry, I was making angry faces...
Another note on today's lesson: do not afraid to stretch or squash more then you want to. My mistake was that I didn't see difference on my pictures. Stretch and squash were almost the same. One of the cool design principles is to make different objects REALLY different. Smth extra small with extra big together. It brings attention and contrast.
And one more thing: I found helpful to draw the arrows to show the movement of the head. First, I was drawing construction, then arrows, after that I was checking and redrawing if needed my construction and then I draw the elements of the head.

Lesson #1 Construction - The Head (end)

Last page of the lesson 1. Searched for people who are doing same lessons. Seems like they all stoped working on it after the first one. Will see how it goes with me. Also I looked through other lessons on the site and don't like the idea of copying Preston Blair's picture with exactly every detail. I think the most important thing to learn here: principles and a lot of practice. Even if I'm drawing circles and lines - I must draw it every day. Just don't let your pencil be dull (although I use mechanical pencil hehe ).

Lesson #1 Construction - The Head (cont)

I feel very lazy today, but did the lesson anyway. It is probably not as accurate as I wanted it to be. Also, I ordered animation book by Preston Blair today.

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 1

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 1

Lesson #1 Construction - The Head

Не знаю можно ли здесь переключать язык на английский. Видимо нельзя. Когда нибудь заведу платный блог. Пока буду на английском пытаться царапать. Простите за грамматику :)

Today I've got through Lesson One. There is a link there where you can see every page of the first book by Preston Blair.
Although, I'm not finished with the lessons, here are sketches that I've done today:

Провела несколько часов в интернете сегодня в поисках хороших уроков по анимации. Наткнулась на Meta: The $100000 Animation Drawing Course . Это довольно старый пост в котором John Kricfalusi публиковал уроки по анимации на основе книги "Animation" by Preston Blair. Я уже давно задавалась вопросом: как же это получается у художников рисовать анимацию? Я решила что эти десять уроков стоит прочесть и точно стоит купить книгу. Я опубликую свои рисунки по этим урокам в скором времени.