Lesson 5 - Tom and Jerry

Whew! That lesson took a while to get done. What with the holidays and snowboarding I have very little extra time, but now that the holidays are over, I have more time to draw. But going boarding a couple times a week eats into a lot of my drawing time (but I'm not complaining!).

I can definitely see an improvement in my drawings, but I am also becoming more and more picky with the quality, so they are taking just as many tries.

Tom and Jerry are fun to draw, but they are also very easy to draw ugly. Usually I would get all of the proportions down, then get an appealing picture.



















Here is the progression the drawings took to get to the good one.
















Also, I have been playing around with inking in Illustrator and that really helped me figure out where and why lines were drawn. Tracing over the pictures really helped drive home solidity and how to draw solid characters.

John K Stuff: Animation School Lesson 5 - Line Of Action, Silhouettes

Playing around with Inking

These first two of George Liquor's face were done with Flash, just for fun. I was just messing around, because I have nowhere near as clean a line as the inks that you posted, but then I figured out that they where done in Illustrator, so I got the trial and gave it a shot. Then they turned out a lot better, now I just have to get more familiar with Illustrator.




It's fun to take a break from the lessons and do something different. I have also been trying to recreate Yogi Bear backgrounds in Corel Painter, so I will post those at some other time. But, lesson 5 will be posted here in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for looking and have a Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

Lesson 4 Re-Post

Here are my Lesson 4 drawings side-by-side with the Preston Blair originals, for better comparison. I guess that I will post my drawings with the side-by-side comparison, instead of the overlay from now on.

Full Bodied Lesson 4

Now here was a lesson that I could really sink my teeth into. Drawing the full character is just so much more fulfilling than just a head. The main point that I learned was to make sure the line of action was correct, because if the line of action was right, the drawing would be really close. Another thing that I noticed was that I tend to draw hands smaller than they need to be.
























John K Stuff: Animation School Lesson 4 - 2 legged characters-full body