Gesture Drawing for Animation

Gesture Drawing for Animation Walt Stanchfield Edited by Leo Brodie ii Walt Stanchfield This compilation is not copyrighted or protected in any way by the editor of the compilation (Leo Brodie). It is based on a series of un-copyrighted class notes written by animation instructor Walt Stanchfield during the period roughly from 1970 to 1990. Since then, these class handouts have been widely copied and shared amongst animation students and members of the animation industry with Mr. Stanchfield`s blessing and encouragement; in that spirit, the handouts are now available freely on the Internet. Some of the illustrations in this book represent preliminary drawings of cartoon characters that are the properties of their respective copyright holder(s) and are therefore protected by copyright. These illustrations were part of the original handouts and are included here for educational purposes to illustrate specific principles of animation technique. No endorsement of this book by the copyright holder(s) is implied, nor do the views expressed in this book necessary reflect those of the copyright holders(s). I hope that covers it. Gesture Drawing for Animation iii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Go for the Truth.........................................................................................2 Observe, Observe, Observe..........................................................................................2 Lead to the Emotion.....................................................................................................4 Give Them the Experience...........................................................................................5 The Driving Force behind the Action..........................................................................5 Gesture.........................................................................................................................9 The Essence ...............................................................................................................10 Go For The Truth!......................................................................................................13 Chapter 2: The Animator`s Sketchbook....................................................................13 Everywhere You Go ..................................................................................................17 Composition...............................................................................................................17 Ron Husband`s Sketchbook .......................................................................................21 Note Taking and Sketching........................................................................................27 Good Habits...............................................................................................................32 Chapter 3: A Visual Vocabulary for Drawing..........................................................31 Lines, Lines, Lines.....................................................................................................31 A Simple Approach to Drawing ................................................................................31 A Simple Approach to Drawing ................................................................................32 Finding the Abstract...................................................................................................32 The Solid-Flexible Model..........................................................................................32 Figure Sketching for Animation ................................................................................32 The Pipe Model..........................................................................................................33 Seeing in Three Dimensions......................................................................................34 The Rules of Perspective ...........................................................................................34 Direction ....................................................................................................................36 Problems of Drawing in Line.....................................................................................36 Simplifying Heads .....................................................................................................37 Caricatured Head Shapes...........................................................................................37 The Head in Gesture..................................................................................................38 A Simple Approach to Costumes and Drapery..........................................................38 Chapter 4: The First Impression................................................................................71 Short-pose Sketching.................................................................................................71 Superficial Appearance vs. Creative Portrayal..........................................................71 A New Phrase: “Body Syntax”..................................................................................72 The "Explosive" Gesture............................................................................................72 Feel, As Well As See, the Gesture.............................................................................76 Draw Verbs, Not Nouns.............................................................................................77 Draw with a Purpose..................................................................................................77 Dividing the Body into Units.....................................................................................78 "Knowing" or Searching............................................................................................79 Simplicity for the Sake of Clarity..............................................................................79 Chapter 5: Elements of the Pose.................................................................................85 Angles and Tension....................................................................................................88 Applying Angles and Tension in Our Drawings........................................................92 iv Walt Stanchfield Tennis and Angles......................................................................................................98 Straight against Curve: Squash and Stretch in the Pose ..........................................101 Applying Perspective...............................................................................................103 The Sensation of Space............................................................................................105 Recreating the First Impression...............................................................................109 Putting the Elements of a Pose Together.................................................................112 Habits to Avoid........................................................................................................118 It Ain’t Easy.............................................................................................................121 Chapter 6: Pushing the Gesture...............................................................................119 Drawing Gesture from the Model............................................................................120 Stick to the Theme...................................................................................................120 Subtlety....................................................................................................................123 Pushing the Gesture.................................................................................................124 Gesture to Portray an Action or a Mood..................................................................124 Action Analysis: Hands & Feet...............................................................................125 Learn to Cheat..........................................................................................................125 Lazy Lines................................................................................................................125 Double Vision..........................................................................................................125 Caricature.................................................................................................................125 Chapter 7: Principles of Animation.........................................................................153 Drawing Principles...................................................................................................153 28 Principles of Animation......................................................................................154 Drawing Calories.....................................................................................................154 The Pose Is an Extreme............................................................................................154 Animating Squash and Stretch.................................................................................154 The Opposing Force.................................................................................................154 Connecting Actions..................................................................................................157 Inbetweening............................................................................................................158 Chapter 8: A Sense of Story......................................................................................171 A Sense of Story......................................................................................................171 Talk To Your Audience - Through Drawing...........................................................179 A Thinking Person`s Art ..........................................................................................182 Acting and Drawing.................................................................................................187 The Emotional Gesture............................................................................................187 Common Vs Uncommon Gestures..........................................................................188 Body Language........................................................................................................189 Chapter 9: Final Words.............................................................................................191 Creative Energy .......................................................................................................191 Osmosis....................................................................................................................192 A Bit of Introspection..............................................................................................194 Mental and Physical Preparation .............................................................................195 The Metaphysical Side.............................................................................................196 Habits.......................................................................................................................197 Final Words on Essence...........................................................................................199 Gesture Drawing for Animation v Foreword by the Editor Walt Stanchfield was an animator who taught life drawing classes for animators with a special emphasis on gesture drawing. For each weekly class session, he wrote informal handouts to emphasize the theme of the current class session, to comment on work done in the previous class, or discuss whatever topic struck his fancy. Over a period of years, these notes were lovingly shared, studied, and treasured by animators and animation students everywhere. Mr. Stanchfield personally gave copies of his collection to interested students, and was happy to seem them distributed. According to many people who were lucky enough to study under him, he wanted to publish them as a book, but the studio where he worked was not interested. The goal of this project is to imagine the book that Walt Stanchfield might have written. This project is a compilation of the first 60 handouts that are shared on the www.animationmeat.com website (as that site has numbered them). Walt Stanchfield did not present his topics in any particular order, which suited the ongoing nature of the classes. Walt`s handouts are like individual frames of animation—some are extremes, some are inbetweens, some are even cleanups. As I was reading the notes and trying to absorb as much as I could, I thought I might understand them better if it were all laid out in sequence, with basic topics followed by more complex ideas. I wanted to see his ideas grouped by subject so I could compare the ideas. In other words, I wanted the topics to be arranged like a normal book. So I`ve re-arranged bits and pieces from the handouts into cohesive chapters, while taking the liberty to eliminate redundancy and make minor edits just as a book editor would. In deciding how to organize the material, I imagined how Walt himself would have put it together if he`d written it. Where would he have started? Knowing that the readers of the book would not be the lucky members of his classes, what concepts would have illustrated before moving on to more advanced topics? I tried to follow the principles Walt himself outlines in these notes: clarity, attention to the "essence," emotion, and using the minimum number of words (lines) to get the point across. Another reason I wanted to see this material as a book is that there is no other book that covers the same information. There are many excellent volumes on animation, but they generally assume that the reader can already draw animatable characters with strong poses without explaining how to get to that stage. All the books on generic figure and life drawing, even those that emphasize gesture, encourage capturing the model`s appearance and gesture without explaining how to internalize the gesture so as to push it to extremes or apply it to a different figure. Personally, I think this compilation—if it were a book— would take its place among the top volumes on animation. There is an informal, lively charm to the original handouts that gives the reader a sense of `being there.` You may want to check them out to get a feel for how this information was ... - tailieumienphi.vn