Drawing 101 Pt 2: 'Life drawing is dumb.. why should I do it?

      After copying, comes creating. Copying builds skill, life drawing hones talent. 

      Copying is for learning the basics. When you start to leave copying and start to create, there comes a new level of learning.. that can be scary. Bc then you really start to see how little you truly know. When you leave copying pictures and start drawing from life, it will probably be the biggest shock in your drawing life. Take my experience for example:

     All through out grade school I copied my favorite characters from magazines and posters. I would draw every single Pokemon when I was in elementary to my favorite artist's album cover during highschool. I would draw some things from life but they were mostly of spaces or buildings. Always staying a little abstract to hide my flaws.
      Then came freshman year of college: Week one. All us students came with our new biggie boards and freshly sharpened pencils and sat down in our life drawing class. The model is nude and getting ready to start posing. I have never drawn a nude model in person before and it was quite odd to realize the immaturity I was feeling all bc there was a penis right there hanging like no bodies business. All that went away when our instructor told us that we were not to EVER use pencils and to walk over and grab a piece of charcoal and to begin drawing the model. Then began the 30 seconds poses. Then with in 20 seconds I realized exactly why the instructor made us use charcoal and not pencil. You can NOT draw details with charcoal and finish a drawing in 30 seconds. It forces you to be broad and to commit to your lines even if they weren't perfect. It makes you live with the mistakes you create on the paper and because of that you are INSTANTLY AWARE of everything you are not good at. When you draw with pencil you can erase your mistakes... not in life drawing.
     We eventually learned its not about being ACCURATE and replicating a true depiction of the model. but to capture something .. deeper. You try capture the 'feeling and energy' of the GESTURE.  (if you didn't notice I capitalized and bloded the word gesture. That means I'm trying to make a point.) I'm not drawing wrinkles in the clothes and every single finger, but I'm drawing ONE line that goes from the head to the toe with in a second. I am overlapping, and drawing over the whole body in one line that never leaves the paper, not worrying about mistakes and smudges my hand leaves. Because when you finish 2 hours later.. It all comes together. Those 'mistakes' help support and add energy to a drawing I could never really quite capture back in the day when I use to copy. Copying another drawing is copying 2D and translating it to 2D again. Drawing things from 3D to a 2D surface is a whole different world.

      Some people life draw very accurately, some people life draw very abstractly.. Learn to do it both ways. Don't worry about what you are drawing BUT HOW YOU ARE DRAWING IT. No one will ever see what you see, so they will never compare your drawing to the real model and criticize you. What they will do is criticize your drawing and how you did it.

- 'But but.. DANNY, the model moved and Thats why my drawing looks bad. Its not my fault.'

       Hey well guess what. It is your fault that you created a bad drawing. The models job is not to stay still, the models job is to give you a concept, an idea of a pose. The model plants the seed and you take what the model gives you and then YOU create from that. You are not copying, if the model moves, that should be no problem to you bc you are to of already captured the gesture within the first minute of the pose SO that if the model does move you already have the foundation of the original pose on your paper. You are on to blame for YOUR drawing, not the model because as far as they care, they have nothing to do with your drawing.

     Life drawing teaches you not to be precious with your drawing. It may have something to do that after an hour you probably have made over 60 drawings. Who has time and the energy to care about that many drawings?? When one copies OF COURSE you get precious over drawings bc you probably spend weeks on one drawing.
     Everything you did learn while you were copying does not go to waste, you just become efficient and learn how to do all your tricks faster. Your skills become second nature. It is essential to do life drawing with an instructor, even if you do not agree with their style or notes, bc no matter what you think, what they have to say is important and will only add to your knowledge and skills. If you find your self ever saying, 'I don't want to hold the stick sideways to draw, its not my style." You might as well use the money you're paying for your art school to wipe your own ass. Try everything that is told to you. Use every medium offered to you, learn how to create and let your style come through in all mediums and techniques. Learn how to do things academically, then learn how to do things experimentally. Then last but not least learn how to do things in your own way. Break out of your comfort zone often and early.

Thanks for reading
-Daniel

Animation 102: General Polishing Notes..

     So here is an email of a critique I wrote out. I thought it had some useful elements  to it and decided to share! Context: They is about to wrap up on this and has a little less than a week to finish. So I pointed out the major things that catch my eye and overlook the little things so they can make the best use of their time... enjoy

Hi _______,

     Lets get down to business shall we? I'll try not to be that harsh :)

     So, contrast... everything needs some sort of contrast, it just makes things look texturally more interesting, agree? So your animation is great, but as bad ass as it is, in the beginning it's still sort of, smushy, water smooth... (and I understand he's sneaking) but none the less the characters movement is a bit swimmy.

     The Culprit: The FLASH LIGHT. The flash light moves way too much and at the same pace and style as the body, if you would just view the flash light and hide the body, it will look like the hand of someone high, or drunk, or just someone waaay too relaxed. It has tooo much over-lap (up and down), the head and the body go up and down already, no need to go overkill and do the flash light as well, it's like you want me to watch your assignment while nodding my head up and down the whole time. if you're more a percentage kind of girl, I would tell you to take it 80% down...

     Solution: Hold it reletively still in the direction it is in now, towards the opposite wall where he is heading towards. and if you are feeling daring even put a lil frequency vibration in it to show shaking, but DONT MAKE IT look like he has tremors! This will contrast the slow cat like movement of the body. make it look like he's holding the Flash light with a purpose and not hold it as if it was a prop.

     POSES: On frame X78 is very natural and realistic. Not bad, but tell me one thing...  which one is better.... im just asking.. you know... just take a look and let me know...

        You see? Just always push things a little more and make sure you are selling the pose. Never forget to check if your silhouette value is the best and clearest it can be. Is it telling the whole story? is it appealing? What might it be mistaken as? how do i make it fool proof? And don't start saying that it's not physically possible with the model. "but Dannny, it wont let me, It doesn't want to bend that way, it's too hard..."  FORCE IT. Do not compromise with the computer, do not meet it half way, don't let it decide how far you can push your art. It does what you tell it to do, don't pitty it. The moment you start to let it tell you who's boss, that's when we all lose and then movies like Terminator 2 and the Matrix become reality. Always keep the computer in check. :) It's just waiting for you to let down your guard..... haha

Frame X78- X104
       After you hit that pose you start to turn, BUT EVERYTHING TURNS WITH EACH OTHER FAIRLY AT THE SAME TIME!!!!!!! You do have a teeny weenie bit of an off set, but that's only because I had to look for it. How about you hold the head staring towards Screen Left for a while longer and hold the flash light there too. Make the body turn first then around X92 start the head turn, try that out see if it feels right and adjust accordingly. Break it up, make it feel natural.

       Ok this next one is a big one, you might hate me but i can afford you to hate me, what you CANNOT afford is sub par problem solving skills!
-Flip through Frames X105 to X110.. then continue flipping to X115. Doesn't it look like he's bouncing off those boxes? Like in a bad action film sort of way? X110, that character definitely broke it's back on those boxes.. I drew something that might help you out:

 

      So you see what I did, I also moved your last pose a little screen left. This way not only is it a reaction, but VISUALLY he is moving away from the ghost as well. It makes the head ARC less spontaneous and it's easier to follow along with the eyes. But that means reworking the animation before and after it and making it work, re-look at the physics my pose change demands and make it work. it's going to be tough but try it out. It will definitely be challenging.

     Your ending, I'm going to acknowledge it's subjective. Because I too watched cartoons when I was younger I could recognize what you were doing (scared stiff and the fainting) but if I was living in a cave my whole life or from Antarctica, I would have no freaking idea what the hell was going on, "he stopped, then moves again and stops again... then he MOVES again to fall down... and then the ghost looks at me??" WTF is going ON!!!!!!????? lol. your animation is nice. I'm just letting you know you are relying on the audiences background knowledge of cartoons to sell your idea.

      So I hoped this helped you out, Let me know how it goes, your animation is very nice and it doesn't look messy at all. Good job staying organized. Notice how most of my notes were on choices and not fundamentals. That's perfect since you are in the polish stage. If you would like me to check it out again let me know and I'll gladly do it. Touch on these notes then I can look deeper into your timing and spacing after there is nothing to distract my eye. Keep on going!

-Daniel Gonzales

Animation/Drawing 101: HANDS

Drawing from my sketch book: Ball Point Pen

    HANDS: Second only to the eye's, they mirror a person's emotion the clearest. A bad hand pose in Drawing or Animation can silently KILL your art. This is a huge overlooked concept. This info was passed on to me and now I shall do the same. Big thanks to Pixar for their education.


THE HAND:
     The hand is very specific and has thousands of ways to be drawn and posed. It a very hard part of the body to master, that's why you see a lot of artist draw hands over and over again in their sketch book. (and if you don't draw hands like a manic.. well START DRAWING HANDS) When hands are overlooked they look like this...

     Horrendous.. I know.. So before I get you to some juicy knowledge I'm going to try to give you a VERY BRIEF 101 on hands.
-These are the natural paths of fingers. They radiate and curve in relation to each other.
-CG hands look like bricks and rakes when you first load them.. you must pose them into organic believable shapes.

-Simple and Complex hand shapes-
      A simple hand shape has an easy silhouette to trace with your eye and have a simple over all shape such as a square or a triangle. Complex shapes have busy outlines and take too much time for the eye to take in the information the hand is trying to convey. Always go for simpler hand shapes so that the viewer can spend more time on the focal point of your work (which should be the face)

-Hands ALWAYS DO SOMETHING.. 
     They must ALWAYS reflect how the character feels or suggest the prop they are using. It can interact with itself, some one else, or with a prop. Live action never has bad hand poses.. So we have no excuses for choosing bad hand acting. That's why Animation is a bit harder than acting, you have to get GOOD ACTING and convince the viewer they are watching a real HUMAN with real habits and poses..

-Hands can interact with themselves and your body- hand to hair, relaxed, fingers crossed with each other, etc

 -Hands can interact with props- and show their purpose. He's not holding a basball bat.. He's holding a gun.. The hands make nice silhouette with the gun that if darkened in, would seem as an extension of his body

-With in the hand pose individual fingers must have a purpose. thumb supporting lower bottle, index finger is gripping the lower bottle as well as supporting the top bottle and the remaining three are gripping the top bottle.

        -With small props you grip them a certain way and
        with in that grip you can still show personality.     

-How you approach interacting with a prop can also reveal a lot about the thought process.








Bad Hands-
      Bad hands come in drawings and Computer Animation. I tend to always talk crap about football games while I play them. If they would only focus on the little details they can become that much more believable. 10 years of edition after edition of Madden and they cannot seem to get the physics right. And if you look at the photo below you can see that the same hand pose generally used on every hand. The fingers look like rakes and in real life it would take WAAAy to much energy to constantly keep your hands in that pose than to be expressive with them. The hand does not naturally want to keep the fingers apart, the fingers always want to rest on each other, especially when griping something. I learned that when drawing a hand, to check if I can see the purpose of the hand, is it moulding to the form of the object, does it look like the thumb and the wrist are connecting and flowing into the hand at a believable angle..

ACTING-
      The hands should support the emotion and the cues the face or character is giving. The hands should never steal the show unless it's on purpose. Do not always move them around with each pose. (Meet the Robinson's: when the black hair kid is first seen is a good example of over acting) watch that movie and you will see what I mean. Do not over use the hands. but use them responsibly and with specificity.

-PERSONALITY is all about the hands. Here are Cool hands

 -Here are hands that intend force and dominance

           -Sadness through hands

-multi tasking hands to show busyness...






-Here is some acting with the hands... over acted for my tastes  but VERY VERY WELL ANIMATED..



     There is hardly any OVER acting or bad posing with the hands in most Live Action film. So when looking for an answer on what to do with your hands, Watch people and watch films. Draw hands as much as you can, there are two perfect modelled hands in front of you! You never have an excuse of not having NE thing to draw... DRAW YOUR OWN HANDS,

     Hope this helps a little. There is so much more on hands that one can speak about with hands. Whether you are drawing them or animating them, think about the hand pose you are choosing and what does it say.. you should be able to tell the mood of your character just by looking at their hand. 

-Daniel Gonzales