Art and Reference point - Further Art reference Tumblr Blogs 5 Fundamental Skills Every Artist Should Master As an artist, your job is to immerse your viewers into a world that you have built and guide them safely through it. Artists have much in common with storytellers. Storytellers have several tricks that they use to keep their readers coming back for more. The most important aspect of art to me personally is the composition. This is the simplest and most used composition technique, one that I use a lot myself. The main idea behind this is to place your most important element/object on one of the intersections where the lines converge (the +'s), as well as along or near the vertical line of wherever your focal may lie. It is believed that when this is used and your subject/focal sits on one of these spots, it creates more interest in your picture rather than having it centered. In contrast to what was stated above, this particular composition sets the focal point directly in the center of the picture. Everything has a perspective. So, what do I mean by them being able to read properly?
• This is part of a lecture I gave for the... Ten Things to Think About - #9 Eyes ~ Thinking Animation Blog 10 Things to Think About - from the book Thinking Animation by Angie Jones and Jamie Oliff. This is one of the lectures I use at the online school ianimate.net. I created this list for my book Thinking Animation to help animators create a clear and solid message with their work. I will post the 10 Things to Think About over the course of the next 10 weeks. ~Enjoy! #9 Eyes: (This particular lecture is much longer when I teach. Basic Notes on animating Eyes: Eyes are windows into the soul and the soul is controlled by the mind.Eye darts and glances tell more than any other gestures in the body when used in the right place in the scene. Overview of Eye Movement: Never animate without a reason! ...eye shape: when the iris moves around the eye the lid cuts across it changing its shape from round to oval. ...lid shape: The lid itself changes shape as the eye line changes and the brow pushes down on it with emotional poses. ...blinks: Never blink unless there is a reason! Eye Darts: Squinting:
Tips on Character and Costume Design by Aaron Diaz Character design is paramount to pretty much any kind of comic. Most comics have things in them, and some of those things are characters, and those characters better be well-designed. Design allows the artist to communicate essential information to the reader about a character, and a good design allows for versatility independent of minor details. I’ll probably write a more specific post later about the mechanics of character design, but for now I’m just compiling a list of my personal favorite comic character designs. All of the one I list exhibit all of the key essential design elements:Silhouette - the outer shape is clear and uniqueValue - the lights and darks provide effective contrastColor - meaningful and compelling color choicesVersatility - details of the design are flexibleIconic - striking, memorable imagery Here are my favorite designs from the world of comics: #10 - Spider Jerusalem #9 - Thor #8 - Calvin & Hobbes #7 - The One Electronic #6 - The Elric Brothers #5 - Popeye Shape
Character Costume Ed Benedict | Catalogue of Curiosities This post comes via Mark Christiansen’s blog as well as Yowp (both blogs are inexhaustible resources of 50s-60s era Hanna-Barbera). Apparently a mysterious stranger has recently posted black and white Hanna-Barbera show bumpers on You Tube. With layouts and animation by studio stalwarts like Ed Benedict, Art Lozzi and Ed Love, these bumpers are quick, funny scenarios, highlighting various characters in the Hanna-Barbera stable and packed full of great gags and wonderful compositions. Another highlight of these bumpers: the voice acting of Daws Butler, as everyone from Snagglepuss to Huckleberry Hound and Rojay North as the voice of Mr. *UPDATE! As a sidenote, I recently ran across the following model sheets that artist Bill Wray had posted, all of which were drawn by the incomparable Ed Benedict. Read Full Post » Read Full Post » Ed Benedict’s character designs are simply wonderful. Much of his work laid the foundation for the look of many Hanna Barbera’s most famous characters. Tom Oreb
Character Design Tips - Helpful Harrie Designing characters for animation – Here’s the Plan — Blog – Medium The process for creating Kat & Doug [Leer en español] Character design is, for me, one of the most important stages of pre-production. It can be compared with the casting process of a live-action film, where you’ll have to choose the perfect actor who will work with you before, during and after the premiere of the film (Diffusion and promotion). Even more important, it’s who we’ll follow during the story and whatever the duration of the short/film/series is. If we make a bad choice, this can compromise the success of the piece, because if the audience doesn’t identify with the characters, they won’t be able to establish an emotional bond with the story. Ok, ok, that’s very interesting, but, how do you translate that live-action casting logic to animation? But in animation we have the particularity that we have the control of creating from scratch absolutely EVERYTHING about a character. Now, I have to be honest. The stages of my characters design process are: Exploration (Blue Sky stage)
Straights & Curves | Art, Animation & Film Analysis by James Chiang “The Garden” by Joan Miró. This majestic Spanish artist’s abstract compositions play beautifully with shape, line and color to help evoke sensations that lie within the realm of the surreal – ideas which would be too difficult to present in more realistic form. “What is straight? Character Design: Shapes are the essential building blocks to visual art. Solid understanding of the power of shapes, line and color will aid strongly in the construction and definition of any character. Graphic Design: In graphic design, the interplay between line and shape help define ideas, sometimes in the most simple yet powerful way. Design elements can signal power or danger. Performance: The primary edge of shapes can be defined as either straight or curved, implying either linear or circular movement or revealing a sense of intensive direction or gentle comfort and welcome. The sharp, angular designs used by renown illustrator Gerald Scarfe gave Hades an edginess uncommon among Disney characters. Anatomy:
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: Contrast and Variety I often talk about how creating distinct and interesting characters with unique personalities is one of the most important parts of our trade. I'm warning you now, this is another one of those posts! Raymond Chandler was a writer of detective novels and the creator of the iconic hard boiled detective Philip Marlowe. Towards the end of his career, he sat down for an interview with Ian Fleming, the writer of the James Bond novels. If you Google something like "Raymond Chandler Ian Fleming interviews", you'll be able to find transcriptions and youtube excerpts so you can read it, or listen to it, or both. Here's the passage that I thought was the most interesting and relevant to this particular topic: Ian Fleming: I wonder what the basic ingredients of a good thriller really are. Raymond Chandler: Yes, I agree. The part I found the most interesting was this one: I think there's a lot of truth in this sentence and shows what made Chandler such a popular writer.
John K Stuff: Character Design 1: The Character Design Fallacy First of all, character design should never have been separated from the rest of the animation process. The handful of artists from classic cartoons that are renowned for their character designs, were not really character designers at all. They were layout artists. When they finally got around to designing characters, they knew the functional needs of the job - and they usually layed out the cartoons. They didn't just design characters in the abstract who existed only to float on white paper and look neat. Here is a very stylish cartoon "designed" by Ed Benedict in the 50s modern style. I don't think so. Or in Mike Lah's drawing style: Ed Benedict, Tom Oreb, Gene Hazelton, Ward Kimball, John Hubley, Fred Crippen, Bob Kurtz, Bill Hurtz designed their characters only as part of the overall designs of the cartoons. The Character Designer Plague So today we are overrun with character designers. Except this one below.