Adventures in Pencil
It’s been about a year since I tried to learn to draw. I got interested in it because I was watching a lot of old school animation and loving it. In the heyday studios like Warner Bros and Disney were producing outstanding material, all hand drawn in pencil. You don’t see much of it being made these days, especially for short form TV, as it’s just so expensive. And anyway, if they can fob kids off with any old crap, why not. And adults, well, we’ve grown to accept ‘illustrated radio’ shows such as Family Guy and South Park as the norm. I love South Park, but it’s a whole different medium to the stuff that was mainstream back in the 40′s and 50′s. It relies heavily on the script and voice actors, as opposed to the visual elements like in this
There’s been a resurgence of ‘full animation’ recently. You’ve got Disney making films like Princess and the Frog, and Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist as recent movie examples.
Anyway before I rant any further I best get to the point of this post. I was going to post some pencil tests I’ve done over the last 6 – 12 months.
Here is the first one I ever finished, back when my concept of construction in drawing was still pretty none existent.
I tried to remedy the situation by doing John K’s $100,000 dollar cartoon drawing class. This, along with going to some life drawing classes, helped a bit. See older life drawing post
A few months passed and I felt a little more confident so I had a go at designing my own character, below
Duckbill, a cartoon character I designed
Then I went ahead and tried to animate him. I was watching Wimbledon and seeing our guy get beat and thought up a little skit. I drew all the keyframes which totally exhausted me, and I never finished the inbetweens. The thought of drawing all those tennis rackets in perspective sent shivers down my spine. But I learnt a lesson, don’t over complicate it, simple is good, less line is good.
It took me months to get around to having another go at hand drawn animation. A lot has changed in my life in the last 6 months, and it’s been an eventful winter. But, I got the bug again when the sun returned and had another couple of cracks at it. Here’s what came out
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
No Responses Yet to “Adventures in Pencil”