Lesson 5, Part 5 (conclusion)

Here's the last of the drawings that I'm copying from JohnK's Lesson 5.

Good grief! What was I doing with that muzzle?

I made three attempts at Tink; always had a problem stretching her out along her line of action.

Wart is pretty good. The only error I see I that I made his face slightly too wide. (This was all just by eye.)

Lesson 5, Part 4

Today I finished copying all the Preston Blair drawings from JohnK's Lesson 5.

This one of Tom sneaking on his tippy-toes was really hard for some reason. Below was my third attempt:
And here is the comparison of it with the Preston Blair original. Not too bad. If I want to focus on the successful parts, that front leg is pretty exact!
I really enjoy drawing Jerry.

Comparing it to the original, mine was again pretty close. Except I really underestimated his ear.

Tom again, and once again this was kinda tricky.

I made the head too small, as you can see in the comparison below:

The next one is interesting. If I just saw the finished drawing, I wouldn't have seen the line of action as clear as Preston Blair draws it (bottom picture). But being aware of it, you can see how all the parts of this drawing fit around that line.

I'm getting a little faster at these but it takes me almost an hour per drawing.

There's still a bit more to Lesson 5: JohnK included some extra frame grabs including some actual silhouettes, plus some Disney pencil sketches with good line of action. Plus just a few days ago, John posted a short animation of a great character running, tying a rope and jumping on a bicycle, all in silhouette. I'm thinking of attempting to copy at least part of that animation!

Lesson 5, Part 3

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog: Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 5

Here's the next set of five. I copied all of these from Preston Blair only by eye.

Click the first image of each pair for a larger view of my copy. The second image of each pair is an animated gif that compares mine (black) against Preston Blair's original (red).

Lesson 5, Part 2

I'm grateful that there are so many poses with the same two characters. It helps to see how they can be stretched into such extreme poses.

This one was relatively easy. I worked on capturing that expression of disdain.

Here is the comparison to Preston Blair's original:



This one was really hard! It think just because it's so stretched out. I made many tries on this one, then finally traced the line of action before copying the figure itself by eye. The face is pretty damn accurate anyway. Again, I worked on capturing the exact expression.

Look how distorted Tom's body is. It's harder to see the underlying construction in this drawing, compared to simpler poses. Look at how his two shoulders are aligned, and try to imagine his pelvis in relation to his spine! You can see how Blair pushed the construction both to impart a strong the line of action and to create a strong silhouette. It's not that he sacrificed or ignored construction -- he just bent it to create a stronger cartoon drawing.


This is such a cute pose of Jerry. But speaking of stretching the pose, his left shoulder is coming out of his head!

Below is the comparison to Preston Blair's original:

Another one of Jerry:

I did the next one twice. The first one was too stretched out horizontally. This is the second one:

Lesson 5, Part 1

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog: Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 5

I'm loving this, but I can't believe how difficult it is! Even just copying the simple lines of action faithfully is challenging.












Click below to see the animated comparison:



The "down" frame took me three tries, and it's still not right! Here is the best of the three:





But even though it's hard to match the proportions exactly by eye, I'm still "getting" the main idea of the line of action. I really appreciate Preston Blair's drawings more and more. Thanks JohnK.


Anyway, just for fun: here are Preston Blair's original drawings "animated":

Lesson 4, Part 7

Yay for me, I finished Lesson 4!



I felt pretty good about doing this one.

Here's the comparison to Preston Blair's original. There are still some dumb mistakes - especially the size of the nose - but considering I did that entirely visually, it's a great improvement. Also I did it faster than the other ones in this lesson.

Lesson 4, Part 6

I thought this was pretty good...

Until I compared it in Photoshop...

Lesson 4, Part 5

This little guy took over an hour, but I did it without checking until I was done.


Comparison with the original (in red):





Click to see animated GIF comparison:

Lesson 4, Part 4

Ok, so I'm really dragging this lesson on and on!

I bragged in the last post about how my eye was so much more discerning. Well, the next night I spent nearly an hour on this character swiveling his head around. (I think it's a mouse?)

Once again, as soon as I felt like I was finally done, I got ready for bed, then came back and looked at it. It was terrible! I'd straightened it all out. Yuck!

So the next night I started over with a clean sheet of paper, resolved to really see what I was looking at. I drew lightly in blue for maybe fifteen minutes, and I could already tell I was making exactly the same mistakes. The body didn't seem to be leaning forward far enough, and the head seemed too small. But I could not figure out how to correct it, and I didn't want to spend a whole hour barking up the wrong tree again.

So I cheated.


I scanned the rough and compared it in Photoshop (above). Wow. The differences in the lower body were subtle but important. The curve in the hind leg that I was making too vertically straight made a huge difference in the overall perception of how the body was leaning.

I was also amazed that I had so much of the head exactly right, except the face was pushed in a whole eyeball width! How could I not see that?

So the next night, working from memory of the comparison, I went back to the drawing board and corrected the blue, then pencilled it in black.

Finally I compared it again. Except for the hands and nose tip being too small, it's not too bad.

Considering I cheated.

P.S. I really enjoyed the feeling that I was drawing three-dimensional volume in this character. Especially the organic shapes of the belly and the head.

P.S.S. Bonus comparison. Yikes!

Lesson 4, Part 3

Well, I know I'm making progress because it's easier for me now to see my mistakes on the paper, before I dash off to the scanner and do a Photoshop comparison. The problem is... I see my mistakes on paper. So drawing is taking longer and longer. I keep drawing, noticing it looks wrong, figuring what is wrong, fixing it and checking again. Over and over and over.

Using blue pencil, I worked on a drawing of the duck with the slingshot for nearly an hour. When I thought I was done, I realized it was fundamentally wrong. So the next night I started over on a new sheet of paper, and spent another fifty minutes just on the blue pencil. When I was done, it was close, but still visibly wrong. So the next night I spent another half hour fixing the blue, and then tracing it in black. An hour and half on a single drawing!

This is the result:



That looked pretty good to me. At least it was as good as I could get it without doing the comparison in Photoshop. It did seem somehow that the head was bigger than it should be, but the neck also looked just a tad longer than the original, so I couldn't figure out how the head could be bigger.

Finally I did the test:


It's okay (or maybe pretty good), but the mistakes are all too obvious.

Maybe I'm spending too much time on this. But now that I can self-correct better, I'm really trying to get each drawing as good as I possibly can. Also the time I spend, I'm training my eyes and hands, which after all is the point (at least partly). Hopefully this is a just a stage along the path, where I'm getting more discerning (a good thing) but I'm still not as skilled as I need to be.

I'm gonna leave this angry little duck be, and move on. There are three more characters in Lesson 4.