QUICK STUDY: John Byrne Sketches

Even if it's only an hour, it's better than nothing :P

1) Some more sketches from X-men the hidden Years vol1 with art by John Byrne. Really starting to respect the guy once you start copying their work. It's not only his posing and knowledge of anatomy, but the storytelling and layouts.. keeping in mind that is still pretty oldschool.

I also added a new section on my blog ARTIST RESOURCES. I'll keep adding to it, but those are the most valuable online resources I have used and still use today. Inspiration & Education!

And a couple of poses form imagination without ref. Trying to focus on shape and avoid filling in the "detail". 3 ways of reading a book!

Figure Drawing from imagination + Mcfarlane interview

Even though I've been drawing figures and characters for a long time now, I still really suck at making up my own poses and drawing realistic anatomy. So time to unleash those 1000's of bad drawings and see if we improve over time.


These are done without reference, I tried going over my sketches and refine or fix ideas. I'll probably make up a schedule to tackle different parts of the human anatomy, and build up my knowledge over time.

While I like the line and rendering in the final drawing below, the pose is incredibly awkward. That's a trap I keep falling into..I just draw figures without purpose or story...something I'll try to work at.

There are a million things wrong with the image below, but I was really enjoying drawing lines to represent forms. I hope that going back between working form reference and drawing from imagination will eventually come together as one.

A bit of critique on my own drawings

Been watching those artist interviews by Stan Lee (God knows what age that was recorded in), Jim Lee's was really great but I also recommend watching Todd McFarlane's interview.

Few noteworthy points:
- At some stage Todd worked about 80 hours a week / 7 days a week
- Todd is very obsessive, so when he is turned on to something (like drawing), he'll work at it obsessively. That's kind of what I'm trying to do myself at the moment.
- From all those interviews I can say that there were comic book artists working only 10 hours a day (which is still a lot). These guys all put in crazy hours, because it wasn't about earning money. They love their work, they can't give less than 100% all the time. I'm going to say that this is part of what made 'em stand out from every other artist and why they have kept evolving and had such great success with their work.
(Great layout pointers from Todd in the clip as well. )

STUDY: Yanick Paquette (Uncanny X-men 512)

I've mostly been busy on my other blog doing figure drawings and mixing it up between digital and paper (not so great on paper still). While I was going to indulge myself into a world cup game this evening, I was feeling rather sick so picked up a comicbook instead and did some "studies".

I'm trying to relate "Andrew Loomis" to comic books, mainly just looking at how different artists use line to describe form. I'll be honest though and in some cases I think the fluidity of the shapes is destroyed by very blocky inking. Like having angular shapes on round body forms (breast, tricpes,..).

Anyway here are two pages of doodles. The pencils of the original material by Yanick Paquette (Uncanncy X-men 512).

This page below was actually done first, but because I focussed more on copying things looked very stiff. On the page above I took a bit more liberties and tried to make the line more fluid when I could.

On a side note I also saw a pretty cool video of Jim Lee talking a little bit about how he got into comics and he's doing some live drawing. A lot of people seem to have the assumption that comic artists use a lot of reference, but I would say this is evidence against that (especially talking about drawing the figure now).

Couple of noteworthy things:
- Jim Lee doesn't study anatomy, doesn't know the names of the muscle groups
- He work(ed) 10-14 hours a day / 6 days a week!
- He started drawing (with a tutor) at the age of 4!
- His warm ups are quick hands, faces, bits of anatomy he draws regularly (from memory).

X-men studies + figure/heads from imagination

So I sat through the entire second half of this 12 episode long X-men anime..and my god..I would not recommend it to anyone. In the last 3 episodes everything unfolds exactly as I thought..which made it extremely boring to sit through. The visual design is also quite heavy... it really could've done with a bit of humour to lift the mood...but more importantly some good writing was in order here. Anyway here are some sketches:

This is a page of some heads from imagination using the loomis template (or at least trying to :P).

And a couple of figure poses from imagination:

STUDY: Legend of Korra + X-men Anime 2011

In any other profession "studying" involves reading a tremendous amount of boring crap. But luckily for us "artists" it mostly involves looking at pretty pictures.

This week I got the artbook for the legend of Korra series. It's mostly a collection of pre production art (which is exactly what I wanted). It's also nice to see the development of the characters and how the production came together (concidering this is animated by studio Mir in South Korea).

Anyway, here's a page of some doodles from the book. I basically used the Loomis measurements to get me started on the heads, which seems to work pretty well actually.

Next up is a tv animation that I never really heard of, a Marvel X-men anime from 2011 by the name of ...euhmm...X-men. It's 12 episodes long and I'm currently about half way in it. I honestly couldn't recommend it though, there are definitely some good moments, but overall the characters are pretty badly portrayed.

Every once and a while though, they get some artist to knock out some amazing drawings (check out the screens below). Unfortunately not every key animator holds up the standard :D

Anyway, here are some drawings. You can see I draw a lot of heads as of late, it's tying in with my Loomis studies. I'm not really great at drawings faces, so trying to get a little bit of know-how going on that subject.

STUDY: John Byrne

Let's kick off immediately with some studies. I did a combo of some loomis heads (on my figure drawing blog) and some drawings from an X-Men comic (very classic X-men), I believe the artist is John Byrne. If you look at the old Marvel stuff, you can see a lot of similarities with Loomis' drawings.

Just to give you some insight in what I'm actually doing when copying. In the example below I was looking at how the artist used straight vs curves to get some dynamic in what would be an extremely boring pose. He also broke complete symmetry by having one arm lower than the other.

My aim is never to replicate a drawing exactly the same, it's about getting into the artists' head so you can discover tricks to use in your own work.

And most importantly a page of some stuff from imagination, trying to see if I remember what I drew from Loomis and apply it. It's the only way things will actually stick, unfortunately the results will be very crappy until the information has soaked into that small brain of mine :D

Setting Goals : Update 1

So on March 15th 2014 I posted my new goals for my creative future. I decided on focusing my skills to becoming a 2D Traditional Key Animator. What was missing was a specific timeline and steps to make this a realistic goal.

The reason I post this on my blog, is that it becomes "real", I need to sit down and verbalise this idea/ambition. Too many people have these raw ideas like: "I want to be a background artist/character designer/...". But there is no real plan on how to actually achieve this. It's also not recorded anywhere, so there is no pressure/urgency to succeed.

Since last time I've been able to think a little bit about what skills I lack, and was able to be more specific about what type of animation I want to do.

(Young Justice TV series)

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UPDATED GOAL: Create a showreel specific for Frame by Frame TV action series (Legend of Korra / Justice League).

DEADLINE: March 2016

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REQUIRED SKILLS?
To draw on a show like Legend on Korra / Justice League, you need 2 things:
- Action Animation Know How
- Effortless ability to draw the Human Figure

While I have a mountain to climb to become a better animator, I am already improving month to month. And the show I work on really gives me the opportunity to develop my animation skills.

But one thing I really lack is the ability to draw the human figure effortlessly and convincingly. This includes ANATOMY, POSING (something I only started thinking about since a few months), STYLE. So as a result, that is STEP 1:

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BREAKDOWN STEP 1: 
Draw everyday (if possible) from reference:
- Life Drawing
- Movie stills
- Comicbooks (especially for heroic posing)
- Draw from animation (Legend of Korra / Justice League).

DEADLINE: March 2015

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(Sketches by Lesean Thomas - Legend of Korra)

I'll revise my plans on March 2015 if needed. But basically I'll be studying the human figure in all it's shapes and forms until then. There's no point animating something you can't draw yet :P

Some people might ask: You know you can't work on shows like Legend of Korra / Young Justice right? It's done in Korea.
-> Yes you're right, my goal is not to "work". My goal is the have the "skills" to "be able" to work on a show like that. I have the confidence that when you have that kind of drawing ability, you'll be able to work in many different types of jobs. But more than that, I draw for myself....and for me that is the secret to self motivation...you need to be selfish and you need to find something you really love, otherwise it becomes "work" and you'll eventually give up.