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":