My resources for animation art and illustration learning
I’m trying to be more available and present for questions and advice about portfolio/career things. In the past one of the issues in my availability has been that questions I get are very broad or general. The other issue is that I don’t always have time, and things get lost in my email box. So I thought for starters to share what has been useful to me in recent years. Mind you, this is not general masterpost of anything, it is just interesting tidbits from my point of view that might be useful to others.
Perspective and layout:
https://imgur.com/gallery/V5Prm
Thomas Romain’s tips for perspective. Perspective is hard in the beginning, but I promise it gets easier the more you do it. This is a good reference for whenever I feel confused or struggling.
Books:
Marcos Mateau-Mestre: Framed Ink highly recommended! Informative, for beginners and professionals alike.
Tod Polson: The Noble Approach a look into animation history particularly from layout and design point of view. For anyone who’s interested in very graphic and shape oriented approach to animation layouts and philosophy behind it.
Hans Bacher: Dream Worlds a book that takes a quick look on all aspects of animation, I think it’s a good resource for sparking interest in variety of departments in animation and understanding how feature films are made. Often referenced when explaining basics of visual development and concepting for animation.
Character anatomy:
100 Tuesday Tips With Griz and Norm
http://grizandnorm.squarespace.com/tuesday-tips a great collection of variety of helpful tips for drawing from two Disney feature artists.
https://line-of-action.com/
Where to start with online figure drawing. It’s free! The goal for figure drawing should be to draw meaningfully. I’ve spent years of my life doodling and only absorbing a little bit of information, but I think there are more effective ways to learn. These exercises I do are to make me better at drawing dimensionally and so that the characters are acting and interacting in a space.
Exercise 1: Drawing long sessions - taking the time to observe. We should always aim to draw the characters as 3dimensional, even if desired result is heavily stylized and simplified. In the beginning, it might be more helpful to start with thinking anatomy as boxes and balls and pyramids (I draw boxes, but different artists have different methods), I’ve found it helps me to improve my perspective and dimensions. Starting to draw muscles and skeleton straight away, it can be difficult to place them correctly, until there’s enough knowledge to break them down into more basic shapes. I find it takes time to start understanding and really visualizing things in three dimensions, but these exercises help.
A great demonstration: https://fyeaharttips.tumblr.com/post/23113717282/eyecager-tutorials-done-by-stanislav-prokopenko
Exercise 2: Drawing over photographs. I saw storyboard artist Ethan Becker on Youtube teach this and found it useful. I do this sometimes, because this too, helps to see how exactly all building blocks of human/creature are acting in different poses and action. The point is not to just idly doodle-trace over outlines, it’s to learn to see the underlying geometry.
Exercise 3: Croquis - the short poses. These exercises are to particularly push the line of action, the direction and force of the pose. It’s also good for seeing how well the basic shapes are working and how they stretch and bend in motion.
Color and light (painting):
Studying how light works immensely helps to figure out how color works. It’s also a necessary skill in BG painting or visual development for animation and very helpful for illustration. Other than that, I’m including a few videos of painting that I think are interesting and have been relevant to what I’m doing.
Schoolism course: Fundamentals of Lighting with Sam Nielsen https://www.schoolism.com/school.php?id=3
Schoolism course: Painting with Light and Color with Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo https://www.schoolism.com/school.php?id=30
Books:
James Gurney: Color and Light - A Guide for the Realist Painter
Hans Bacher: Vision - Color and Composition for Film
Scott Wills painting demos on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvqCOo47Ag_GdWk_HXc1l_hD20yGca8TH
Four Disney artists paint a tree: https://youtu.be/9Dg8w6gk4cE
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With these, a little disclaimer! My area of knowledge is mainly color and paint for backgrounds, illustration and a bit of character design. When it comes to storyboards and animating, I have next to no experience and there are many others who would be better to ask about these things.
