Help! I have been trying really hard to improve my drawing skills, practicing almost everyday. I have been watching tutorials and studying anatomy but I can't get my characters to look natural.. They look extremely stiff and blocky... Any advice?? Oh! I almost forgot, I LOVE YOUR ART SO MUCH!!!
GESTURES. GESTURES. GESTURES!
Studying anatomy is fantastic. Whatever you do, don’t stop! I’m going to suggest gestures but that is by no means a suggestion to swap. Just start implementing gestures as well.
Okay. So. Look at this.
This is a still from Glean Keane animating Tarzan - and it exactly nails what a gesture is. Just a few simple lines that are full of movement and you can tell exactly what the heck is going on. All with a few simple lines.
Learning anatomy is great - but learning how to implement it is another thing. If I focus too much on nailing anatomy - the drawing starts to feel stiff, exactly as you’ve stated.
Gestures are all about forgetting what you think you know about muscles and structure and instead drawing what movement in a body FEELS like. That might sound cooky but that’s kind of how I approach it in my head. It’s all about those lines of movement and contrast and CURVES.
I think loosening up and forgetting about how technically correct a drawing is and instead embracing something rough and full of movement, and looking at how the lines in the human body contrast themselves will do you wonders. Keep learning anatomy, but look at how we move and look the weird shapes we can make with our bodies. Look at the way we slouch and stand tall. The way we dance, the way we run. Sit in a coffee shop and try to draw the heart of someone’s pose in like 30 seconds.
Observe MOVEMENT AND RHYTHM AND MY GOD THE HUMAN BODY IS POETRY *GESTICULATES WILDLY*
Even just grabbing a photograph from the net and looking at it objectively - how would this pose break down into a few simple lines? It’s so damn simple to look at something this way. You can endlessly improve your knowledge of anatomy and your technical abilities - but I think so many of us (myself included) stumble at the simplest foundations.
My last suggestion is a wonderful book (videos are floating around on youtube as well) from Mike Mattesi in which he talks about Force. It’s fascinating stuff! I love this example of a simple gesture being built up on.
I hope at least some of that was useful! Just start small okay. Think about learning the chords before you try and master Stairway to Heaven.
“Wenn man sich klar macht, wie oft jeder einfach gestrickte Computer abstürzt, ist es kein Wunder, dass psychische Erkrankungen zu den häufigsten überhaupt gehören.”—Eckart von Hirschhausen (via lolaa-lou)
Summary of the uni modules I’m selecting : My Preferences : I-BEG-YOU-PLEASE-LET-ME-DO-THIS modules My Back-up Options: I-BEG-YOU-DON’T-MAKE-ME-DO-THIS modules Hope I get all my preferences, because otherwise I may or may not be in trouble.
“He was a man with both feet firmly on the ground, the only difficulty being that the ground in question was on some other planet, the one with the fluffy pink clouds and the happy little bunnies.”—Terry Pratchett -The Science Of Discworld (via terrypratchettparadise)
someday, in the distant future, humans will once again be capable of hearing the phrase “what is love” without also feeling the primal urge to respond with “baby don’t hurt me”
So at that point, people will say “baby don’t hurt me”…no more?
I tried to scroll past I really did
beautiful set up, perfect follow-through. great teamwork everyone
“‘Ah,’ said Mr. Pin. ‘Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens.’ He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where ‘traditional values’ meant 'hang someone’.”—THE TRUTH by T Pratchett (via olanthanide)
Your headcanon is your headcanon. The characters in your mind are what they are, and nobody is trying to take them away from you. Think of the Good Omens TV series as a stage play: for six full hours, actors are going to be portraying the roles of Crowley and Aziraphale, Shadwell and Madame Tracy, Newt and Anathema, Adam, Pepper, Wensleydale and Brian and the rest. Will they look like the people in your head? The ones you’ve been drawing and writing about and imagining for (in some cases) almost 30 years?
Probably not. Which is fine.
The people in your head and your drawings are still there, and still real and still true. I’ve seen drawings of hundreds of different Aziraphales over the years, all with different faces and body-shapes, different hair and skin, and would never have thought to tell anyone who drew or loved them that that wasn’t what Aziraphale looked like. (And a couple of years after we wrote it, I was amused to realise that the Aziraphale in my head looked nothing like the Aziraphale in Terry’s head.) I’ve loved every instance of Good Omens Cosplay I’ve seen, and in no case did I ever think anyone was doing it wrong: they were all Aziraphales and Crowleys, and it was always a delight.
Good Omens has been unillustrated for 27 years, which means that each of you gets to make up your own look for the characters, your own backstories, your own ideas about how they will behave.
The TV version is being made with love and with faithfulness to the story. It’s got material and characters in it that Terry and I had discussed over the years, (some of it from what we would have done it there had been a sequel). Writing it has taken up the greater part of my last three years. You might like it – I really hope you will – but you don’t have to. You can start watching it, decide that you prefer the thing in your head, and stop watching it. (I never saw the last Lord of the Rings movie, because I liked the thing in my head too much.)
Remember we are making this with love.
And that your own personal headCrowleys and headAziraphales and headFourHorsemen and headThem and headHastur and headLigur and headSisterMary and all the rest are yours, and safe, and nobody is ever going to take them away from you.
