Come visit us at our new address!
This blog has a new home at http://www.telluastory.com You are all invited to continue reading more about the amazing world of 2D animation over there. This is an illustration I did a couple of years ago. I love it! Click on the image to visit the new address.
To do list
Post by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
Hello everyone. I have a few things that I want to share with you (although I won’t just yet). First of all, I want to show you The Deadly Truth. Its release is loooong overdue. I thought that was going to be an easy thing, but once again, having a demanding day job and (yes I know) not enough discipline has pushed that deadline endlessly. The purpose was not perfection; just mastering Toon Boom software. Shame on me. After my work trip to Holland, I came back to a lot of backed up work that just had to get done. Things are more relaxed now, so I’ll get right on it. Along with The Deadly Truth, I want to share a series of posts regarding the various stages I went through to create it (including all the things that should have been done in another manner). In The Netherlands, I met with fellow animation enthusiast Voynitsky, so in the following days you’ll see a post about our conversation and some of his work. Great guy. In the past days I’ve been getting a lot of traffic directly from gooogle, and the search terms that keep coming up are “toon backgrounds” and “animating water”, so I decided to write detailed tutorial posts on how I go about doing those two things. Even if it’s only from my amateur experience.
My purpose is to make this blog as informative and useful as possible so that animation enthusiasts everywhere can benefit from my learning process.
So, over the next couple of weeks you can expect the following:
1) Completion and release of The Deadly Truth.
2) A series of posts about The Deadly Truth’s production.
3) My conversation with Voynitsky and some of his work.
4) Tutorials on “toon backgrounds” (indoors and outdoors) and “animating water”.
[Update:] I don’t like posts without visuals. After all , this is a blog about visual storytelling, so I want to show you the animation that got me started with this hobby back in 2006. It was done for a challenge at animationforum.net, run by Greg Kapersky. The challenge was called Dance Off and we were given a one minute piece of audio called Lalla, from the album I Have a Small Penis by M. J. Katamajäki to which we had to draw a character dancing. Go figure. I did it in Flash MX and had a lot of fun doing it, so here it is (opens in a new window):
Dance Off by Renato Vargas. (Click on the image)
I want to thank everyone that has kept coming back to this blog. It’s been great having you here. Don’t be shy, leave a comment 
.
Greetings from The Netherlands
Post written by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
Well. In the end I had too little time left for The Deadly Truth before my day job took me to Holland, so I had to leave things as they were, but to tell you the not so deadly truth, I can´t complain. This is a gorgeous country, no matter where you look. I thought I’d show you what I’ve been up to and get back to animation once I’m back home (June 29).
We are staying in Tilburg, which is a city close to Belgium, but before we got here we spent one night in Wageningen, which is sort of a University town. It looks like one of those christmas decorative miniature towns. Just lovely. Here’s a view from my hotel room and one of the streets in the center city.
Our hosts at Tilburg University have been great to us and we’ve been integrated into an excellent work team. Of course not everything in this life is work… Here’s a shot of the guys. (From the far left: the all knowleadgeable Jan van Tongeren, Juan Pablo Castaneda, Ruud Picavet, Yours Truly [standing], and Pedro Pineda.)
I leave you with a shot of the view from my room at the Mercure Hotel in Tilburg’s center square. I might be getting together with two Dutch fellow Toon Boom Animate enthusiasts the following week, so I’ll let you know how that goes. I bought a sketch pad to capture some of Holland’s and London’s (over the weekend) gorgeous views, so I’ll be sharing those with you later. Til then, Doei!
The Deadly Truth: Almost done
Post written by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
I had intended The Deadly Truth to be released yesterday, but I’m going to wait a couple of days. Although the animation is done, there are a couple of aspects that need a little attention before its release. First of all, I’m wrestling with a couple of effects. I thought that was going to be easy, but since I’m still learning the software I cannot get them to look exactly how I wanted them to. I’m gonna do some experimenting tonight. Then, there’s the sound issue. It’s a very short clip (around one min in length), but I want it to sound good. Last night, I dusted off my microphone and did a few tests with the new comp, and it’s all set. I just need to start recording. Last but not least, I want to share more with you, so I’m going to be writing a series of how-to posts that will describe every part of the process and how to get each of them accomplished with Toon Boom Animate. They are going to be really cool. I want to have the first one ready when the clip airs. So now I’m not going to give you a release date, but instead I’m going to say that you can expect it soon. Have a great day!
Things are back in track
Post written by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
Now that things are back to normal, here’s a quick update of The Deadly Truth. This link takes you to a facebook version of the video that looks better than Youtube’s. While you are there, you can always befriend me.
Here’s the Youtube one, which for some reason is one second shorter than it should be. Just a taste:
Note: I’m thinking of releasing the Toon Boom Animate source files for this animation once it’s published so that everyone can learn from my mistakes, so stay tuned!
Because stuff happens
Well, Sunday has come and The Deadly Truth is not finished. This may sound like a “my dog ate my homework” type of excuse, but these past two days were extremely hot where I live (not in the sexy way) and my computer couldn’t take it. Apparently, something overheated (past fry degree) and it won’t start. Now I have to wait until Monday to take it to the repair place and hopefully, it’ll get fixed over the course of the week. I have another computer (an old laptop), but since it doesn’t have an NVIDIA card that’ll satisfy system requirements, it won’t work with Animate. Luckily I always return the licence after every use (due to fear that someone will break in and take the computer), so it’s not locked in there with the broken down machine. Hopefully the hard disk isn’t damaged and my files are still there. If things aren’t fixable, I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a MacBook Pro, ever since I read this post from the one and only Chris Georgenes, who recently “made the switch” from Microsoft to Apple. This might just be the signal I needed. Anyway, this is going to be fixed in the next couple of days, so I’ll move the release date for next Sunday. The idea is to work fast and not worry about little details. Of course, your computer not working isn’t one of those :-S.
The Deadly Truth
Release date: Sunday, June 7th, 2009.
In the meantime, take a look at this character update I posted on Twitter a couple of days ago:
The Deadly Truth: first update
My little clip is coming along nicely. Backgrounds are close to done and rough keyframes are in place. Everything on schedule. Progress!!
“The Deadly Truth” will be released on Sunday, June 7th, 2009.
Edit: For those interested, I will post more quick updates through Sunday on Twitter. You can follow me here.
Coming to a web browser near you: The Deadly Truth
Post by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
I decided today that it is time to become Toon Boom Animate literate, and there’s only one way to do that: animating. For that reason, I decided to make a clip, under one minute in length due next Sunday, May 31st. No excuses. I am aiming to do it as fast as possible, and to use multiplane, some symbols, couple of effects, and frame-by-frame character animation. It’s going to be called The Deadly Truth.
So far I roughed out the setting, set up the multiplane shot, and drew some poses. I hope I have some fun making it. Afterwards, I’ll write a couple of posts about the experience. For now, check out the rough BG:
Title: The Deadly Truth
Release date: Sunday, June 7th, 2009.
Backgrounds: From Google SketchUp to Toon Boom Animate
Post by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
Hey there, just want to show you some stuff. In my last post I showed you an application called Google SketchUp. Since it’s an incredible tool to develop three dimensional models of whatever you want, I thought it would be a good idea to use it as an aid in the creation of two dimensional backgrounds for animated shorts. I’m still working on the outside shots I showed you before (I’ll post how those turn out in another post) but I’d like to show you how SketchUp is of great help when it comes to drawing perspective. You don’t even have to think about vanishing lines and what not.
We start off with a fairly simple Sketchup cube and with the push/pull tool we create a two wall room (or set). After that we pay a visit to the 3D Warehouse we populate our room with a suitable bed and a nightstand (although here I just modeled this “placeholder” as nightstand). Don’t forget to punch a hole in the wall for our window. We paint everything white, move our view around to get the best shot, and snap a picture (export an image). I’d like to point out that SketchUp is full featured software, so it is capable of much more than these simple things I’m doing. I want to keep the models simple because afterwards, the painting portion will take up most of our time. We end up with something like this:
We then import our image into our drawing software (in my case, I’m using Toon Boom Animate) and put it on it’s own layer. After that, it all becomes about “imaginative tracing”. Use your SketchUp lines as guides and make sure you keep every drawing in it’s own individual layer (you can group things afterwards). How about we start with the footboard. You can color as you go, or you can color everything when you’re done.
Now some courtains…
Now the bed and we improvise a nightstand using our SketchUp placeholder as a visual aid (don’t mind the shadows; that step comes afterwards, but I forgot to take snapshots without them 
).
And we finish with our walls and the window. At this point you can color everything. Your aim is to accomplish a certain atmosphere. After all, we’re trying to tell a story…
Make sure you build up a nice atmosphere with every layer you paint.
I’m falling in love with SketchUp more and more. It’s an incredible tool that can save you a few hours. You should give it a try. How do you like our final product?
Leave a comment.
Backgrounds: Getting your perspective right with Google Sketchup
Post written by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
When I started with this hobby, I didn’t think doing backgrounds for my animated shorts was going to something to worry about. After all, they were the portion of the whole thing that didn’t (generally) move, right? Plus, I considered myself kind of artsy and I had done a few paintings, so I thought to myself: “How difficult could it be?” I didn’t expect the answer to be “FREAKING HARD”.
As it turns out, creating backgrounds for a short is no walk in the park. It’s not that you have to learn about color, or drawing, or composition, or even effects (which you have to do, though, sorry). The problem with them can be summarized in one word: consistency. That’s right, if you want your backgrounds to frame your animation effectively, you have to be consistent, and as I soon realized, that is one difficult thing to accomplish. When I was a kid, my dad (a civil engineer) taught me how to draw two-point perspective and since then, that has become a bit intuitive for me. However, if my camera looks at the same scene from a different angle and I have to draw that, everything gets screwed up, because it is very hard for me to get the layout right from a different view. I end up with a coach that lies at twice the distance from a coffee table, for example, in comparison to the first shot.
ENTER: Google SketchUp
SketchUp is a 3D modeling application that you can download for free from our friends over at Google. It has many capabilities, but what drew my attention is how easily you can get seemingly complex models done, with just a few clicks. It’s tools are not very intuitive, but the learning curve for them is ridiculously short. With the instructional videos from screen name: SketchUpVideo and 4sketchupgo2school on YouTube you’ll be able to do very nice things with it in a couple of hours (make that three). Some animated series like Futurama, use 3D sets rendered with toon shaders that make their three dimensional objets look like 2D drawings. That’s certainly a nice way to use 3D, but an expensive one, and not the one I want to try out.
You see, I want to draw my backgrounds myself, but I’m going to get SketchUp to tell me where everything goes, and as a bonus to help me out with the perspective. My project takes place near a well-known church in the city where I live, so I want it to be present throughout the short. Unfortunately there was no model for it on Google Earth so I had to create it myself. As I wrote before, it is not complicated at all, once you get the hang of it. The two tools/techniques I used most in this case were the “Push/pull tool” for extruding every structure up from basic shapes drawn on the ground and the “Follow me tool” for mouldings and spheres. Here’s a panoramic view of what I created:
This took me a little past three hours to complete,
including the time it takes to learn basic SketchUp.
In a 3D space where you’ve made a mock-up of your set, and marked with big blocks where your buildings, nature and props go, you can quickly move your camera to explore what shots work best for your project. Not only will you get the correct layout, but you’ll also get your perspective right in every shot. A nice feature of SketchUp is that it lets you apply a photograph as a texture to any surface. In my case, that lets me visualize more clearly what I want as an end result. I browsed through flickr and found some façades that give me a better idea of the direction I’ll take. Let’s take a look at a nice establishing shot:
Which is based on this original rough sketch:
What if we climb on top of the chapel or take a look across the street?
What next? You can’t use these pictures for your project. No matter how cool it was to craft them, they’re still a long way from finished, so the next step is to take these and import them into your image editing application and paint your scene on top of them, using the blocks as reference for the position of all your objects and using the lines as perspective guides. However. we’ll explore that in a different post. Hopefully, this technique will ease up the process of drawing consistent backgrounds. Have a great day!
Leave a comment.
What about a real site?
I have been considering turning this blog into a standalone website, and now that installing (and maintaining) WordPress has become easier, well I went for it. Guess what domain I bought? Yes, you got that right. For the moment I’m fiddling with the overall look and feel of things so it’s not operational, but WordPress is up and the theme and theme manager are working. I’ll move this blog there and I’ll add a new feature, that I hope you (and some more peolple outside the current reach of this weblog) will like. I can’t wait to show you some new cool things. Hopefully, you’ll have a nicer visual experience, coupled with the high quality posts you’ve come to expect from “I’ll tell you a story…”. Keep checking for updates here.
In the mean time, take a look at this background I did some time ago, when I started this project. It was done in Flash, and I like it a lot, although the original .fla file was lost in a very very stupid way.
Background done with Adobe Flash.
P.S. A lot of you keep contacting me on my e-mail address. Not that I don’t appreciate your input, but I would rather see it in the comment section of every post, so that everyone can join in on those nice conversations about animation as a hobby. Have a great day!
The Importance of Staying Creative
Post written by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
Some say creativity cannot be forced; that it is something that is either there or it is not; that you either have it or you don’t. Does that mean that you have to sit around and just wait for it to strike you? Well, I say NO, because if I learned one thing is that the longer you sit around doing nothing, the further away you get from being creative. Especially for people who do not necessarily work in a field related to their creative passion. It’s hard to keep up with your daily life, and then come home and burst into a creative frenzy. It is true that you cannot will yourself to be an excellent animator, or just force yourself to have an excellent idea, but there are certain elements of the creative process that you can be intentional about that will eventually lead to a creative explosion. This is not a new idea, but I would like to share with you how I’m slowly applying it to my animation project.
An update on Rezadores’ character development.
You have to intentionally set time aside for your magic. An hour’s work can be very rewarding.
The idea behind being intentional about your creative process is that you have to make an appointment with yourself to develop your skills and to simply, well… use them. In that time, you have to give a hundred percent, as if you were getting paid to work on your project, and the client expects nothing but greatness from you. Play with your craft, be curious about new techniques, but do it for the sake of it and not because you expect compensation. Of course, to be able to do that, you have to take in stimulus, not passively, but in an active and focused manner.
What does this mean? If you were working on an animation about Africa, for example, it would be in order to spend some time researching about the wildlife there, maybe do an internet photo search about the place, familiarize yourself with the physical appeareance of the people that live there, or listen to some sounds that were recorded there. You probably knew that, but what you don’t know is when or what to do with all the materials you’ve researched. This is the tricky part.
You have to set time aside for three things: taking in stimulus, processing that stimulus, and putting things into practice. In that time, the activities you do must reflect an interest in seeing how you can apply the things you perceive to your current project or problem. This is how I’m doing it:
1. One hour a day for me and my creative self. You might be asking, “hey, didn’t he say he’d only be animating three days a week?” You are right, that doesn’t mean that I’m not doing anything on the other days. The actual animation is my practice. The other days I might take in stimulus, process it, or just find another creative outlet (like writing posts about the whole thing ). I try to make a schedule, and if you want to do so at this point, I suggest you do it on a weekly basis. That way, in any given week, you are able to direct more of your attention to any of the three steps I described. At the beginning of any project you might want to spend more days a week taking in stimulus. Later, you might want to cut down on your stimulus intake, to favor the processing part, and once you are well aware of what you want, you might spend more days just creating, until your next project comes along.
2. One hour, and one hour only. Start with a little until it becomes a habit. Oftentimes, when people read posts like this one, they get enthusiastic and set their expectations too high. They think: “Hey, I have more than an hour a day, I can spend three hours doing all this”. Eventually, they get burned, and drop the whole thing altogether. Start with an hour a day. Half an hour would be better. Everyone has half an hour to spare. Refrain yourself a little in order to go on longer. At this point, I realized I was more receptive to creative thoughts at night, so I decided to have my unnecesary creating time around seven in the evening. Some days I’ll animate, others I’ll just work on some concept art or write some thoughts on the subject.
3. Taking in stimulus is an active endeavor. Things like watching youtube videos can be considered stimulus if you take an active approach when doing them. This means that you have to think about whatever project you are working on when you sit down to watch awesome animations on youtube. I will take a blank piece of paper and I’ll write down interesting things I see that can be applied to my project. Is there a cool effect they are using? Are there any interesting camera angles being used? It doesn’t matter; try to get ideas from an otherwise useless activity. Do you have to do this all the time? NO. Remember, this is something you will do in your Unnecessary Creating Time; your hour for yourself.
4. Process your stimulus. The next day, after you’ve taken in stimulus of any kind (web vids, movies, art, television, magazines, etc.) you have to sit down and let your mind generate new thoughts based on what you’ve absorbed. Remember, you don’t have to copy people styles. You are coming up with your own ideas about things. I will take the notes that I wrote when taking in stimulus and think hard about them (maybe, the following day). I then write something about my project or draw some concepts based on that stimulus, taking advantage of what inspired me. New brain connections are created at this point, and you are able to see things under a different light.
5. Apply what you’ve learned. Hopefully, after taking in all that stimulus on purpose and processing it, you will be eager to use it on your project. That means that when your animating day comes you will be full of ideas of what to do and how to do them. This is when your body switches to auto-pilot and creative explosions happen. Put things into practice. Work your magic!
Staying creative is a crucial part of the animation process for hobbyists (and even for professionals, I think). You have to build disciplines and be intentional about some aspects of the creative process, to be able to respond creatively when the time comes. As I said before, the ideas expressed here are not original. They are just how I’m interpreting and applying them to the animation process. If you want to learn more about this subject, I suggest you visit Todd Henry’s Accidental Creative site and listen to the podcasts.
I would be delighted if you shared your thoughts on this subject in the comments.
From A Forgotten Piece Of Paper To Life
Post written by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
Over the past week I have been discussing how hobbyists like myself tend to omit certain steps, professional studios are obligated to take in the process of creating animated stories, because they feel that everything is in their heads. I certainly followed that logic, and it brought me nowhere, since I didn’t give my characters a chance to develop correctly, which ultimately lead to very inconsistent character animation. It was so bad, that it looked as if the character that started the motion slowly transformed into a completely different one (and not on purpose). You see, the animation process became stagnated, due to the fact that characters weren’t properly taken out of the crummy piece of paper they were conceived on, and put on a nice model sheet that could serve as a reference throughout the entire project, before the actual work started.
From my Rezadores de la Recolección original concept art.
(Click on the image to see the other side of the paper.)
After reading a lot about animation, it became clear to me that I had to adhere, more or less, to the workflow that studios have used since the first half of the twentieth century if I ever wanted to finish my little project, as I stated in a previous post. It’s a proven formula that just works. It was time to put my money where my mouth was. We’ll, I’ve been doing my homework, and it is turning out nicely. I thought I showed you a bit.
Inspiration hits you in the most unusual places. I was at a conference on climate change when the idea for the look of my characters flooded my mind. Luckily for me, they handed out little note taking blocks for the event and I was able to get a couple of poses drawn before the Q&A round. This past week, in an attempt to get this project going, I pulled the little piece of paper (which you can see by clicking, either on the picture above, or here), scanned it, and decided to make a nice model sheet out of it, to be consistent with what I previously discussed about character development. It is nowhere near finished, but it’s a start. Here’s are the steps:
1. Take the character’s measurements. It’s a good practice to think about your character’s size in multiples of its head. That way, no matter where you draw it on the screen you’ll always know if it’s dimensions are right, just by counting “how many heads tall” it is. This was a good time to correct my character’s original measurements, since I wanted him to be exactly five heads tall. No matter what program you use for your animations, make sure you do every step in its individual layer. That way you have more control over the entire process. Here I just drew a couple of horizontal lines marking the head’s superior and inferior edges, copied them and pasted them down the page as reference. A couple of red lines delimit what would be an imaginary sphere embedded inside his head, which is useful for drawing him rough.
Notice how I drew lines that represent its height in “heads”.
2. Rough it out, and draw a half or a full turnaround. This is the time to start figuring out how to quickly draw your character in various views. Make any adjustments to your original sketch here. Don’t forget to use a new layer for this. Block the rest. You don’t want to mistakenly ruin something. In the following image the original bitmap layer is turned off, but you might want to keep it on while you draw on top of it. At this point, keep it simple. You just want to learn to draw your character in various poses and get its dimensions right.
Look for simple shapes that will help you draw your character faster.
3. Clean it. In a new layer, take the pencil or pen tool (something that will give you same width lines, no matter the zoom) and cleanly outline your character. You can take your time with this step. Use your software’s tools to edit the points or nodes that make up the lines. You’ll end up with something like this:
Be very careful with this step.
4. Color it. Our model sheet is starting to look good. Now it needs some color. You can copy and paste the contents of the clean lines layer onto a new one and color your character there. That way you’ll have both versions in case you need to revisit your lines (say, if you’re writing a post about them 
). Document what colors you are using. If your software doesn’t have color palette management functionality, make sure you know the RGB values for all of your character’s colors. You might (and probably will) need them later. Just write them down.
This is a nice picture you can tape to your wall as reference for your project.
Our model sheets are on the right path now. A couple of expressions and some action poses would be in order, and seem like the next step. What do you think of my process; any suggestions? Tell us all about it in the comment section of this post. See you next time!
Animating Effects: The Best Form of Procrastination
Post written by Renato Vargas
If you have read some of the posts I have written here, then you already know that I have delayed the completion of my animation project for a couple of years. But during that time, I have found myself procrastinating in great ways. Yes, in not doing what I was supposed to do, I ended up learning one or two cool things, and I have to admit that I love to waste time animating effects.
Click on the image to see it in motion.
(Be patient; it takes a while to load sometimes)
Water is one of the most entertaining things to animate. It is very difficult to get right too (and I probably haven’t yet). I became interested in water animation after I first came in contact with Adam Phillips’ Brackenwood shorts. I could not believe they were done in Flash. I had to find out how he had done them. Fortunately enough, he wrote a post on his blog about ActionScript camera effects in Flash, and he posted a small waterfall scene of Prowlies At The River to illustrate his point (I tried to find the original post to give you a nice link, but I had no luck). The camera was a nice feature indeed, and I used it a lot, but I was amazed by the waterfall itself. It was in that file; all of its frames. I felt as if I had struck gold.
What drew my attention is that the final result looked wonderful and everything was accomplished with only six drawings and a hold for each of the waterfall’s elements; meaning it was done “on two’s”. He was still animating at twelve frames per second at that time (He animates at 30fps nowadays, I think). I tried to replicate the same principles with the fountain you see above these lines and I ended up with a nice result. I didn’t know I was developing a useful skill, which solely landed me all of the freelance gigs I’ve done.
There are other animated effects, besides water that never stop amazing me, like lighting effects, smoke, fire, and moving sand. The thing is that, even if they are important skills to master, they should come last in your list of things to learn, since there’s no effect that can outshine a good character animation. Character animation is the soul of your piece and it is the only thing that will say whether a story is good or not (or finished in my case). What I’m trying to say is… “stop reading and get back to those characters!! Are you done with your model sheets?” But before you go, share your thoughts about animation procrastination in the comments.
Building Character is not the Same as Character Development
Post written by Renato Vargas
When someone is doing an entire animation on her or his own, there’s a tendency to avoid taking some of the preparatory steps that studios often cannot ignore, such as creating character model sheets, among other things. “After all”, one thinks, “it’s all in my head”. Wrong!
Image courtesy of yashrg.
Character development is a crucial step that often gets neglected by hobbyists such as myself. We might see the character in our minds and think we’ve got it all covered. We probably drew our character on a napkin for the first time and it looked excellent. Our buddies thought it was “awesome”, and the girls all thought it was “so cute”. You’ve got a winner… until you start animating.
Your first frame requires your character to be in an entirely different position than the napkin’s. So you rough it out and voilà; instant Picasso. Your drawing skills are more or less solid, you think, but your drawing of Little Timmy doesn’t look like him. He looks awkward. “Hmm, it’s something about the nose”, you think. Okay, you erase him and start over. Another piece of abstract art flows out of your wrist. “Damn it”, you get angry, “I can’t tweak each drawing for 30 minutes. I’m never going to finish like this”. And you’re right.
As it turns out, character model sheets were invented for a reason and they can help you speed up the animation process if done right. Their purpose is to give your animated character a consistent look throughout your project, regarding not only its features, but also its dimensions and colors. A good model sheet should have images of your character in various positions, and looked at from different angles, so that you’re able to compare every drawing you do to it, and judge whether you are “on model” or not. But how do you make one?
1. Dimensions. You need to know how big its head is, in relation to its body. Are its arms long or short? How many heads tall is it? On a blank page (or frame, if you draw it directly onto the computer) draw horizontal lines spread apart by multiples of the head size and draw your character standing in a full 180 degree range of drawings, meaning you will draw it facing front; a quarter left; full left; three quarters left; and back, all next to each other, and then flip them to have their right counterparts(unless its sides are different, because then you would have to draw the others too).
2. Facial expressions. Under your full turnaround, draw as many facial expressions as you can.
3. Sitting poses. Fill the blank space with a couple of drawings of your character in a sitting position.
4. Action poses. On a new page (or frame) draw him in active poses, such as running, walking, or things your character would typically do. Does it play basketball? Does it eat frantically?
The purpose of this is to practice building your character. Drawing him or her should come naturally to you and model sheets are an excellent practice. Keep it simple. Your character’s main structure should be made with simple shapes such as circles and cylinders. Add details last.
Tomorrow is animation Tuesday for me. I won’t animate though. I’ll be going back to model sheets, because my character’s face cannot stretch anymore. It’s all over the place. Wobbly, wobbly, wobbly. He’s starting to look like plastic man. Learn from my mistake and just start with a nice model sheet for each of your main characters, before you do any of what I mentioned in point 1. of my previous post.
Do you experience the same consistency problems I do? Let everybody know in the comments.
