Deskribing My New Addition

I was browsing around on eBay a few days ago and I couldn't believe my eyes when I stumbled across an animation desk for a fraction of it's normal price...

...so I bid

...and I got it!

So now I feel a bit more like an animator (alright I know I haven't actually animated much yet). So here it is:I dismantled my old animation "desk", which was quite a sad event. It's amazing how one ends up bestowing a personality on a piece of furniture! I was hoping to get round to building my own desk as there is something appealing about creating art on a desk which I have built myself, but I just couldn't pass this one up. It feels a bit more like mine now that my girlfriend and I have cleaned it up a bit and added a few extra features. Maybe I'll build a nice posh one when I have the skills to put it to full use.

Forging a-Head

I've was practicing heads again yesterday as I haven't managed to perfect them yet. I was sitting on the train on my way to have some pretty painful dental surgery so I tried to calm my nerves by sketching.This is a composition of the best heads I produced (there were four pages in my sketchbook filled with them). I have noticed that I seem to have a habit of bringing the jaws too far forward on most of them, which is something I will try to work on. I think I didn't notice this at the time of drawing them because it doesn't really look wrong until the mouth is put in place.

I have also been practicing drawing circles a bit.
I'm trying to get to a stage where I can produce a good circle with only a couple of lines, but I'm not there yet.

Just Plane Drawing

Well after meeting with Tao, I was eager to get practicing. Since I was to fly home to the UK that very same day, I had a good eight hours to get started. After spending a few minutes swallowing, gulping, blowing whilst holding my nose, pulling strange faces and all the other rediculous looking things we all do to stop our ears from popping on take-off, I brought out a brand new sketch pad and a ball-pen (after being inspired to draw with a pen by both Tao and my girlfriend) and began to sketch furiously.

I was rewarded with a page of hands which I was actually pleased with! Alright, these were actually drawn at the airport before take-off, but there are no interesting things to say about that!! I have started to note down the locations in which I was drawing, maybe so that I can be all nostalgic in years to come.With these hands, I made absolutely sure that I constructed them properly before filling in any details, as I have a habit of starting to construct, but then just drawing like I have always done. The drawing on the top left was a triangular prism shape, with sausage shapes attached, the one on the bottom left was a sort of misshapen square with sausage shapes attached, and the one on the bottom right was a cuboid with sausage shapes attached...I have a craving for sausages now! Actually in the bottom right drawing, I split each finger into three cylinders since a bent sausage would surely not look right!

Next I did some simple shapes. I don't think I'm too bad at drawing them. I maybe just need some practice on my circles.I then decided to try some heads. I have a book that explains the positioning of all the features of the human face but I didn't have it with me so I had to experiment a bit to get it right.
As you can see, my attempts started out pretty poorly. I had started with a circle and split it in half to give an eye line. However, after a few drawings which really didn't look right, I concluded that the forehead was too short in comparison to the jaw. I knew from when I did portrait paintings at school that the eyes should be ablout half-way down the head, but since the jaw protrudes further down, this didn't mean half-way down the construction sphere. Therefore, I decided to try lowering the eyeline. I then noticed that I had a habit of drawing the cheeks too low in relation to the position of the eyes. After that, I simply played around with the construction of the head and the jaw until it started to look more human. The last attempt here is a more cartoony face, but still built the same. I think heads are an area I really need practice with.

I then decided to take a bit of a break from constructing heads and hands. I quite liked experimenting with drawing the head, so I decided to do the same with eyes alone. I took the standard cartoon eye that I have been drawing and changed it to make different expressions. For a couple of these, I didn't pay attention to what end result I was going for, and simply altered lines to combine the eyes from different expressions to see what I ended up with.
I found this to be quite a useful exercise, teaching me how to create an eye that expresses emotions other than just happiness or anger.

Finally, I just drew some characters as I was getting too tired to really learn anything new. Although the first one is pretty rubbish, I quite like the second two (the boxer-type and Gob).
I have to say that I have been converted to using ballpoint pens for drawing. I'm not sure what it is about them that I like, but if you haven't used them much before for anything other than writing, give them a try!

Back to Business...and Basics!

If you are wondering why I haven't posted anything new in a while, it's because I have been on holiday in Florida with my girlfriend and her family. However, I'm back now and its time to start drawing again!

Whilst in Florida, I had the good fortune to meet up with ex-Disney, Dreamworks and Warner Bros animator, Tao Nguyen, who I have mentioned before as being the author of the ProSketch website. He now creates children's books with a character called Mighty Mite, which you can see at The Amazing Factory.

Well after having a chat about the animation industry, Tao gave me some drawing tips and things for me to practice, so I thought I should share them here for any other people in my position.

Firstly, he told me to practice drawing simple shapes over and over so that when constructing characters it becomes second nature. These are his quick doodles, not mine. I feel that I can already do this without really thinking about it, but I'll still practice them, just in case it does help. Of course, he also talked about everything we draw as being made up of these simple shapes, and in the case of characters, they are mainly the same shapes with different proportions, as illustrated with Mickey here.

Ok thats pretty standard stuff. Next came some tips, some of which were new to me. He told me to make sure I made it clear which parts of an object or character are in front of another. As you can see, this is done with a small extension of the lines of either object.

A concept that was newer to me was "straights and curves", which relates to human or animal bodies being covered with opposing straight lines and curved lines. For example, the shin is approximately straight, with the strong curve of the calf on the opposite side of the leg. The idea is to avoid the "Popeye syndrome" in Tao's words, shown on the left of this picture.


He also said to avoid lines that meet at an intersection. For example, in drawing a character with a hat, make sure the edge of the hat doesn't coincide with the edge of the character's face. This makes the drawing more believable since the head has room to fit into the hat. Of course the hat must also be tall enough to fit the top of the head!

Finally, Tao advised me to practice drawing the human head, and showed me the difference between a female jawline (on the right) and a male one (on the left).


These were the main points he covered, although he did also talk about other things such as perspective.

In case you read this Tao, thanks very much for sparing your time for us, and I hope that one day I might be able to produce artwork at your level!