Milt Gross Study: Doc and Ugly Lady

I like very much the characters of Milt Gross, they are very appealing and visualy interesting. It reminds me the drawings from another genius cartoonist, Guillermo Divito.


Verbal Analysis:
-All flows through line of action.
- BIG Head!
- Short legs
- Little body
- Little eyes
-Eyes have slightly diferent directions
-There's lots of space inside the head
- The smile is higher than the eyes.
- Big collar and straight, in contrast to the curved shapes
- BIG Tie
- Little hat with a complex and very interesting shape
- The features that sticks out make and interesting silhouette



- Defined Line of Action
- Big Head
- Big Chest
- Skinny legs

Head:
- eyes occupy a small portion within the head
- One eye is slightly bigger than the other and they don't follow the direction of the head (this is very subtle)
- broad forehead
- Big nose
- Big chin
- The ear doesn't have the tipical cartoony ear shape.
- Some features sticks out making an interesting silhouette.
- LOTS of negative space inside the head.


I think next I will try some of my characters using the things I've learned here. Sometimes I have "happy accidents" in which I'm close to achieving the appealing of Milt Gross characters and I think doing these studies, I realize that these characters have things in common that make them look like this.

George and his Chainsaw

Verbal Analysis:
-His line of action is tilted slightly to the back.
-His porportions are two heads tall.
-He has a big head with big eyes and smile.
-His eyebrows are up
-He has a little hat.
-The right foot is bigger than his left. it's in perspective.
-He's holding a saw larger than its body, so his left arm should be slightly curved to look like holding a large, heavy object. The other arm is for control I think, so it has to look solid and firmly for controlling that saw.
-The head sticks out from his body.
*Watch the silhouette.
*Watch the negative space between george and the chainsaw.


I made his head tilted up, which is not.
The left eye needs to stick out.

foghorn and dog

First I check the proportions, the Dog has almost five heads. I didn't know how to check the proportions on Foghorn in this pose.
Then I did the Line of Action.

Line of Action.

Line of Action Check:
Then I draw the first level of forms.

1st Level of Forms:

1st Level of Forms Check:
I did this with Foghorn to
I didn't save the 2nd level of forms so I only put the check.

2ns Level of Forms Check:

Final Details:

Final Details check:
This was really hard to draw! Now I think I could have built better the forms.

Constructing Everything Underneath Your Final Lines

It's difficult for anyone to take a storyboard drawing and turn it into a layout. When I draw a storyboard I just scribble it out fast and don't worry about it being perfect or totally constructed or functional. But a layout artist has to take that scribble and give it function and sense- while maintaining the spontaneous feel that the storyboard panel has. It's hard to make something look spontaneous when it isn't, but that's what a layout should aim for.
Here's Anne's adaptation of my sketch. It does look spontaneous and cute but could be more solidly constructed.
Here's a stage I know that lots of artists skip when drawing characters. After drawing the line of action, you should construct the charcter on top of it. Draw each form all the way around-the whole body, the whole head - not just parts you will see in the final drawing.

There are other things you have to look for while doing this - like maintaining the guts, negative spaces, silhouettes etc... but let's just take this step first.

I would like to see some cartoonists here make some soldidly constructed rough drawings of the poses they are copying from my storyboards or from old cartoons and comics. This is the step no one seems to want to do. Maybe it's boring.

If I was to construct the other character now, I'd first analyze what I'm looking at:

She is on more of an angle than Roxy
Her head is tilted up and back
Therefore when I construct her, I have to construct her head as if we are looking slightly up at it - her eyes will be higher on her head, we will see more of her jaw than we would at a normal 3/4 angle etc.

Character Construction

I think this is a good drawing to copy.
It's solid, has line of action, clear silhouettes, perspective, life...
It's a good drawing to copy?
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I wanna draw this character, but I have a couple of questions first:
Should I draw first the line of action or the proportions?
Should I make the proportions by the eye or I can make it with a ruler?

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.

Cantinflas Composition

Update:

I need to study more on painting. I'm doing an analysis of Art Lozzi's backgrounds
That's next.

What do you think?

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I have this assignment, make a better background for this character, Cantinflas.
From what I learned on John K blog, this image has no composition, ther'es no negative space, everything is cluttered, no contrast, no design, no nothing.

I reorganized the picture, I give it more space for the character, more contrasts in the elements, better staging (I think...), more interesting shapes, flow...

What do you think?