Information

FAQ
ANIMATION-
Sketching for Animation

What kind of pens, pencils and markers do you use?
-- Honestly? Whatever I can get my hands on. Pens and pencils never make you a better artist.
However I do have some preferences. For rough animation I usually use a 2b or 3b pencil or a red colored col-erase pencil. I prefer softer leads, but I can't animate with them becuase I'm a messy animator and I press too hard. If I used a really soft pencil to animate with, I wouldnt be able to make any modifications (becuase there is NO hope of erasing with dark soft pencils if you press as hard as I do). I've actually given myself a really really odd callous becuase of how hard I press and the odd way that I hold my pencil. My co-animator Crystal Chesney, however prefers to use prismacolor since she animates much lighter than me. She says it helps her loosen up and get a darker drawing. In my case, my work is usually too loose, so I have the opposite problem as her.
-- For life drawing I use Conte of Paris... it is SO wonderfull to be able to make soft super dark marks. For those of you who are life drawing and like Conte of Paris, I might suggest trying lazer paper or another very smooth paper to draw on, the texture and the extra white paper combined with the Conte is simply amazing!
-- As to pens, I don't really like pens. I often don't bother inking, but instead I use my graphite pencil as the final line. If I draw my rough in red colerase and then my final line (on the same paper) with graphite,... I simply scan in that sheet and remove the red channel in photoshop. If I need to color, I color with COPIC Markers and color on a separate sheet and later composite in Photoshop. I highly prefer COPIC markers to other markers.

Why are some animation sketches purple, red, blue or green in places? Are specific colors used for special things?
-- Sometimes it takes more than one pass to complete a scene, some passes are used to clean up or change something, so it helps to use a different color. Sometimes particular jobs are assigned particular colors on a certain project. Like for example, sometimes a production will say "all inbetweens are to be done in blue". But this is on a production per production basis. If I'm doing my own private work, usually I just use whatever color I happen to feel like using. There are some col erase and prismacolor pencils that are "non-repro" meaning that the camera or scanner won't pic it up, becuase it's such a light color of blue. Other than that though I dont think that the color matters. Although some colerase colors are softer than others.

When animators first start a scene... are the drawings perfect or messy? Does someone fix them up?
-- Every animator approaches a scene differently. Some do very messy drawings, some do cleaner drawings, but they are hardly ever perfect. This is why it is called rough animation. The animator does the drawings very quickly while flipping the paper inbetween his fingers to see the motion. The most important thing is the motion, not how pretty the drawing is. Don't worry about making a pretty drawing. In fact, alot of paper and drawings are thrown away before the right motion is found, so you're wasting time making the drawing pretty. After the motion and emotion of the rough animation is right, then the animator usually ties it down a little bit so that another artist can understand it. Depending on the studio, the scene is then inbetweened and then cleaned up by another artist. "cleanup" means that another artist takes the original rough animation drawing, puts another clean sheet of paper on top of it, and re-traces the drawing so that it is very clean and "perfect" so to speak. Then the cleanedup drawings can be sent to ink-and-paint. (whether done colored on the computer or with cels) All this being said, some animators are VERY clean with their work. You shouldn't feel obligated however to do this.

Question about sketching using constructing and understructure with circles and basic shapes:
"I hate drawing with circles and underconstruction... It seems useless to me to start that way. Why not just draw?"
It may seem like a tedious way to draw, or that its a useless step, but this is the way you should teach yourself to draw. After you learn to do it quickly, your brain will automatically think of the 3D things underneath the circles and then your brain will draw those understructures instead of you having to draw them all. But even after me practicing for years, I still use circles and/or construction to help remind me how 3D something should be. There are variations on this understructure technique, like I tend to sketch the leading, or moving edge when I'm drawing something that is moving, but I'm very aware of the understructure even if I may not draw it. Another way to think of this "leading edge" technique is to draw lines that are emphasizing the motion, or emphasizing the squash and stretch on a figure, or on a muscle even. If a woman's shoulder is pushing up against her neck in a shrug, even if the pose is frozen, I'll make sure that I'm drawing the lines that emphasize that motion, the feel and the pull of that muscle is very important to me. All of these lines will follow the understructure. You simply _push_ the understructure into the action of the pose.

Think of throwing the lines down, throwing them down on the paper with the feeling and energy of the character and pose you are trying to capture. I think my best sketches and drawings comes from this feeling of kinetics when I'm drawing the actual undersketch. A good undersketch is key, one that has power and emotion or just a good pose to it. THAT is what you know is a good drawing. If it's not quite there, then continue to push the pose and plus it. All you have to do then is tie down those loose lines and add details. You already know the drawing works becuase the rough sketch works. Anything beyond that is just polishing out the bumps. I know you're saying that it takes to long to worry about all that, but I used to say that too. I was like "oh well I dont want to draw that, I can draw it without it" but once I got in the practice of doing it, and I got faster at it. And then I realized why my mentor had me start by drawing all the circles. so even if its boring and tedious see if you can do it. The main idea of the circles is to remind you of the curve of the 3D SOLID thing you are drawing. Dont think of flat lines. Think about your character or whatever you are drawing as 3 dimensional. The understructure technique is a very basic way to try and train your brain to think that way. Dont get tight though, make sure your rough sketches are ROUGH, loose and playfull.

When doing quick sketches,... how detailed should the face be?
-- Very little detail
You want to get quick sketches with basic personality in there. If you can't draw fast enough you can add the face in later. For quick sketches, simply get a good pose, a good line of action, and plenty of emotion.

How can you possibly draw a whole figure in 1 minute? Mine don't look like anything at all....
-- When you start out they're going to look pretty funky, believe me, mine did. Keep a big stack of loose leaf paper or a sketchbook, and just keep at it for a few weeks. You should see some improvement. You must force yourself to draw quickly though, When you look at the figure, person or animal you are drawing... look for the overall pose, not details. Look for the attitude, line of action, balance and well, the basic pose. What is the figure doing? Draw that. Even if the anatomy is bad or it doesnt quite look like a person or whatever you are drawing, as long as you start to be able to draw the pose, or emotion, that's whats important. You're not trying to make a picture to hang up on your mothers refrigerator here. You're trying to learn how to draw quickly... its like taking notes basically. But instead of using words, you are using your drawings to remind you of what the pose was. Lets say you were animating a tiger. You go to the zoo and you draw some tigers walking around, you're going to want to remember what the tiger looked like in various poses and parts of his walk... these little sketches even if they arent "pretty" by most people's standards will help you make your animation deeper and more believable. The faster you get at getting the basics of the quick sketch down, the more detail you can add. Always do the quick throw-down sketch first. Then if the figure hasnt moved, you'll have time to add in little details. If you're going through a quick sketch exercise though, make sure you force yourself to draw one a minute, one full body a minute, it will help you get faster. Doing 3 and 5 minute sketches is a good exercise too, so don't feel like you have to only do 1 minute ones, ok?

Quick Sketching from moving subjects:
"Well, I go to my sister's tennis club sometimes in an attempt to practise sketching moving people, but the people move incredibly fast and it's a bit kinda difficult. Usually I end up with a few very scribbly drawings and some of them look a bit um, strange."
Oh its very hard when you start out. Don't worry. Try to think fast. Try to think about freezing the person in mid air. watch and then freeze the pose in your head and then draw. It takes some practice. At first you might only get a kinda ugly looking thing that looks kinda like a person but doesnt have much of the pose, or maybe its the pose but its not much like a person. Just keep at it. Keep practicing. Also to suplement this you should try and draw slower things as well, like say a dog or a cat that might sit around for a minute or two and then move. Practice drawing slow things faster. Try drawing yourself as well. You may try the 1 minute drawing exercises to help your speed. Try to draw a full figure doing something in 1 minute, then do another. Any character you want, in any pose. Just make sure you do one a minute. Do this for an hour a day if you can. You should see some improvement within a few weeks.

CONTINUED QUICK SKETCHING:
" The moment you see some one make a shape with their body that you think 'ok I want to draw that', they've moved, and you only get a split second of that particular pose. Usually what I have to do is look at just one person, and wait for them to do a similar pose, like a serve or a fore hand, and this usually means I end up looking a lotlotlot more than I actually draw."
This is good though. watching is the most important part. by this you are learning how things work. you're learning how their body moves when they work in that tennis. so even if you arent drawing, you're learning alot. Try to do full body poses using what you're learning. its ok if they move. draw what you remember. just keep practicing. if you notice that the person holds their wrist a certain way when they serve, then maybe just draw that wrist. you're learning how that works. that's the trick. do full body poses too though, not just sketches of parts of a body. do both.

How did you draw those pose by pose beagle-walking drawings on your life drawing page?
Oh well there's a trick to that. I had a video tape of a beagle walking, and I watched it on slow motion to draw those. you might try that as well, its a good way to study EXACTLY how something moves. i do it alot. Ellen Woodburry taught a class at Calarts, and she taught us to do this when trying to figure out an animal's motion to animate it. She also strongly suggested that you watch the animal at full (normal) speed several timed doing the same motion so that you understand the basic motion and feeling of the motion before you try to slow-frame it. Watching things at super slow motion can be deceptive. Ellen says before you start animating you should "come from the informed place" meaning do all the reasearch and sketching you can before you even start animating. Then your animation should be more solid, and you shouldnt have as many problems.