KNB 122 Drawing for Animation 2: Assignment 2 - John Everitt
Turning Head
For my first pass at the turning head, I kept features such as nose and ears relatively basic, as I’ve often had trouble rendering them with detail and perspective. I made sure to give the head an arcing, accelerated motion during the turn, which really added a sense of life to the character.
Pass 1:
I then added hair on my second pass, which helped greatly in keeping perspective and form.
Pass 2:
I then realised I made the mistake of placing a blink before the turn rather than in the middle. I tried testing a version with two blinks, but I found it to look awkward and ultimately decided to remove the first blink and keep the one on the turn.
I fixed some issues with the ‘face-squashing’ as she looks down in order to keep consistent form, while also adding detail to the eyes, nose and ears. In the case of the latter two, this task helped me greatly in figuring out the correct look and perspective for detailing those features. As the head completes its turn, I decided to add a flick on the ponytail to give it some extra life, which worked out excellently.
Final Pass:
The one issue I still have is the perspective of the neck. I tried drawing it multiple times to keep consistent form throughout the turn, and while I can’t decide whether this final pass still looks off, it was the best I could manage.
Weight Lift:
For the lift, I decided to have some fun with the characterisation. For reference, I used a clip from a championship weightlift (below), and designed my figure based on that example.
Figure design:
I studied the specific method to which he lifted the stone weight and applied it to my thumbnails.
Thumbnails:
Pass 1:
Pass 2:
Pass 3:
Modelling the motions after the clip proved to be difficult, due to both the perspective of the image, and applying said motion to the cartoonish proportions of my figure, but I feel I managed to work it out. As with my previous flour sack task, placing pauses in the action helped greatly to convey force, weight and effort. During each pass, I made sure to correct areas where the body would shift out of place to keep consistent form.
Final Pass:
On my final pass, I added both a squash and stretch to the figure as he falls back on the ground, while making sure to give the ball a light bounce as he does so, once again conveying weight and force.
Rotoscope Dance:
For the rotoscope clip (frames 5880-6024), I wanted to create an interesting and interpretive design for the dancers. While searching through references, I came across one very interesting image of a vector-style illustration of African tribal dancers.
Something about this image appealed to me and I decided to apply a similar design to the thumbnail sketches bellow.
Thumbnails:
I placed them out along the key poses in the sequence, along with my gesture drawing to end the clip.
Key poses:
I found the process to take a lot longer than expected, so I took to completing the middle segment first before focussing on the gestural and transitions. The female dancer’s skirt I had to animate by hand, which was an added effort, but I feel flows nicely.
Pass 1:
An interesting observation I found was how far more difficult it was to animate a slow moving object or character, as opposed to a normal or fast moving action. This made attention to detail very important for where I placed certain lines.
After a talk with my tutor, I found that I needed to add a sense of form to the animation, so I decided to apply lighting and shading around the different segment of the bodies, giving a more three-dimensional, mannequin-esque look to the dancers. I also re-drew and re-sent my final gesture image to better match what was given to me.
Shaded dancers:
New final image:
The transitional drawings turned out to be both a challenging and fun experience for me, especially as the male dancer turns his arms over towards the end. I kept the dancers’ hair unshaded, both as an artistic choice and to distinguish it from the rest of the body.
Transitions:
Final Animation:
I am very proud of how the final animation turned out, even though certain instructions were difficult to interpret. I feel I could have perhaps exaggerated the body proportions more for my design, but as this was my first time rotoscoping, I decided to keep the body shapes fairly close to the clip.
Life Drawing:
I didn’t take much life drawing practice between semesters, so the process took me a little time to get used to again. I started on A3 as last time and found myself getting back into certain techniques, such as shading. I then decided to move on to the larger butcher’s paper, which took me a little longer to get a handle of. The larger canvas definitely forced me to use my arm more for gestural strokes, and made detail a lot harder to crack down.
I still have a lot of trouble with anatomy, especially with the placement of the ribcage and shoulder blades, hence why they appear a little off in some images. Proportions and measurement techniques are also a challenge (foreshortening is still a pain), though I feel I’ve managed to make it work regardless.
I still definitely find the female figures much easier and more interesting to draw due to the greater emphasis on the gesture, but I think my skill at the male figure has definitely improved as well. I still keep away from faces and (for the most part) fingers and toes, as once again these prove to be the most challenging aspects and I decided to keep most of my focus on the body.
Overall, I definitely feel an improvement. I’ve become more comfortable on the butcher’s paper, though only when time allows me attention to detail. I have a better understanding of shadows and shading now, although anatomy is still something I need to work on to improve my skills to the next level.














