Lesson 8

This is the final John K exercise I will do for a while. It's great I've atempted all of John K's original 9 lessons,which originally you could show to try enter the cartoon college blog. I could try to do that but there is plenty more from his blog for me to do anyway. Plus, I could do many more drawings for these attempted lessons using existing drawings and overlayed notes.

January will be figure drawing month for me. I have classes to go to as well as Glen Vilppu DVDs. Doug Campton's lesson notes from his Karmatoons site look like fun too. I may post some of my stuff regarding this on my other blog occasionally.

Anyway, here are my attempts at the dogs (with and without overlays).

Generic 40s studies

Here are some generic 40s studies I have been doing.

More Top cat construction

I've done four more TC Studies. A first attempt and a redo and two others. Hope I'm going about it the right way:

It's all good practice that hopefully I'm getting things from. The redos seem helpful I'm going to go work on another Blair exercise now. Might try some more of these later.  :)

Happy Birthday Gemma

I put my animation practice to good use and made this original Bosko-like dance for Gemma's Birthday.

Hope you have a wonderful day gemma :)

Hands

OK, done all of Blair's hands and then did some via memory or only a few glances. Don't know if this is 9 or 5A. Anyway, I started in TVP:

Did some in the car on paper:

Then I started using this new program artrage 3 (awesome ink and pencils):

Finally, some by memory and some copies. I also did the Blair Dog, bird and baby penguin. The dog and some of the hands earlier are sketchy as I did them in a moving car:

Top Cat

I've made a start at the top cat construction (with an overlay):

THe Points of all this

I've been reading the top cat contruction posts here are some important quotes from that by John K:

• When I am learning something, I tend to draw stiff, because I am thinking about what I am trying to learn. The drawings don't come out all pretty with clean flowing lines and stuff.

         When you study, you are trying to be accurate, as opposed to
         beautiful and flowing.

         Once you have done your stiff drawings, you can loosen up a bit
         and then try again from memory and see if what you learned sunk
         in.

•  I always write notes when I study something so that what I observe sticks with me.

• The point of copying is not just to copy but to understand what is happening in the things you are copying: and then to apply them to your own work

Here, Rodrigo did a careful study of a toy and what it looks like from different angles. This is a great thing to do - IF you then apply some of what you observed to your cartoons.



Rodrigo also sometimes does careful construction studies from classic cartoons - also a good thing - if you then apply it to your own work.

Heckling Hare Attempt

Here my first attempt:

2 bar Oswald Animation Finally Complete

Here's the Final Clip for this two bar Oswald Dance. It took ages to do, but looks great. :) I was so relieved when it was finally complete:



The ear's, body and mouth are all on different layers. For the ears and mouth I just copied straight ahead. For the body, I did the keys and breakdowns and worked out the inbetweens myself (which some corrections and changes against the original later on).

Here's a comparision with the original:

Oswald Progress

Just finished the body layer for the first 4 bars. Here it is:



Here's a comparision:
 



I like it, I only wish it was a tad tidier. Anyway, mouth and ears next, copied frame by frame (I have no idea how to lip sync yet).

Most of it is on ones some is on twos. I tried to match the orginal framerate.

(Edit 30/11/09):I also forgot to post up the Ex sheets I used before (that I started with). I also had a horizontal ex sheet in my software. Here they are:

Smiley head turnaround*

This exercise was about working out how lines move on a sphere when rotated. The sphere is the easiest curved shape to work with, as it's contour doesn't change when rotated. I did the following pictures while looking at how lines change on a kneadable eraser.

I came up with some good rules as to how this works (see image below). Basically a line curving the opposite way to a contour will become straight and then bend towards the contour when turned towards it. A line bending the same way as the contour will be stretched out but will not come to form around the contour as it's turned towards it. I hope that makes sense.

Most of these pics below I just did via judgement and logic. Some don't look right, but it was a fun learning exercise. Hopefully I will be able to do some of Preston's eggs from any angle in mind soon.

I've started Oswald

I've Started John's 2nd 30's rhythmic animating lesson: Oswald's lucky rabbit dance.Very early days.

I copied the keys and a couple of the breakdowns but I tried to do the inbetweens logically without looking at the originals. I did check a couple of times, but I toggled off the originals when drawing. The hands were definately the hardest bit.

Here's the roughs for the first two bars:



And here's a comparision:




Now I've gotta go back and correct the roughs against the original and do an inking layer. I might even put in a mouth and lip sync for good measure.

Applied exercises*

Ok, I am going to start adding applied exercises to this blog also. In a sense, I think this is what all the lessons are pointing towards. John wants us to get to the stage where we can "apply the same principles to your own drawings at will".

I don't think only copying will get me there though. Whenever I attempt a drawing without copying I'm still at a similar stage to what I was before. I think you also need to practice applying.

Here are some of the tools I have been learning that I will be attempting to apply:

1) Construction (the most important)
2) lines of action
3) visualising drawings in 3D, maintaining volumes.
4) protruding/ intruding construction (lesson 6)
5) checking spaces (negative and positive)
6) exaggeration and contrast

I'm sure there are plenty more (silhouettes is one). I'll add these as I go.

Here are examples of the types of applied exercises I'll be attempting:

    •    drawings from memory
    •    new poses
    •    inbetweening via logical construction (not copying)
    •    making new characters
    •    short animations

I'll still be doing plenty of the regular lessons too (with overlay checks). You need both. ;)

All my lesson 6 stuff

Thank you Katie Rice for making such a great post on Drawing Lips. :)

For this post, I've decided just to post my worksheets up. I haven't done any overlays with them yet or  chopped into individual pics. This first sheet was done in TVPaint. Mine in blue:

These two were done on paper:

And finally, some more TVPaint:

I had some real fun copying these. Katie's drawing have a nice fun style and I can definitely see the construction technique influence.

final lesson 5 for the moment

Ok, got some Disney and Clampett done. First Disney:

I checked the boy with an overlay a couple of times while doing it, so that's why it's a bit more accurate that some of my other stuff.

Here's the Clampett attempt:

20 minute attempts

All the following were limited to twenty minutes each (more or less).

In this one above, the line of action isn't extreme enough to begin with.

I think I'll try a couple of the other examples of John K's blog and then go on to the next lesson (I know these aren't super accurate).

Some quick pencil attempts

I attempted these fairly freely without checking accuracy as I went. It was a lot more fun and quick to do it this way, and some were close to as accurate as I'd get anyway.

I think I'll work more like this. I think it is better to have many attempts at accuracy rather than spending a very long time checking and correcting ust one attempt. It should help make the drawings look more loose and clean as well.

This last one was just completely out of scale. Note to self: measure head ratios.

A Start

Here's three drawings I've done for the line of action exercise. Attempting to be so accurate is tiring and slow (for me).

This one looked pretty good, but it turns out that the body and head were out of alignment

 Here's what it looked like when I aligned the body and head seperately:

The last one I've done so far of Jerry, the lone construction head was traced from the drawing: