Tireless Drawing

We went camping in Devon this weekend. The plan was to enjoy a lovely sunny weekend relaxing in the sunshine. Instead our tent was flooded and we broke down on the motorway, making our return trip nearly 16 hours long. I was not amused!

So the rain meant that I was cooped up under the canvas, lacking the mood to draw. The long journey home has resulted in me being absolutely shattered today too, but I decided I needed to draw something. So rather than drag myself the massive three feet to my drawing table, I collapsed on the sofa in front of Big Brother, drawing the various idiots that performed in front of me. Surprisingly my tiredness allowed me to loosen up and be more confident with my gestures. I also noticed that I was more able to remember the pose I was trying to draw. The challenge with drawing from live action is of course that the moment you put pencil to paper, your drawing reference is gone. So the trick is to learn to take in as much information about the pose as you can in the first moment that you see it, then use your mental picture as a reference. I'm still not too good at this. Not enough practice I think. However I'm assured that over time this ability grows.

Ok, as well as tiredness, my other new tool is my new pencil. Yes, another one! I have always wanted a decent lead holder. I love the thought of having one pencil that I use for the rest of my life, rather like how a violinist uses the same instrument all the time. I bought one ages ago but it was crappy. I got one a few days ago though that I love:
It's nice and thick and heavy, with dark lead. Well the lead isn't actually the usual graphite, but something I have never heard of called Nero Lead. I don't know what it is, but it looks a bit like a china marker lead and smells like wax. Anyway I love it as it's soft, dark and doesn't smudge. If you want one, you can get one here.

I won't bother to explain who I drew, mainly because I can't remember, but here is the first one:
I quite liked the next one, it's of someone consoling someone else:
This next one is the simplest of all the ones I drew:
This last one is supposed to have her arms around someone's neck, but I haven't drawn the other person:

The Circles of Light

Since today's drawings consisted of 25 A4 pages of circles, I figured I'd avoid posting any of them tonight! I feel bad that I'm going through trees faster than a lumberjack. I don't wear suspenders and a bra though.......well maybe just at weekends. I've enlisted the help of my mathematician friend Craig to supply me with large quantities of paper from the recycling pile in his office. I may as well be a bit greener about things. Also, I can't afford to keep ploughing through animation paper. That stuff doesn't come cheap.

I invested in yet another exciting object today. Not content with my recent aquisition of a new pen and pencil, I frivilously splashed out on a lamp! Here it is in all it's glory:
I have been meaning to get a decent lamp to clip on my drawing table for a while now, but never got round to it until today. So I basked under it's claimed "daylight" drawing nothing but circles in the hope that my brain cells may start reinforcing the "draw stuff right" connections and put me a step closer to drawing on instinct.

You might notice that on the top right of my drawing board there are the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (or Hero Turtles as we Brits came to know them in the 90s, since ninja was apparently too harsh a word). My girlfriend Sian said something funny about them today and I was trying to think of a funny thing to say in return involving a lyric from the Turtles theme tune. However the first line that popped into my head turned out to be one from Alvin and the Chipmunks. So in honour of that moment, these four little mutants are now called Alvin, Simon and Theodore (and Dave).

Am I Boring You Yet?

I feel like I should liven these blog posts up somehow. They are a bit boring with the whole "tonight I did this......this evening I did that" thing. I wish I had some pearls of wisdom that I have discovered to share, but I haven't discovered any in a while. I don't want this blog to just be a place to post my drawings. I want it to be a place other learners can come to find out about how to make their own drawings better.

I guess I haven't really learned anything new though recently. Until I get into actually animating things properly, I can't practice and share all the different principles that are involved. I'm kinda stuck in limbo with lines of action, construction shapes and proportion. I really need to just jump in and start animating.

Well, while I procrastinate over the idea of the thought of possibly attempting to consider thinking about making my drawings move, here are some of tonight's drawings. First is an attempt at some sort of hand stand:
I just realised that I've drawn it back-to-front! The pose he's in is really quite impossible. That's tiredness for you! Next is a bit of a lunge with a sword:
And finally, someone grappling with a rope.

My Email Now Works!

Okay, ignore the beginning of that last post, my new email address now works again, so email me at andy@andysanimation.co.uk

Getting A-Head with Some Gestures

God my new email address is bugging me. People's emails aren't getting through and I can't figure out why. If anyone is feeling sociable enough to want to write to me, you can still reach me at my old address of andylatham82@hotmail.com
Right then, today I decided to try to make up a character that would be easy to animate. I ended up only really drawing heads, but this is the guy I came up with:
He's a bit boring I guess, and I'm not very good with facial expressions yet. I haven't done them much before, so I need to practice. I tried inking and painting a couple of these faces:
Damn those wobbly lines! After spending ages drawing faces, I was getting pretty tired so I just started drawing little gestures. Normally my gestures are about 20cm in size. This time I was just drawing ones of about 3cm.
I'm quite interested to see if anyone can tell what's happening in this sequence, so I'm not going to talk about what I was trying to do...anyone got any ideas?

Bits and Bobs

Here's some of today's scribbles. Not much to write about them though!
I'm quite excited because I was contacted today by someone asking me to make an animation for his company. I don't think it'll be anything too difficult, but it'll be my first paid 2D animation job.

Building Foundations

My drawing this evening consisted mostly of simple shapes. Nothing too complicated.
I was watching a TV programme earlier about a woman who is a chess genius, which stemmed from her father training her as a child. She spent hours every day repeating and repeating chess strategies and formations until they became second nature - instinct as they described in the show.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this; the same applies to drawing. An animator friend of mine told me a story of one animator who made his understudy draw nothing but circles for eight hours a day until he was brilliant at it. I think I need to do a bit of this. Unfortunately I don't have the time to spend eight hours a day doing it, but I'm sure I can do some. I feel that I need to go back to basics for a while. I know how to draw a simple sphere, and I think I can draw them pretty well. However I wouldn't go as far as to say I can do it perfectly without thinking about it. Of course I don't just want to focus on circles and spheres. I want to generally brush up my construction skills. Repetition is what I need.

The same applies to inking I guess. I had another go at it tonight with an old character of mine, Dwain. I'm still making wobbly lines (hence why I put the pictures on here small, so you can't see them so well!).

What a Tool!

Today's post is on the exciting subject of pens and pencils! Ohhhhh the joy!

I was eager to get some more practice at inking today, but as I said in my last post, I didn't have the right pens for the job. Therefore, I went to the local art shop to try to find a suitable one. I had heard that overhead projector pens were often used, so I looked at all of them, and I also looked at fine tipped felt pens, brush pens, writing pens and drawing pens. However none of them really seemed to fit the bill of what I wanted.

A while ago, I bought one of those fountain pens without the built in cartridge system - one you have to dip in ink. I bought it for inking, but never really used it since at the time I was trying to ink on transparencies, so it didn't work particularly well. Since then, it has become rusty and unusable, but I figured a fountain pen might be the way to go. So I was going to go elsewhere to find a shop that sold fountain pens (I was thinking I'd get one with cartridges to avoid the mess of dipping) when I stumbled across one in the art shop that is specifically for drawing. It was a little on the expensive side at £13, but I decided to go for it. It's a Rotring Art Pen (sketching pen variety - EF, which I assume means extra fine).

I decided to try it out on the same character that I used in my last post so I could compare the two inkings directly. Ever the scientist! Here's the result:
Obviously the one on the left is the old one and the one on the right is the new one. What a difference a pen can make! My hand was still a little shaky, which I need to work on, and the variation in line strength is minimal (not much I can do about that with a steel tipped pen). However I'm pleased with the result. Also, I know it is common practice to use bolder lines for larger details and thinner ones for smaller details, but I only have one size of pen! Since I feel comfortable with the fountain pen, I may buy one with a thicker (or thinner) tip.

At the art shop, I also decided to try out some different pencils. I know, I know, surely a pencil is a pencil. I thought I had found the perfect pencil with a Faber Castell 3B one - yes that's really quite specific. However, recently I have become uncomfortable with it. I tend to draw quite lightly and the 3B doesn't give a dark enough line for my liking. Therefore, I worked my way up the Bs. I have now settled on an 8B Faber Castell. That's really very soft (I think most people use a 2B or 4B for animation), but I like the darker lines.
So, apologies for the boring post, but I would have liked to see a post like this on someone's blog when I first started out, and in fact still would like to hear what tools other animators use (comments anyone?). I hope it proves useful to someone.

I Ink It's Time For Something Different

I figured it's been a while since I made up a character, so I did one tonight. It's only a head. I thought it would be good to have a go at inking and painting, so I inked it up with a pen, scanned it in and quickly coloured it in Photoshop. The inking isn't great since I had a shaky hand and didn't have the right kind of pen really. Anyway, here is the result:
I haven't thought of a name for him....any thoughts?

Dances with Flour

I did some more drawings at work today, but they were a bit rubbish, so I'm just going to post what I drew tonight (arguably they are rubbish too!). Almost all of these are drawn from reference photographs. First we have someone dancing:
This next dancer was actually a really cool statuette of a dancer:
This next one was really tough. It is supposed to be a ballet dancer stretching before a performance:
Next is a dancing native american:
This one is something from my imagination. I guess it's sort of a crane stance:
Finally, I decided to do some more flour sacks. I find them quite theraputic to draw for some reason.
I think it's their simplicity. There's not as much to think about with them as there is with other characters.

Water, Water Everywhere!

Well I'm posting again, quite recently after my last one, so you might be able to tell that I'm feeling a bit more in the drawing mood! I don't know what's got me eagerly back behind my pencil, but I hope I don't jinx it by talking about it here! As weird as it sounds, I actually think it might be something to do with drinking lots of water. I've had really dry skin lately and I decided I wasn't drinking enough water. So yesterday evening and today, I kept drinking as much as I could, and as well as feeling better, I'm drawing better! Maybe my brain was all shrivelled like a raisin!

I took my sketchbook to work today. I'm the only one in the office at the moment since my colleague Sarah is away on holiday, so I thought I'd do some drawing on my lunch break. I was pleasantly surprised with what I came up with. I only drew two figures - not much, I know. However I was reasonably pleased with them and so I wanted to stop on a high in the hope that I would be more eager to pick up my pencil again soon.

You might notice a lack of hands on this first one:
I sort of just drew a figure without really thinking about what sort of pose it was striking and I couldn't decide what to draw the hands like. It was drawn with a china marker, which I enjoy using from time to time. However I decided to change medium for my second picture:
This one was drawn with a ball pen. I had more of an idea of the pose I wanted this time and I was pleased with the result. My knowledge of human anatomy leaves a little to be desired at the moment, but I hope to improve that with either some life drawing sessions or a good book on anatomy in the near future.

I'd like to thank "Jon", whoever he may be, for a good tip for getting out of artist's block (see the comments on my last post). Jon, maybe you could let me know where I could see some of your work?

Also, many, many thanks to Mel Milton who has been providing me with much needed encouragement in the comments of nearly every recent post of mine.

Soul Searching

I don't have much to say about my drawings at the moment. I'm really struggling, as I have said in every post for a while now. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I haven't had much chance to practice. My other excuse is that I'm constantly tired recently. I have my boss at work to blame for that!

Normally if I'm having a bad drawing day, I make a few drawings, then give up. Tonight I decided to avoid giving up. I drew and drew and drew and drew....but to no avail. Nothing was turning out how I intended. I even tried to draw some characters like Bugs Bunny, and made a mess of them too! Not good.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some of them. These are the best of a bad bunch. The first page is just some warm-up sketches.
Next is a guy that was supposed to have a shocked reaction:
Next, some flour sacks. These were the only drawings that did turn out how I intended.
Here's a guy in a sort of proud pose. Boring.
Finally, a guy peering over the edge of a block.
I'm not sure how to get out of this rut that I've got myself into. I feel like I've only been really struggling since I started my new job. My job has removed all routine from my life due to the varying hours I have to work. I read somewhere that it's bad to get into "routines" from an artistic point of view. However, I feel that I need routine to feel comfortable enough to draw confidently, particularly while I'm trying to climb such a steep learning curve. When there's no routine, there is too much going on to be able to think clearly.

It's all very confusing and requires more thought. Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe I'm thinking too much. Either way, my indecisiveness is holding me back.

Hardvark

I had a good idea a few days ago. I have been using photos as a reference for my drawing when I can't get out to draw from real life. I have trawled through the internet collecting pictures of people and animals doing interesting things, printed them off and currently keep them in a pile near my drawing board. I thought that maybe it would be good to do the same thing with video. I figured it might be useful to have a collection of video clips of interesting movements to refer to when practicing animating.

Although I'm, not yet proficient enough to make use of it, I created a DVD with short clips from different movies. I only included a few for the first disc as I was just assessing whether it would be a good idea. I included a clip from The Sound of Music of Maria skipping along with her suitcase and guitar case, a clip of Darth Maul performing an acrobatic twirl from The Phantom Menace, one of Garth from Wayne's World doing his "Foxy Lady" dance and the intro to Austin Powers. I really think this is a useful idea and would love to share it over the internet, but I guess copyright laws might pose a problem!

On another note, I've been working on my first animated sequence for someone overseas. It's for a team in Los Angeles who are attempting to get funding for a 3D animated show based on an old comic book from the 70s called Cerebus the Aardvark. I was hoping it would be paid work, but even though it's not, I still agreed to do it for the sake of practice (to date I have only really made one character animation in 3D). So here is my contribution so far.

Cerebus Sword Swing
Uploaded by andylatham82

I stress the "so far" part as this is a work in progress. I'm sure Oliver (the guy who asked me to do it) won't mind me saying that the rig for Cerebus is less than perfect and as a result there are a lot of difficulties animating it. I'll post a better version if I can make it any better!

I also found an interesting post by John K (the creator of Ren & Stimpy) illustrating an experimental animation technique used by Bob Clampett at Warner Bros. It involves using colour to accentuate a movement. It's very much worth a look...not that John's blog really needs any more readers!

Finally, I thought, as have many others before me, that I would share some of the phrases people have Googled to get to my blog. If you remember typing any of these in, make yourself known! As you can see, some have left me speechless!

1. Learn pencil sketching siting position - Could it be that my animation difficulties have been the result of incorrect posture?

2. Pictures of cartoons and it going nuts

3. What does a baby lemurs skin look like?

4. Moose caricature drawings - Don't mooses look funny enough?

5. Drawing show cowboy hat big pencil drew cartoons - Huh?

6. Draw easy but cow cartoon characters

7. Cow part meat anatomy draw

8. Monkeys gesture drawing - There's one right here. I guess this one got to the right place!

9. Make my girlfriend flash animation - That really is the Illusion of Life!

10. Gesture drawing dog - Probably more talented than the monkey

11. Merv is gay

12. Drawings of squirrels and nuts - Squirrels are private creatures. They don't like showing off their nuts...even less having someone draw them!

13. Cartoon animation of man sitting on toilet - Is he suffering from constipanimation?! God I crack myself up.