Prop...per Anatomy

Continuing the idea of using props in drawings, I did a couple more the other day. I kept forgetting to scan them in though!

Since I had drawn someone climbing onto a box, I figured it made sense to draw him getting off the box:
I felt like I was off to a good start with this one. Just as with the climbing up drawing, the climbing down one turned out almost exactly how I had imagined it. Unfortunately, the good luck was not to continue! I next tried drawing someone attempting to push a boulder:
Looks a bit deformed to me. The next one is a bit of an embarrassment too, not because it's deformed, but because it in no way follows the initial line of action I put down. I clipped the line off at the top of the image so you might not notice!
Finally, I decided I would attempt someone crawling in a style like Spider-Man when he's crawling up a wall.
I think this suffered from my lack of knowledge of human anatomy. I just couldn't decide how the torso should look when viewed from above. I guess I need to do some studying!

Get Legs!

Today I was still in the mood for drawing, which is a good sign! I continued with yesterday's plan of drawing from imagination. Here's the first:
He's got small legs hasn't he? As I said yesterday, that's a running theme throughout my drawings. I always struggle with legs. Maybe I should draw drunks...legless...get it?!

Right, ok, I know your sides are splitting but we must press on. I tried to draw someone in a sort of crouching position as if calling a dog or a small child towards him.
Unfortunately he looks somewhat constipated! I think the feet are too far forward so he would be off balance. It thus looks as though he is sitting on an invisible chair...or toilet.

I decided to use a prop in the next drawing. A lovely box onto which a character is climbing:
I was quite pleased with this one as it turned out pretty much exactly how I had intended. I thought about some more props to use and decided upon a balloon lifting someone into the air. However I think it looks more like Superman.
I guess it would have helped if I had actually included the balloon. I finished off with an attempt at a tightrope walker holding an umbrella.
I hadn't planned on having him lunging quite so much but I made the mistake of not leaving enough room between the body and the tightrope.

Loosely Drawing

I haven't had much chance to post anything recently. I have just finished my fifth week of my new job and have been very busy indeed! Thankfully I have found some time to get some drawing done today.

I decided I would try to use my imagination rather than pictures for reference. After filling a couple of pages with circles to loosen myself up, I started on a guy pulling on a rope.
Not a bad start, although I could have pushed the gesture further I think. It doesn't quite feel like the figure is straining against the rope. After this, I almost immediately got mental block. I couldn't think of any poses to draw. After an extended period of pencil tapping, the image of someone peering around a corner popped into my mind and from there flowed down my arm to my pencil. The result was this:
I originally only drew the top half of the body and was pretty pleased with it. However I felt the need to fill in the lower half and, rather typically, ruined it. Bloody legs! I learned from my mistake with drawing number three, leaving the legs out:
It's supposed to be someone leaning back on a wall. However my girlfriend Sian couldn't see it and so I guess it wasn't too successful. Next I wanted to draw an exaggerated laughing pose. I had planned the guy to be doubled over laughing, resting on his leg and about to slap his thigh with his other hand.
It didn't quite work though. I guess it would look better if you could see the expression on the man's face, but I want to be able to use only the pose to get the idea across. After this, the image of Rafiki holding up Simba in the Lion King came into my mind, so I tried drawing that really quickly, but in a more human form.
By this point, although my drawings weren't brilliant, I had really got into the flow of drawing - into 'the zone' as I'm loathed to call it! I did think about stopping to scan the drawings in so I could post them on here but I thought that I had better continue to scribble since I was in the mood. So I attempted to draw a nonchalant cowboy tipping his hat.
As often seems to be the case with my drawings, it is let down by the legs. I really need to get some practice on legs. I really struggle with where to put them. I started to struggle for ideas after this. However Sian came to the rescue with the idea of attempting Harry Enfield's character, Kevin. For those of you who are unfamiliar with him, he is the characature of a typical adolescent boy. He does a particular movement when he exclaims, "It's so unfair!" which involves him bending over and letting his arms dangle beneath him. I didn't capture it too well though.
Sian also reminded me of Eddie Izzard's stand-up show, 'Dress to Kill', in which he portrays a stereotypical member of the Church of England, who he describes as lacking all muscles in the arms. He leans back, saying "hi", letting his arms dangle backwards - the opposite of Kevin if you will.
This was possibly the most unsuccessful of all this evening's drawings. Next I had planned to draw someone with a sword. It turned out rubbish, so that's all I'll say about it:
Don't worry - I'm nearly finished!

My penultimate drawing was another attempt at Kevin:
A little more successful I guess, but not greatly so. I actually think it looks like C-3PO with a bad back!

Finally I tried drawing someone looking shy, shuffling round with his hands in his pockets.
Yet again, I'm not happy with it. I think the legs are wrong. However I wasn't as disappointed as I had been with some of my other drawings and so I decided to finish on a relative high.

My Jerry Springer 'final thought' is that although in every drawing I can see glaring faults and things that I'm unhappy with, overall I am pleased by how much looser I am getting with my pencil strokes and how much quicker I'm producing drawings. Each of these were produced in under a minute, with the shortest being made in about 20 seconds.

Surfing into Port......folio!

I know, rubbish title, but my new portfolio website is now online and waiting for you all to visit!

Go see it, it's imaginatively titled Andy's Animation.

It's not complete yet, but there is enough for you to get an idea of what it will look like in the end. The only complete section is the Artwork section, but Animations will be up and running soon.

Credit Where it's Due

Remember the yoghurt pot I modeled some months ago (see here and here) for a Richard Herring comedy DVD? Well it popped through the door this morning, shining like a silver lining amongst the dark cloud of gas and electricity bills. Apart from seeing my yoghurt pot in its full glory, I was especially excited to receive my first credit!
I hope this is the first of many! A big thanks to Chris Evans at Go Faster Stripe!

Money for Nothing

Seeing as my drawings aren't up to much at the moment, I thought I'd share my first piece of paid animation work. As you may know, I recently started working for a corporate film company. Last week the boss asked me to have a go at redesigning the intro sequence for the company showreel. This is what I came up with:

It was done in 3ds Max, which is a program I last used quite some time ago and was rusty to say the least! Nevertheless I was quite pleased with what I produced. I still can't believe I'm being paid for something that I actually enjoy doing!

Jumping for Joy?

I thought my last batch of drawings was bad...my latest ones are even worse! So much so that I'm only putting one of them on here. I know I should put all my drawings on, both good and bad, but I've been feeling quite self conscious about my drawing ability over the past few days. I really need a good session to boost my confidence. Anyway, here is a kid doing a weird jump.
Well, as they say...back to the drawing board!

Going Nuts

Today wasn't a good drawing day. After a long day riding roller-coasters at Alton Towers yesterday, I think I'm feeling too drained to produce anything worthwhile. I was looking through a book called "Draw the Looney Tunes: The Warner Bros Character Manual" and saw a page with a photo of a golfer taking a swing. There were a series of drawings next to it, each with a more exaggerated pose than the last, caricaturing the swing action. It occurred to me that in none of my drawings have I really attempted to use exaggeration, which is possibly the most important concept in animation. This was earlier this afternoon, and I had decided to settle down to some drawing later in the evening.

This evening came and true to my word, I sat at my drawing table. However in all the drawings I made, I completely forgot about that most important thing that I had intended to include! So I apologise for these being 'more of the same'. Actually I think they are worse than the usual due to my tiredness.

I decided to start off with a squirrel:
It turns out that squirrels are quite hard to draw. The above one was ok, but the following two attempts are not:
I think I find them hard because their body parts flow into each other as if their skin is like a bag. I thought this might make them easy to draw but I found it difficult to assess how the limbs attached to the body. This little fellow clearly liked the camera:
Next I went back to humans, with an attempt at a girl doing some sort of gymnastic movement:
It's better than the squirrels, but not by much! I then tried a close-up picture of a clown instead of the usual full-body poses:
Finally, I thought I'd try to copy some drawings from model sheets as I wasn't getting anywhere with photos. Well I say copy, but I suppose interpret is a better word as I didn't stick to closely to the details. I was more interested in getting the poses right.
These two were both from a cartoon called 'The Flying Cadet".
And last of all, I tried Mickey Mouse. As usual, every detail that is wrong with it really stands out because Mickey is such a well known character I guess.
The worst part of this though is the disproportionality of his head to his body, the latter of which needs to be smaller.

What a Goofy Idea

Ok I know I just posted about five minutes ago, but I just found this article. As I have whittered on about before, Disney are not only resuming hand-drawn movies, but are starting to make shorts again. I can't wait to be able to go to the cinema and see a short before the movie (yes I know Pixar do it, but this is 2D!). Anyway it seems one of the first is to be a continuance of the old Goofy "How To..." shorts from the 40s and 50s.
How cool is that?!

When the Going Gets Tough...

Ever since I started this blog I have received comments and emails from learners and professionals commending my enthusiasm for learning to animate. I find it particularly strange (but yet very flattering) that someone who draws this well described my last post as "inspirational"!

Well with my humble little blog's first birthday approaching next month, I decided that I might share with you the sources of my continued enthusiasm - my inspiration.

I remember going to Walt Disney World in Florida for the first time when I was fifteen years of age. I loved all things Disney already, but became completely hooked on the animation world upon taking a behind the scenes tour in Disney-MGM Studios (anyone I have spoken to about it before will now groan loudly!). Guests were able to see an actual animation studio at work (albeit from behind glass). They still have the tour there now but since the Florida animation studio shut down, there is just one animation desk in use there. Anyway, as The Lion King was the latest release at the time, I invested in a "How to Draw The Lion King" book, which introduced me to the concept of construction for the first time. I recall being so pleased with my first rendering of Simba. I also bought a little book of "The Art of The Lion King", filled with beautifully inspiring production art.
That little book still resides on my book shelf and has since been joined by many other books on my favourite subject. One such book is the old animator's favourite, "The Illusion of Life" by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's nine old men.
As well as being full of animation tips and secrets, the artwork in this book is great to look at when I am losing sight of where I am trying to head for. Just looking at a few images makes me want to rush to pick up my pencil.

If books aren't enough for you, I discovered two DVDs some time ago that are wonderful. Neither of them are available in the United Kingdom (as is always the case) and so I had to get them imported from the US. The first is "Frank and Ollie", the story of the aforementioned authors and animators. It details how they got into animation and their amazing journey through their parallel careers.
Watching this makes me so envious. The Disney studios back in those days seemed such a wonderful place to work, filled with yet more wonderful people like Frank and Ollie. If current animators that I have been in contact with are anything to go by, they are still wonderful people on the whole. Anyway, if I could manage to get a tenth as proficient as these guys, I'd be over the moon! Second is "Walt: The Man Behind the Myth".
Whilst Walt Disney wasn't know for his own animation skills, he was known for his imagination and his ability to tell a story. Although in the studio's early days times were tough, Walt stayed focused on what he believed in with little concern about making tons of money. From what I have learned about him from this film, he was a beautiful man (and that's not a phrase I use often!). And there aren't enough people in the world like him!

So anyway, these are the material inspiration I draw from when needs require. Of course there are limitless sources of inspiration all around in the form of people we meet and places we visit, but for nice little things that can be held and put on a shelf, these are among the best.

Kids and Cubs

I set aside my website aspirations for the day today in order to concentrate on drawing. Well most of the day was taken up by spring cleaning, but there was still some pencil time. I thought I'd draw some young children today instead of the usual adults, so I found some pictures of babies and toddlers as well as a few tiger cubs for variation. I started with an adolescent tiger:
As ever, I'm plagued by proportionality problems, although this isn't quite a fully grown beast so it won't look quite like a proper tiger yet...at least that's my story! Still on the tiger theme:
I find myself looking at my drawings and thinking, "that's a really average drawing - I've done much better." Now, while this may be true, my 'average' has improved dramatically from what I can tell. Only a few months back I couldn't even think about drawing something like the above 'average' picture. Excuse me while I give myself a rare pat on the back!...

...Right then, on we go, this time with a human child:
I deliberately picked unusual angles to draw to try to test myself a little. I made the neck a bit too long. In fact the whole shoulder area is rather bad. I'm quite pleased with the rest of it though. I wish I could say the same for this next one. If you happen to be in the animation business and thinking about offering me a job, please look away now!
For some reason I've taken it upon myself to add a particularly unfortunate face! Oh well, you win some, you lose some...Ok you can look back now.
For some reason I look at the drawing above and think of a mummy. An Egyptian one I mean. I think it's the hands. I don't tend to draw fingers when doing gestures. Instead I tend to draw the palm and then an arc which passes through the ends of the would-be fingers to hint at their position. Next, a crawling child:
I'm not sure if I got this right. He is supposed to be just crawling along a flat floor but he looks to me like he's crawling up some stairs. Finally I went back to a cub laying on it's back:
As you may be able to see from the rather vague line of action, I wasn't quite sure how to go about drawing this. Not too successful.

I'll end on a positive note: I'm not successful in every drawing I attempt, and I doubt I ever will be. However, my rate of success is steadily increasing. Not so long ago I had to draw twenty pictures before I did one that I quite liked. Now it's more like five. Whether it'll get better than that, I don't know. I guess as I get better at drawing, I will just get more critical of my mistakes and thus throw away drawings that right now I would be proud to have drawn.

Web Slinger

I have been thinking about sorting out a proper portfolio website for some time now. I figured it would be much better to ask potential employers to look at a nice concise site showing them my best bits rather than having them plough through my blog. I was put off by my lack of knowledge of how to put together the said site. All I know of web development is how to make hyperlinks and add pictures.

However, being the eternal optimist, I decided that since my Physics education has enabled me to program computers, I should be able to figure out how to code a web page without too much difficulty, especially if I'm only going to be using simple html. Thankfully I discovered Adobe Dreamweaver which allows one to make sites without needing to know too much about coding.

So I've been having great fun (yeah, sad isn't it?) messing around with scanners, cameras and Photoshop making buttons for my site. I've had many ideas for what my site should look like and I've been going through the digital equivalent of screwing up pieces of paper and slinging them in the bin. It was the screwing paper up that gave me the idea that I settled on. The only page I have finished (I think) is the home page, which you can see below (click to enlarge).
It's not on the net yet, which is why I'm showing it here in picture form. I tried to make it match my blog with a sort of drawing board feel to it. I wasn't sure about my title banner as it doesn't seem to fit in with the design, but I want it there so that it matches my blog.