Sketching

Jodie has this thing called "doodle prompter", todays' word was Lion vs Tiger :

and some Loomis from memory/imagination:

 

Loomis Mannikin 4

 I move move these studies to my figure studies blog, but one more session on this mannikin. 

1- Draw mannikin from memory, then copy from book

1 minute gestures applying mannikin: 

Then poses from imagination, and I sketched a character using the poses:

Loomis Mannikin 3

So continuing the loomis training. 

 

1 - copy Loomis sheet

2 - drew some loomis mannikin poses from imagination (yes , terrible :D)

3 - use loomis mannikin to draw 1 minute gesture poses

Loomis Mannikin 2

 Second day.. will not keep posting these, but hopefully keeping this up for a while until I move on to full figures.

Loomis study:

 

Applied to 60 second figure studies.

Loomis Mannikin 1

 Need to work on my figures again, so copying some loomis (badly as always):

But there's no use copying, if you won't apply it. So doing some 1 minute timed gestures trying to use this mannikin. May look easy, but that's a lot of information to cram onto a page in 1 minute :D Next practice is doing your poses from imagination next. Do this everyday and you'd be a master eventually at posing.

Snail House

 A bit tasteless, but what can you do.!

 

Grease pencil doodles

Came back from a week of a holiday (the beautiful north of Italy - Lake Como and Venice), so time to doodle again. These are in Storyboard Pro using the grease pencil :

Good ol' Annie & Pony doodle:

some drawings from One Piece Stampede:

 

Visual Style - Influences

 So  I've really been struggling lately trying to figure out what direction I want to move in. There are many styles of animation, and they all require different skillsets. So far I've been dabbling around in a bit of everything, but I feel it's time to start focussing my attention. 

I thought I was more interested in "realistic" artstyles, because I want to tell more mature stories. But what I have discovered is that visually I am just more drawn to cartoony faces that allow for a broad range of expressions. And very often, even with live action movies, mature stories can be "all ages", it's not about violence, or offensive language, it's about talking about mature themes.

The movie "Stalker" for example by legendary director Andrei Tarkovsky is rated PG. And that is one of the most powerful movies I have seen that made me reflect on things for days after watching it. 

Anyway, that is going off topic a bit :D What I wanted to do was to list some of current influences for what I feel I is my -range- of visual influences. 


Akira Toriyama - Dragon Ball. He's got great comedy, great action, lots of volume and amazing linework. Never gets old for me!

Pixar story artists. I'm especially a fan of the older pixar work, but big fan of their storytelling and character art.

Disney - ranging from the older films (especially the ones designed by Milt Kahl) to the newer flms like Tangled, Big Hero 6, Moana.

Katsuhiro Otomo - (Akira ) : Perfect blend of cinematic action but also keeping really expressive face designs. 

Eiichiro Oda - One Piece. The guy knows how to create awesome characters with a lot of heart. It's mad and super cartoony..the recent films however, have pushed the artstyle to even greater appeal (The movie Stampede )

Anyway I am putting this up, to remind myself of my influences and to stick with in this range :D

SCENE STUDY: Stranger Things - Eleven saves Nancy - pt2

Continuing on with this sequence...

STRANGER THINGS STUDY GIF

 For fun..turned a little section into a gif:

NOTE: Rough v CLEAN

 From my experience, it's easy to fall into the trap of re-drawing your roughs when you do cleans. But really, all you should do in clean-up is clarify things. Make sure the location is clear, camera angle, the position and identity of the characters. It really doesn't need to look pretty, it just needs to clearly communicate what is going on. 

Rough 

Clean

SCENE STUDY: Stranger Things - Eleven saves Nancy - pt1

 So I started doing this scene study, and I had no idea how I was going to draw the characters. You can see my first few panels I used the grease pencil, 

But then I did some character sketches (bottom of page), and continued the rest of the scene with the standard brush. It's more about learning about the framing and use of camera to make this regular girl (eleven), look like a freaking badass. This is my favorite tv series...I think.. ever! So it's about time I learn from it :)

Jere were the sketches to get a vague idea on how I'd approach drawing this (not about pretty drawings but trying t capture the attitude in the characters as quickly as possible).