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My recommendation is the same as it is for all novice animators: do life drawing, a lot of it. Even if your aim is to do highly stylized characters, life drawing will give you a better looking end product both in terms of character design and in convincing movements. With regards to these specific sketches, you may want to give the nerd more jaw space, if you plan to animate him talking (his mouth is too cramped to move as it's presently sized). Alternatively you could give him a really tiny mouth. The hoodie guy is generic, but otherwise fine. You may find the shoe's exaggerated appearance difficult to maintain as it changes and deforms in his walk cycle.
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Jul 1, 2017 19:23
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 16:17 |
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You may have already done this, but if you want to go off model, it's helpful to me to get a solid "skeleton" in place, so that when you exaggerate a gesture you have a baseline to return to. It'll also help you create rules for more oddly shaped characters like your nerd. I sketched in skeletons to demonstrate what I mean. The nerd's skull doesn't conform exactly to what you've drawn, but is a good guideline for where you would place his facial features throughout an animation. Outlining the joints, waistline, and spine allow for you to predict a more fluid movement path.
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Jul 1, 2017 21:20
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Also I just noticed-is the nerd wearing a hat, or is that nub his ear? If it's an ear the glasses arm should go over it not under it, if it's a hat, it should more obviously be a hat.
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Jul 1, 2017 21:43
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It can work with the glasses arm below the ear; the ear just has to be recognizable as an ear-in the current iteration it isn't, and next to the hoodie guy the shape strongly resembles his hat, so it's a bit confusing.
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Jul 1, 2017 23:51
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Yeah, if you match the design to the hoodie guy ear it'll be recognizable
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Jul 2, 2017 00:12
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Hands are actually my favorite thing to draw; the hands you're currently doing (the backwards hook) are reminiscent of a lot or recent kids cartoons, particularly on nickelodeon . If you want to learn how to articulate that shape I'd recommend looking jhonen Vasquez's art, as he favors that shape in his comics and cartoons, and uses it effectively. If you want to go the four fingered style I'd recommend Disney, warner bros (standard looking hands) and the simpsons (fat, rounded hands) as a broad example pool that's easily accessible. My personal favorite artist for hands is Jamie Hewlet, particularly back in the tank girl days. Wrt general hand anatomy, I do fairly stylized work, and utilize strong line work to suggest underlying bone and musculature. I've found it helpful to break the hand down into geometric parts, the same as any other body part. The palm is a shape of your choice (circle, square, rectangle, oval typically) the first joint/thumb knuckle comes off the side in a shape close to an Isosceles triangle, and the fingers are in a slight arch based on their length (middle being longest, then pointer, ring and pinky) I use my own hands as a reference, most often, so what I draw tends to reflect stylized/modified version of my own features (prominent knuckles, large palm, etc) I also pay close attention to other people's hands. Sorry for the wall of text, but I love hands. E: to more succinctly answer your question about hands, I think my answer is: look at how other people do hands, then combine the observations you have about other people's methods/styles with practice from anatomy studies and life drawings. Theokotos fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Jul 2, 2017 |
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Jul 2, 2017 18:20
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haha, yeah, across cultures humans talk with their hands and varying degrees of gesticulation; animation is all about movement, so nailing down body language and hand gestures is pretty key. E: oh yeah, I forgot, this website is good for practice/ref photos, and you can tell it to feed you a bunch of body part specific images here: https://www.quickposes.com/en/gestures/random Theokotos fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jul 2, 2017 |
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Jul 2, 2017 22:58
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 16:17 |
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Wrt developing unique character personalities: when I started actively working on character development I found those stupid personality quizzes posted on live journal etc were handy question sets that made me consider foundational human aspects of my characters. Even if it's never relevant for a second party to know your nerd character's favorite ice cream (or whatever), information like that informs narrative decisions you make about him. The little paragraphs you wrote about the characters is a start, but as another poster mentioned, it comes across as very generic; you're describing (stereo)types, not unique personalities. The physical dev of the characters is coming along tho-like I said, and I think someone else echoed, even if you're doing exaggerations and deformations, you must have a baseline to return to, and an understanding of where all the joints/internal anatomical structure is at any given point.
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Jul 21, 2017 20:15
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