For the second time in a row, we’ve receive, as a gift, the latest DvD box set of the newly released Simpson’s season. I like this quite a bit. Especially since I haven’t been able to afford buying some of the past ones. The nicest thing about the gift though, was not that it was given to us by the studio, Fox or even Gracie Films, but in fact, it was given to us by Matt Groening himself. Each box set came with a thank you note signed by him. That was REALLY nice of him. Especially since he didn’t HAVE to do anything of the kind.
Thank you Matt Groening!
ART
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
This is taking more time than I thought. The one hour a day I get, in order to draw my stuff, is not enough time to work on this drawing.
I blew up my thumbnail about 200% on a 11×17 sheet of paper. I took a sheet of tracing paper and began cleaning up the drawing, as well as adjusting the poses. I adjusted the position of the Sorcerers by moving them over a bit to the right. I also changed the pose of one of the Sorcerers to make him a little more dynamic.
I’d drawn Rob first and after I drew the Sorcerers in, I discovered their feet and Robs feet where not quite in the right place. Rob’s feet were in front of the Sorcerer’s feet, so I had to erase Rob and redraw him higher up. I also ended up redrawing him three more times because I didn’t like his proportions at first and then I tried a different angle for his head, but it didn’t look right.
Rob is also bigger in this final drawing than he is in the thumbnail. I wanted to be able to see him more.
The winged apes are not even in the drawing yet because I was having trouble finding good poses for them. Poses that look threatening and at the same time, place their wings in such a way, that they didn’t cover each other up. In order to figure out exactly what poses I was going to put them in, I need to do some sketches.
Even looking at the drawing as it is now, I kinda want to move the Sorcerers over a bit more to give Rob a little bit of “breathing room”:
Drawing a finished piece is far trickier than a sketch. Mainly because you actually want your drawing to be well drafted. With a sketch, you can live with things being a bit off.
Usually, once I’ve done a thumbnail or a general sketch as to where the characters are going to be placed in a drawing, I find the horizon line. When doing so, the most important thing, is to make sure that characters have the horizon line cross them in the same part of their body a it would, if they were standing side by side. In the drawing above, the horizon line (which is drawn in red) crosses everyone mid-foot. The exception being the closest Sorcerer, whose feet go slightly below the Horizon Line to give the ground a bit of a curving feel. Once I have the Horizon Line in place, I draw a perspective grid all over the page. That way, I see the 3 dimensional space the characters are suppose to inhabit at a glance. I’ve only drawn one perceptive point so far, only because I don’t absolutely need the other point just yet, I will draw it in in once I start with the details of the background.
I then start adding a bit more construction and form on the drawings of the characters. I also try to improve everyone’s poses and gestures. In the case above, I’m still not completely satisfied with Rob’s pose and drawing, so it still needs a bit of work.
I need to make sure I get the drawing above right for a couple of reasons. 1) I plan to do different finished versions of the drawing using different styles, in order to figure out what I want the final look of the cartoon to look like. 2) I plan to animate it. It will become the experimental piece that I will use to figure out how I’m going to approach the animation in the cartoon. I’m thinking of a few programs I can use, and I might want to see which ones works the best.
What do you think so far?
MY WEEK
Met my friend Paul in the hallway at work and asked him how he was. This lead to a looong talk about art, drawing, pushing one’s self, discovering new ways to work, and many other things. I ended up showing him some of what I was working on, and Paul showed me what he was working on.
What the was working on blew me away. He’d been doing some concept art on a project for a mutual friend of ours. The art was done using Storyboard Pro and I couldn’t believe it was done using that program. He’d managed to make Storyboard Pro do things, I didn’t know it could. It was very inspiring and it’s go me thinking very hard about the potential of the program.
VIDEOS
I saw this video of John Cleese talking about the creative process, and I found it to be very infotaining:
Wednesday was very exciting. I was asked to join a story meeting with my director, the head director of the show and the two writers who co-wrote the current script of the show we’re working on. It was really amazing. I was asked to join in when they were discussing ACT 4 of the show, which is what I was assigned.
I found it very interesting as the writers went over the script picking out bit of the script that they had specific visions for. They also told us reasons why they put certain things in, so that we could understand their intentions better. It was also great to ask them what they meant in sections we were unclear about.
It was almost like a listening to a DVD commentary, only, we got to construct the show based on the commentary. I hope I get to do it again.
ART
(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
I settled on a final look for the snake monster this week:
On the page above, I drew the top right drawing first and made my way down the page. I thought the first drawing was too “handsome”. A bit generic. Looked a bit like Martian Manhunter. Also, the features were too evenly spaced out and it didn’t look snake like enough.
The second drawing down was better but the face was too big and I wanted it to be more bunched up in the front of the head. It thought perhaps the size of the eyes were contributing to all the “real estate” the face was taking up. So I tried again.
The third drawing, I liked a lot and I even thought I’d finally found what I was looking for. So much so that I drew a few more versions of it on the left hand side of the page. As I did this, I realized he was still too “handsome”. Too human. I still wanted more of a snake look. So I tried one more time.
I drew the final face at the bottom of the page. I made the eyes even smaller and spread them far apart, like a snake. It was exactly what I wanted. It’s not pretty, just weird.
Having finally nailed down what I wanted everything to look like, I decided to start thumbnailing the composition I wanted for my style guide/test. But before I write directly about what I did, I will point out that I’ve decided to take away one of the monsters I had originally written. In the story outline, I had written in a Stone Elemental. It was a place holder monster I’d put in so I could have one monster for each Sorcerer. I had been planning to replace that monster with a more “Lovecraftian” monster. Something with a lot of tentacles. I decided to not go with that idea for two reasons.
I’m lazy and I just didn’t want to spend anymore time designing monsters.
I liked the Winged Apes so much, I thought I could use two of them instead of just one.
So there are still three monsters, they just aren’t the original ones that I wrote in the outline. Okay, so here’s the page I drew my thumbnails on:
Remember what I said two weeks ago about what I was going for with the composition? I was trying to make Rob small against something big in order to make him look vulnerable and at the same time I wanted to make the Sorcerers look menacing too? Well, I came up with some shape placements I thought might do the trick. If you notice on the page above, the first drawing on the top of the page is basically just shapes. This was an idea I had gotten in the middle of the work day. In order to remember it, I quickly put the shapes down on paper. This was really all I needed to do to see if it was going to work.
The second sketch was drawn later as a slight variation of the shot above but I didn’t continue with it because I wasn’t happy at all with what it looked like.
The final sketch at the bottom of the page I drew by taking the shape masses from the first sketch and refining them into actual characters. The monsters are a unit and the Sorcerers are treated as a unit too. I also tried to tell an individual story with every character. Some of the poses need a little work and there still needs to be some adjusting with the space relationships, but it’s pretty much what I’m going to go with.
The next thing I wanted to do was to figure out the tonal values within the drawing. To achieve this, I took some tracing paper and a black Prismacolor pencil, and began to add tone. I decided not to be too precious about drawing perfectly within the lines, so it’s a bit messy and rough.
(PRO TIP: Prismacolor pencil is erasable on tracing paper. Many development guys in the industry draw their development tonal drawings on tracing paper and then color copy the final on regular paper.)
The idea is to add a different value to the foreground, middle ground and background elements. The values I was using would be restricted to, dark, mid tone and light. Only using those three colors helps simply the process and allows you to see the tones as a whole. It really doesn’t matter which values go to which “ground”. You can just as easily choose the background to be the darkest value as the lightest. As long as it makes the picture clear and gets across the feel you want the drawing to have.
My first thought was to let the foreground have the mid tone. I decided to make the background the darkest and the middle ground the lightest so that the main character popped out more. At the time, I didn’t really like it all that much:
Part of the problem was that the sky and the buildings are kinda TWO backgrounds and they were throwing me off. I also didn’t like the idea of making all the buildings so dark.
I tried again. This time I decided to make the foreground the darkest and the background sky the mid tone, while keeping the background buildings and middle ground characters the lightest. This didn’t look good to me at all. I added a little bit of shadows on the monsters to attempt to balance it all, but it just looked odd. (possibly because I was so sloppy with it):
I was getting frustrated. Decided to refocus and try to keep in mind two basic things:
My center of interest had to be the place of highest contrast. In this case, the place where the darkest dark and the lightest light would meet.
Try adding a definite light source.
Okay, so I obviously my center of interest was Rob. He either had to be the darkest dark surrounded by the lightest light or the lightest light surrounded the darkest dark (as I had in the first sketch)…or both. I decided to try a combination of both. He would have both black and white in different areas of his body:
My thinking was, just because a ground plane is dominated by a tone, it doesn’t mean that other lighter or darker tones don’t have a place within it as long those values don’t dominate that ground plane. SO, I chose to make Robs pants the darkest dark, and I also darkened his upper body as the cast shadows of the monsters fell on him. The rest of Rob would therefore be in light creating and interesting play of contrasting black and white tones. This meant that the light source would come from the upper left corner of the drawing.
Since Rob was the darkest dark, the background behind him needed to be the lightest light to make him pop out. Now I had the middle ground dominated by the darkest dark of the drawing and the background would be dominated by the lightest. Still, there would be SOME light on Rob himself to make him pop out a bit more. The foreground ended up with the mid tone. This seemed to work.
To add to visual interest, and to lead the eye around the drawing a bit more, I also decided that the flying winged ape would be darker than the other. This will make you “read” him but I’ll make sure he’s not placed against too light a background. Also, I decided that the farthest Sorcerer on the right with his arms crossed would be darker than the other two. That way, you will read him. I’ll just make sure that his darker parts aren’t as dark as Rob’s. This will make a triangular composition of dark areas. Hopefully, doing this will make your eyes travel around the picture.
Another thing I needed to make sure I did was to chose ONE tone out of the three to be dominant. That ONE tone needs to cover 50% or more of the drawing. Then I had to pick another tone to be the second most dominant. Doing this adds visual interest.
I seemed to have accidentally made the dark tone the most dominant followed closely by the lightest tone. Still, I think the light and dark tones are almost too balanced in my thumbnail. Also, I don’t think I did a good enough job differentiating the values. The darks almost look like the same value as the mid tones. This kinda messes up the point of doing a tonal pass. I shouldn’t have been so sloppy. That’s what I get for being impatient.
Seeing all the thumbnails here on the blog has allowed me to take a good look at them all and now I think I had it right the first time with the FIRST tonal pass. As dynamic as the lighting is on the last one, it covers Rob and the monsters too much in darkness. I kinda want them to be a little more visible. Perhaps having the buildings be dark wouldn’t be so bad after all.
What do you think?
CATHOLICISM
It’s not secret I’m Catholic and love my faith. One of the more sensational aspects of Catholicism comes in the guise of exorcisms. The subject seems to fascinate people quite a bit and has been the theme of many passed and future movies. Because they’ve been so sensationalized in movies, exorcisms seem like fantasy. Yet, for Catholic exorcists, they are a very serious business.
Below, you will find an audio interview with an Exorcist. I found the interview fascinating and thought I’d share it. But first, a little bit of what Wikipedia says about the priest you will be listening to:
Fr. Malachi seems to be a very controversial figure within the Church AND without (after all, he’s an Exorcist). Never the less, I found the interview interesting. The interview begins with Fr. Malachi talking about the Devil, Hell, Evil, then turns to Satanism and the nature of sin, which leads him to the topic of Exorcism.
In this interview, when speaking about the movie THE EXORCIST, Fr. Malachi basically says the movie version was laughable, the real thing is far worse. Enjoy:
Got a big compliment for my work from a director a few days ago and that felt good. Looks like the way I’m approaching the work is getting approval.
Then there was this incident: Last week I finished a Couch Gag that I got very little direction on. It was assigned to me, I read the script and since it was an action sequence, I had to “write” the visual representation of the action. The director basically took a look at what I’d done and said, “Well, okay, send it to Gracie to see what they say about it.” It was very odd because I had made it all up.
A few days later I got the notes back and the notes where really superficial and minimal. Change these character’s to be Lenny and Carl, shorten the shirts on Homer and Marge, remove that details on these eyes. Nothing really about the action I had “written” with my drawings. That was very satisfying.
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(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
I started working on the Giant Snake monster. I decided to go with a Horned Viper. It had an interesting and very unique shape, plus it had horns:
As you can see in the drawing above, I was really trying to push the head shape in orders to have the viper’s face be all the way at the end of it’s head.
As cartoony as the drawings above are, they aren’t too cartoony. Why? Well, because I’m not familiar enough with the viper to push it further yet. Thing is, like the gorilla from last week, I first need to see what the animal I’m drawing really looks like. I also need to get familiar with their anatomy and how it’s put together. I can push only so far because I’m trying to figure out how to draw them to begin with. What shapes to use, what features go where and how they fit together. Only after drawing the animal, more or less, realistic, do I have a foundation to work on. How can you exaggerate reality if you haven’t studied what reality looks like? It’s also not enough to just see what it looks like but you have to understand it. This is why figure drawing is so important. When you understand the structure, anatomy, construction, and rhythms of the human form, you are able to re-translate them to the anatomy of other animals (which generally share the same anatomy but in a different configuration). Understanding how to draw something, does NOT require rendering. If you can draw something without having to render it and it still looks right, your doing something right. The point is to NOT use rendering as a crutch to cover up bad drawing. It doesn’t work. A bad drawing is a bad drawing no matter how much you render it. The best cartoonists are generally the guys that can also draw realistic (or semi-realistic) as well. That said, I’ve seen plenty of artists that can draw realistic and can’t draw cartoony (mostly because they don’t understand the principles of graphic design; or if they do, they don’t know how to apply it to creatures).
At this point, for me to TRULY be doing a deep study of both snakes and apes, I would need to start drawing them without skin to understand their muscle structure, as well as drawing their skeletons. I may still do this, but for now I just want to get this over with. I want to move on and finish the development stuff sometime this year. It feels like it’s taking forever. I only get to work on this stuff for an hour or so a day.
I thought, in the end, that the Viper (and all other snakes I looked at) just were not scary enough. In fact, MY drawings of the Viper made it almost look like a cat. It was too cute. I thought I needed something a bit scarier and creepier.
Before I tackled that problem though, I came across a photo of a gorilla that I just wanted to draw, so I did. I quickly drew a color pencil under drawing, exaggerating the features I saw on the photo as I went. Once I was done, I decided to ink the drawing. I also thought I’d use my Copic markers to add some tone to the drawing just for fun. What I ended up with was not exactly what I wanted but I learned a few things.
Then I went back to drawing the Snake monster:
Both the Winged Ape and the Giant Snake are ideas I lifted from two different Robert E. Howard, CONAN short stories. In the story with the snake, the snake had a human like face. I thought that perhaps, I should go with that image. It definitely came out looking much creepier. It also helped that I had drawn the previous drawings of the Viper because I was able to use snake anatomy in combination with what I know of human anatomy and construction.
You’ll also notice that there’s a gorilla sketch in the page as well. One with a pointy head. That’s because I got an idea for a gorilla head shape I wanted to try out. This lead me to the next couple of drawings:
The idea was to not have it be a ‘real’ gorilla but some kind of gorilla type creature so, instead of a big hump why not make it pointy. This made the ape look a bit alien, which I liked. The idea I was going for with the face, was to try to make it look like a death’s head. More skull like. I thought it was working and it was going in the right direction, but there was something not quite right, so I continued on:
In the drawings above, I wanted the face to be small compared to the size of the head, like I had thought in the other drawings last week. I think I got what I wanted with that but somehow the body all looked to “even”. Everything was the same size, so I decided to do a little sketch at the bottom to get the size variations I wanted. It was much better but there was something missing.
A day later, I was looking through the THE ART OF KUNG FU PANDA and came across the gorilla designs in the book. They were sooo awesome I couldn’t help but steal a shape solution or two and incorporate it into my design:
With the arms of the ape, I was definitely trying a clearer “straight versus curve” line contrast. I also made him generally thicker and shrunk his face a bit more, so it wouldn’t be so long.
Next I tried to give the snake another go. I was mostly trying to make sure to draw some of his body so that I could see how it grew bigger in the middle while it tapered more as it got to his head and tail. I also wanted to try to simplify the face so that there wasn’t so many lines. It needs to look as if it’s from the same design universe as the rest of the characters. Not there yet, but getting there. I think I might need to experiment more with the nose and head shape.
There was a lot going on this weekend. It was both my wife and I’s 6th wedding anniversary on Saturday and my daughter’s 4th birthday was on going to be on Monday. We decided to NOT celebrate our anniversary until Sunday and take Munchkin to the LA zoo for her birthday on Saturday instead. Alesha invited our parents as well as a her sister, my brother and his wife and some friends. We all met up at the zoo.
I had bought her a “sketchbook” at the dollar store and a few markers. I told her it was so she could draw the animals. I didn’t realize how much she would LOVE the idea. As we entered the zoo, we passed by a bird feeder with a bunch of birds on it and she stopped us all to take out the sketchbook to draw a bird. She was that way with every animal there after.
I brought my own sketchbook but it was much more difficult for me to get any sketching done. The little bit I DID get to do, didn’t turn out so well. I’d forgotten how difficult it was to draw moving animals at the zoo. Especially when I felt rushed by the fact that I wasn’t there to sketch.
Most of the time we were just trying to make sure to keep track of all the kids and keep everyone together as best we could. It was A LOT of work. The bigger kids would run off and we’d have to make sure Munchkin and Dante wouldn’t follow them. They didn’t like that much, but it was the safest way to keep track of them. They both had a fantastic time in spite of us keeping them close. We finished the day at the zoo leaving the kids to go play at the zoo’s playground until they kicked us out because the zoo was closing.
By the time we got home, we where pretty darn tired. Still, Munchkin was really looking forward to her birthday cake, so Alesha took her to the store and got her one. We sang Happy Birthday to her and she was sooo happy. I think she was looking forward to that part all day. We then had cake and ice cream and everyone went to sleep. Good times.
FAMILY
Sunday evening, we left the kids with my parents and went on a movie/dinner date for our anniversary. Alesha looked beautiful.
We went to see INCEPTION. We both loved it. First movie since the original MATRIX that I’ve wanted to watch in the movie theater again. If only I had the money to do so. Really well written and really well told. A very complex movie and yet they managed to make it clear. Fantastic.
Afterward Alesha and I went to dinner. Alesha is still working on her novel manuscript. Well sorta. She kinda finished writing it and the biggest reason she isn’t doing more with it right now, is because I hadn’t read it yet to give her my thoughts. During dinner, I did just that. I had been reading it all week. There were some issues with it that I wasn’t able to quite put my finger on. Then we watched INCEPTION and it all became clear. I knew exactly what it needed. The way that INCEPTION‘s story was structured gave me the clue. I gave Alesha my thoughts. It was a very geeky anniversary dinner.
The first time I read the manuscript, it had needed a lot of work. She fixed it really well. It still needs a bit of fixing though. I’m very proud of her. Her storytelling has gotten so much better.
We had a good anniversary date.
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Yes, puppets. I can FINALLY say something about it because it’s in the Simpsons press release below. There’s going to be an episode of the show where one of the acts will basically be a Simpsons puppet show. When I first heard about it from the director, I got very excited. I really can’t wait to see it. The act was storyboarded here so that it could be given to the studio doing the work. Very cool.
I’m familiar with most of the shows written about below. Some more than others. I might be able to expound a tiny bit about some of these shows below if you want to ask a few questions:
Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Amber Riley, Hugh Laurie, Halle Berry, Ricky Gervais, Daniel Radcliffe, Jon Hamm and Martha Stewart are among the guest voices in the upcoming 22nd season of THE SIMPSONS premiering Sunday, Sept. 26 (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT) on FOX.In “Elementary School Musical,” the season premiere episode, MARGE (Julie Kavner) sends LISA (Yeardley Smith) to a performing arts camp where artsy counselors (guest voices Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie of “Flight of the Conchords”) and fellow musically inclined campers (guest voices Lea Michele, Cory Monteith and Amber Riley of GLEE) inspire her to embrace her creative side. After she returns to Springfield, Lisa becomes restless with her ho-hum suburban lifestyle and catches the first bus to Sprooklyn in hopes of reconnecting with her inner hipster.
This fall, British imports Hugh Laurie (HOUSE) and Daniel Radcliffe (“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”) provide guest voices in the 21st annual “Treehouse of Horror XXI” Halloween spook-tacular. Later in the season, actor Jon Hamm (“Mad Men”) voices an FBI supervisor in “Donnie Fatso”; and Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, baseball legend Mike Scioscia and sports writer Bill James all lend their voice talents to “MoneyBart.” Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart spreads holiday cheer as herself in “The Fight Before Christmas,” an episode that also features live-action puppets.
Additional guest stars stopping by Springfield this upcoming season include actors Kristen Wiig (“Saturday Night Live”), Paul Rudd (“Dinner For Schmucks”), Rachel Weisz (“The Lovely Bones”) and Alyson Hannigan (“How I Met Your Mother”); NASCAR driver Danica Patrick; comic duo Cheech & Chong; and NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Additionally, Joe Mantegna (“Criminal Minds”) returns as FAT TONY.
Now the longest-running comedy in television history, THE SIMPSONS immediately struck a chord with viewers across the country as it poked fun of itself and everything in its wake. With its subversive humor and delightful wit, the series has made an indelible imprint on American pop culture, and the family members have become television icons. The series features the voice talents of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer.
THE SIMPSONS is a Gracie Films Production in association with 20th Century Fox Television. James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, and Al Jean are the executive producers. Film Roman is the animation house.
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(For those of you coming in late to these posts, if you want to read what my project is about, CLICK HERE to learn about the general world the story takes place in, and CLICK HERE if you want to know the story itself.)
I’ve come to the realization that I’m not really writing out all my process. Some of the thinking behind the drawings I do are simply not written out. From now on I’m going to try to put this info in.
Okay, so here I go. Why do I keep making so many thumbnails of the same scene and stuff? Well, I’m looking for the right “storytelling composition”. If you notice in the sketches below as well as some of my previous blog “composition thumbnails” (feel free to look at earlier posts), I’ve attempted to split the comps into three layers; foreground, middle ground, background. What I’ve chosen to PUT in does positions, depends on what I want to say and how I want to frame the composition. Also, if I wish to finish one of these thumbnails, I hope to give each “ground” it’s own tonal value between darkest dark, mid tone and lightest light (more on that some other time, as I get to a more finished state. Even though there’s already a small indication of this in previous thumbnails).
I’ve been mostly trying to get the main character Rob, to look vulnerable. I’ve chosen to do this by trying to make him look small in contrast to something much bigger in the picture. Either by, making one object bigger or by grouping multiple objects into a larger bigger shape. Only once did I break this theme in a thumbnail and it actually made him look a bit too heroic so I’ve chosen not to try that again.
For example, in the first thumbnail below, I drew the Sorceress in the extreme foreground. Making her look bigger than Rob. I didn’t like it though because I didn’t want her to be the only bad guy in the drawing and her pose was kinda ugly too. In the second thumbnail below I chose to have Rob be in the middle ground being dwarfed by the enormous shape the monsters create when they are grouped together in the background. In the foreground I put a tentacle or the end of the giant snake, threatening to grab him. It also points to Rob compositionally. In fact, you can see how all the lines in the drawing are all curved to point to Rob who is the center of interest. Even the way Rob is standing follows the rhythm of the composition. Although if I was to finish the drawing, I would probably push his pose a bit more, in order to better emphasize this. Below the monsters, I have The Sorcerers directing their them to attack. If anything, The Sorcerers’ size bothers me because they seem small and non threatening.
When designing the backgrounds (in previous posts), I was very aware of trying to include shapes within the design that could be used as good “framing” foreground elements (CLICK HERE for a page of examples of what I’m taking about). I was also taught to try to avoid having any lines parallel to the picture frame when designing a background or a composition. The exception to that rule being when you want to draw something more “iconic” or intentionally dull. Also, most comedic staging, will often be very flat since the joke is the most important thing.
If you have any questions about anything I’ve written above, please feel free to ask.
Below, I will write a little about character design.
The sketch with the monsters above, threw me on a small tangent. It seems I had forgotten what monsters I was going to use in my cartoon, so I reread my outline. Realizing I had written a flying ape monster, I suddenly got excited about drawing one. I immediately Googled “gorillas” . Below is what I ended up drawing:
When I try out designs, I’m looking for interesting shapes. I’m also looking for contrasting sizes within those shapes. When I look at a photo, I don’t try to copy the photo so much as try to push the shapes I see in order to come up with a unique design. Sometimes it works, other times it needs different variations. The trick is to not have everything be even. For example, in the case of the ape above, I wanted the forearms to be longer and bigger than the upper arm in the first and last pages. In the middle page I experimented with the forearm being shorter. I was also working on the contrast of having an enormous pointy head and a tiny face for interest. When it came to the torso, I tried to make sure it was either longer or shorter than the hind legs. In order to avoid line monotony, I also try putting straight lines across from curved line. Even if the straights and curved lines are “complex”. I also attempt to avoid parallel line in favor of tapered ones. Parallel lines in a character are often considered boring and unnatural.
It’s NOT about how well rendered a character is or how many doodas you put on the character. Shape and “well balanced” shape CONTRAST is key to good character designs. Rhythmically putting these things together makes a design sing.
Once you have that, make sure you give your character personality instead of just having it standing there like a robot. I recommend taking a good look at character designs in THE INCREDIBLES.
These are the things I look for in design AS I design. It’s the reason why I sometimes have the same figure on a page over and over. I’m just working on slight variations of shape contrasts and balances. If you look at some of my previous sketches of characters, you might be able to see what I’m trying to working out. Not everything I put on the page “works”, which is the point of the exploration. To find what DOES.
I recommend looking at some “art of” books to see how other artist approach these things. You’ll see them using the same principles. If you have any questions of what I was taught about character design, please feel free to ask.
For more comic and stories written by me, CLICK HERE.
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and came across the gorilla designs in the book. They were sooo awesome I couldn’t help but steal a shape solution or two and incorporate it into my design:
