Some Studies

These are just some good images I found that I thought were good to study from.

I feel like I'm stuck drawing characters floating in space and I figured I should try making drawings of characters within backgrounds that are all under a well-structured composition.

I wanna try incorporating some background elements within my drawings and studying these I thought would help me to do so.






The first two images I got are from Chris' awesome ComiCrazys blog! Lots of neat and inspirational stuff there! Go there NOW!

The last one I found was in John's blog of a Kurtzman post.

Pedro's Slab and Ernie Exercise

Hey, everyone! Happy New year! Hope your holidays were nice!

Here's my take on the Slab's First Fist layout exercise.


Hope these are okay. They aren't fully cleaned up though.

I wanted to see if I was going in the right direction before I kept going and wanted to hear everyone's thoughts.

I tried maintaining the guts on some of these from the storyboards. I think overall I did fine. There are some problems I noticed like some things are slightly toned down and I had some problems spacing the characters within the background like the ladder being to close to Ernie as well as too close to the edge of the paper.

I also tried maintaining a good flow between each pose so that they consecutively flip properly.


I remember reading a post that John did in his blog about how Irv Spence designed the eyes on some Tex Avery characters where their eyes don't follow the center line on the head without making them look flat. Here's the post I'm talking about.

I tried dong so with Slab and Ernie's eyes in most of these layouts so to attract the viewer to their expression in their eyes like the one Ernie has above, which I think was John's intention when he did the storyboard.

Doing this also helped the drawing retain the guts from the storyboard drawing.


With this last layout below I analyzed from the storyboard drawings that these last poses took up almost the whole spacing of the BG, so this is the layout I drew first while I visually planned out how the other poses from the other storyboard drawings would fit into that final spacing of the BG.


As I did the other layouts, little by little I started changing certain things in the BG like raising the top bed for Slab's big fist to fit in better or adjusting the steps on the ladder, so that all the poses read clearly alone as well as read clearly and make sense within the background.

I don't know if that was exactly the correct way to go about it, but it seemed to make sense to me.

Let me know what you think! If anything doesn't make sense let me know.

Layout Study - "Slab & Ernie"

Hello everybody,

here comes my studies of the last exercise.

it was harder than the one with Kaspar, specially because I haven't practiced a lot the model of these characters.

I just finished the drawings (I need to rest) so I can not see the mistakes yet.

I will take a look tomorrow and I will be able to post a self critique of the exercise.

I want to do more of this, it is very cool.

abraço

davi

Kaspar Studies with BG

Hi everybody,

I am back from Portugal and now I will start to do more cartoon studies.
I began drawing these poses below. I started with the ones that had the explanation about the construction, than I jumped for the ones that you had already drawn (so I could read the critiques that mr. John K gave) and at last I drew the ones that nobody had tried. It was preatty hard and I think that it still have a lot of the same problems that mr. John K pointed already... but I also think that I am improving little by little... I will keep practicing.
After I finished the constructions I applied them in the background as you can see in the next image.
I use the photoshop to apply the images and also to make some small corrections on the proportions so it would fit in the BG... I don't know if it is the right way... but it kind of worked.

I can tell that it is not perfect and the drawings could be funnier (SHAME again)... but I really think that the next ones are going to came better... I will try not to take very long until the next post.

abraço

davi

Using the same background setup for multiple poses and scenes

Here are a bunch of drawings of Kaspar doing things next to the dresser. When you are doing layouts, it makes sense to find all the scenes that look like they use the same setup (background and camera angle) - and draw just 1 background that will work for all the poses.
This complicates your thinking because now, not only do you have to do a good drawing, you have to make sure all the drawings work together and in the exact same setting.The reason to do all this planning and to just use one background if you can for multiple scenes - is to save work for the next guy: the background painter. If you draw a brand new BG for each scene that looks like a similar camera angle, then the poor painter has to do all this extra work painting multiple shots that are hardly different.

This unfortunately happens in animation quite a bit - in every department. If an artist doesn't plan his work to help the next guy or gal in the production line, he will cause problems and extra work for others. Those others will hate you for doing it, just like you would hate the person before you if he caused you extra needless work.


(ignore the top closeup below, it's a different angle and camera distance;it needs its own setup. Just draw the pose below that)
As an exercise, try taking 2 or 3 consecutive poses from this post and draw them so they all use the same BG setup. This one:

You have to now flip each drawing against the others so that they move smoothly between poses.

How to make one good pose and setup

READ MORE ABOUT SCENE PLANNING AND SETUPS

Some good BG layouts

These are drawn by someone who has actually drawn in nature and then found ways to simplify what he saw into cartoony shapes.
A lot of people since learend to draw BGs by copying these types, instead of going outside to see what things really look like. Over decades, copies of copies of copies have led to a degradation in drawing ability.
It's good to copy these to see how this artist solved the problem of simplifying natural forms, but then go out and look at nature and see if you can simplify it in your own way.

Background Studies

One thing I've always been terrible at is backgrounds, so I decided to study and practice. Talk about stiffness! I'm starting with this book about my homeland. When you see a whole scene like this, it's so filled with detail and information that it's hard to know where to start.I'll try to analyze what makes a tree recognizeable:

1) its overall shape
2) the pattern or structure of its branches and leaves - now I can see this in the picture above, but I don't know how to put it into words or even form a mental picture of its general form. Aaargh!

here are my first scratchy quick studies of random stuff outta the book.
I tried to get simple structures that looked like the trees without having every leaf drawn. It's not easy. I want to find cartoony ways to stylize the shapes and patterns that look fun and confident. I sure am not there yet.



I couldn't resist drawing that crawfish and the kid around it. It's an interesting bunch of angles, and not what you usually see in a cartoon because of the difficult point of view.
I like these flowers a lot. They look simple on the surface:

1) They have an easy to see overall form-long s curved frond shapes.
2) They have a pattern of details that follow the frond shape.
The pattern is made of the rows of flowers that are neatly lined up perpendicular to the waving stem.

I see it easily, but it's another thing to try and draw it so it looks good.
I gave up on that one.
Here's a nice winter scene that has some trees that have very bold shapes.

Their patterns and textures are much harder to decipher.

I made a mess of the composition and evened out all the sizes. It's very frustrating that I can feel the way the needles on the tree branch out and are weighed down by the snow. They are definitely making a very noticeable general pattern, but I can't figure out how to translate it.I would suggest to everyone to not neglect how things other than characters look. If you have a park nearby or scenic area, grab your pads and get out there and do some sketches. Squint your eyes when you look at the scenes and try to decipher the overall big shapes and forms first. Then fill them in with descending levels of patterns.

Try to notice the different shapes that different species of trees take. Many cartoonists like me have stock cartoon trees in our heads and we just draw the same one over and over again, which is lazy and boring.

The world is full of visual interest that can be cartooned. Get out there and look at it. Don't just learn what a tree and a cloud looks like from the comics. There's more variety in real life.