#john k stuff

[seeksstaronmewni]

John Kricfalusi on Posing for Animation Layouts

“These drawings are the entertainment. They are the performers of the show, and every other job on a show is subservient to the performance.” - John K.

In short: Drawing animation/layout requires one to analyze the story purpose and both story and physical restrictions of the scene. It’s natural for one to hate his/her drawings when he/she tries to improve, but to effectively draw animation/layout requires one to exhibit confidence, loosen up, and make functional drawings that’re not arbitrary but of a consecutive order and build emotionally in the right place.

Tweet version here.

Full article here (contains some crude images/partial nudity)

[sthcollectiontimemachine]

Why does this guy who purportedly prides himself on good drawing principles have a lick of respect for this stupid show’s artwork?

[sthcollectiontimemachine]

Ready for a preview of a John K Stuff blog?

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mJ4lc_Q9Q6k/Ro77Mq0PW6I/AAAAAAAAFt4/dmMCwugTQKQ/s1600-h/ramjet_7.jpg

He thinks THIS is a convincing design while Mulan is completely unstructured!

[scarabsi]

So I tried to look up more information on the “Cal Arts Face” that was mentioned in that one post that confused me, and I found a bunch of self-fulfilling Tumblr posts complaining about it but no actual posts really explaining it really well (beyond the fact it seems to be another name for “Dreamworks face,” which. . . why would we need another name for the exact same concept?)

I actually found this really great article someone wrote that critiques animation/cartoon styles in detail, and I feel like I can learn a lot from studying it in the future!

I don’t like how dismissive they were about certain styles, or the elitist, hierarchical way they seem to be asking people to draw in cartoon styles that amateurs can’t emulate. . .

But they undoubtedly make a lot of good points about the kinds of art that get wasted, the styles and expression that just never get made because there’s an expectation that you have to draw a CERTAIN way rather than a way that best expresses reality as you see it.

It’s things like this that make me feel weird when I looked at the Artist Alley displays at Fanime and felt like, while they all looked different up close, from far away it was difficult to pick any artist out from the others. I feel like, on some level, some of this is probably happening there-- or, at the very least, that the Fanime people in charge of picking artists were subconsciously applying those standards, leaving people who drew things differently out of it altogether.

That said, while I love this article, it turns out it was written over nine years ago, in 2007. They mentioned in the beginning that they had recently critiqued the “Cal Arts Style,” and everything in the article could easily apply to current trends, but it’s super old. So, 1) It’s probably not the root cause of the “Cal Arts Face” trend I was looking for, and 2) the problem of cartoons being homogenized and styles being wasted has been going on for a long time.

[keeganmcfly]

Art from the unproduced "Goddamn George Liquor Program"

[gracesix-blog]

Breaking bad habits (sorry for the time between posts)

Things have been super busy lately, so I send my apologies to anyone who (if anyone?) reads this blog on a regular basis.  Here are some things that have been on my mind: I had to draw this flower fairly quickly and noticed some of my bad habits returning.   One of which is erasing my guidelines. I drew this girl (above) a few years back and did the same thing.  A year or so later, I started to notice my drawings moving to new heights of wonkiness (I dare not post here.)  When I wanted to go back to older drawings to see what went wrong, it hit me.  I had erased all my actual work!

Flash forward sometime later and I came across these Preston Blair drawing lessons on John K's blog!  I know what some of you (imaginary) are thinking, "aren't these lessons stylistically different from what you're doing, Grace?"  Well, yes and no.  They are only superficially dissimilar.   Everything I learned in Life Drawing class is here in these lessons, construction, proportion, perspective, and drawing hierarchy.  Click on the link below to go to his page.

more on construction 

Above, is my attempt at the first lesson.  I have done more lessons since, but I'm ashamed to say I haven't finished them all yet.  I also need to scan the ones I have tried, I know, bad.

some day