Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Learning

And then I found this course from Preston Blair! (all kids on skools should get this book)
And now again I copy allot of old drawings to learn the basics and principles, at least that is what I am trying to do.

Inking is really a good way to learn it.
When I ink a drawing I really need to think about the drawing. You need to understand it to do a good job, just like copying a modelsheet.

A ink I did of a sketch of John K's George.

The original drawing of John K:

I really had to analyze the drawing and think about it. Now I see my ink again I see things that I can do better the next time, especialy some of the forms and corners.

I'm thinking what the next step is, drawing a character like bugs bunny in you're own poses? Or should I just keep inking and copying. I still can learn allot from that.

9 comments:

Ryan G. said...

Wow dude! Nice stuff..

PJS said...

We have very similar stories! Yes, Blair's book is essential.

I think drawing Bugs in your own poses would be a great next step, applying what you've learned so far. Have you tried much caricaturing?

Also. have you noticed in John's blog where he has posted his ideal Animation/Cartooning College course plan. In which he maps out all the logical steps in learning the craft. I refer to that a lot

Julián Höek said...

Hey there Mitch!
i was thinking about that next step too. i asked john in the comment section a couple of times but sadly i've never caught his attention.
i think this subject could be for his class of cartoon application from his ideal school.
right now i'm also copying from model sheets and from the preston blair's book trying to learn and also trying to brush ink my drawings but that's a slow one 'couse it's to damm hard! do you ink with illustrator or by hand?
any way, when i copy a drawing after i'm done i think it's almost ok and i find some things i did wrong but later i check it with the original in photoshop and i notice a lot of things i did wrong then i give it another try and that's the way most of us who read john k's blog are learning.
but how further can we go?
what we learn from that model sheet, how should we apply it?
should we invent a pose for that character or use the same pose in one of our characters?
and how can we know if we're not making a big mistake if we can't check it with nothing else, the eye can cheat us and trying to be very critical with our self some times it's not enough.
perhaps for that part i think is totally necessary to have somebody else who really knows pointing at the errors we can't see.
never the less inventing new poses or doing other stuff trying to learn won't hurt anybody and even if the is no way to be sure about all the things that went wrong just with noticing a couple and fixing them will do till we learn more and notice other stuff.
see ya!!

Anonymous said...

When I was a kid I did copied allot of looney toons and disney characters (here is a really old drawing I did, when I was a kid. It is really bad!) but I didn't knew any of the basics you need to draw them correct
Those aren't nearly as bad as this pre-Blair (I think!) drawing I made. The Marc Anthony drawing looks kind of good, even though you didn't use construction (did you ink those?). I can't believe I draw this primitively.
http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/3200/birdydj6.jpg

Now compare to a copy of a Preston Blair duck I made.

http://img460.imageshack.us/img460/2677/duckyeb7.jpg

I admit that the huge reason I've made so much progress is that now I use drawing paper and tracing paper to make the drawings, and a bigger reason is that I'm using decent drawing pencils.

BTW, I have a question regarding scans. Many of my scans don't look as good as the original drawing. Is there a way to make the scans look better?

Anonymous said...

Whoops. I meant to say drew instead of draw. Sorry about that.

Mitch Leeuwe said...

Thanks guys.

"perhaps for that part i think is totally necessary to have somebody else who really knows pointing at the errors we can't see."

Yeah, that's the main reason for this blog. To get some feedback and tips I didn't see myself.

But the best way is probarly that you have people around you that can teach you the stuff. Like on work or ad school, like what you are saying Julian. But we don't live in a ideal world...

You should read "the illusion of life", that would be a great schoolbook.

So I think that blog's aren't a bad thing to learn this stuff. We reach allot of people with blogging! The only thing is that we need to deside by owerself what we need to learn next, some more guiding would be nice...
But we have John K's blog, where we can learn allot!

Oyeah, I like the way how Amir is learning his stuff.

http://aapractice.blogspot.com/

John Guy said...

"I'm thinking what the next step is, drawing a character like bugs bunny in you're own poses? Or should I just keep inking and copying. I still can learn allot from that."

The next step really depends on what your long term goals are. My goal is to be able to produce funny, independent cartoon animation, or at least know how to. I've been copying model sheets to get better at drawing cartoons. The other skills i need are inking, digital painting skills (photoshop), and finally animation. I still have a long way to go, but I do have a long term plan, that I will probably write out eventually.

Amir Avni said...

Hey Mitch

Your practice looks great! you're definitely on the right track.

In my opinion, the next thing to do is always what you feel you need the most work/improvement on.

If you feel you need to get a better animated quality to your drawing, draw your own poses with classic characters,
If you feel you need to improve your linework, do more cleanup.
You can also do cleanups of your own poses after you're happy with them.

It's good to have professionals to look at your work, but developing your own critical approach is even more important, because it will make you independent.

Mitch Leeuwe said...

Thanks,

Hmm yeah you're all right.

It's up too youreself to deside wath you want to learn.

But you also need to have some skills for work. For the short term I need to be able to draw nice flash characters in an illustrative style for work, I need to be able to draw them fast and allot. So that's where I need to practise on for now.

But for the long term I want to be able to draw/design good constructed characters that are suitable for full animation and I want to be able to draw them in all kinds of posses.

Hmmm.. Ok, so I do know what I need to learn.