Construction

- [Instructor] Second foundation, strong design I've done an entire course on. If you want to go into greater depth, the course is in the library so you can watch the whole thing there. We design our character around simple forms, cylinders, bean shapes, spheres, squares, and we assemble the characters from them. We're drawing volumes, we're not drawing lines. The lines are to express the volumes. And of course, we can twist these, turn these, squash them, stretch them. We're not rigid. The are very flexible forms that we're working with. Here's a drawing of a strongman. And I just turned him slightly so that we could see some of the volumes in action. So it's a very simple turn. Let's have a look at the volumes beneath, head in purple, the sphere and the bean-shaped torso, cylindrical midsection, and roughly spherical, slightly oval-shaped waist. And we can see them overlaid. It really gives you a lot of control and flexibility as you draw these characters from different angles. When we construct characters we have to keep them consistent. So that means we can use different head heights to establish the proportions of the character. The guy on the left is four and a half heads tall, the torso is two heads tall and the legs are one and a half heads tall. Now you don't do this with a ruler, you just eyeball it. You get a feeling for it. But there has to be some sort of scheme or map or plan for the relative proportions of the character, or you'll get off model. Here's an animation showing a figure at different sizes. As he begins at the smaller end of it he's more like a toddler. And as we proceed through here we have a more child like proportion, and here more of a teenager, and about here we have a normal adult proportion. That's about six heads tall or seven. And I could go to eight. Starts to feel like a very lanky, goofy-like character. So this is the virtue of having some sort of established system for drawing the scales. We also construct the facial features and the different body features around central lines or high lines. We're not just drawing shapes on a floating ball. In this case the first thing I'll draw will be the horizon line to set the layer the eyes go at, and then the midsection so we know the direction that we're facing in. And we can vary this. If we're just doing different design characters. We don't have to draw that particular form. The eye line can be halfway up, it can be 1/3 down. We can sit the eyes on top of the line or at the halfway point depending on the design, as long as you stay consistent. Once you have your design you stay consistent within the different key frames that you create, or you go off model. And this also applies, especially if you're working on a realistic character, because you know realistic figures will go off model so quick you won't believe it. So very important to get in the habit of constructing and don't get lazy. Don't just start drawing shapes. So again, dealing with real anatomy is important. I don't want you to think for a second you have to know the name of every bone in the hand, but just have a good idea about the basic shapes of the bones and roughly where they are. The shape of the rib cage, for example, is also very important. The more you know the better. Have some idea of it but don't just be drawing willy nilly, or, again, your anatomy could drift very badly. And here's another example of the principle of drawing volume, not lines. When I draw the curve of an eye I'm always remembering behind that curve there's an invisible ball of eye, and be aware of which part you're drawing. In this case, the forward-facing curve. That's the edge of the eye mask. So, again, draw volumes, not lines. Here's another realistic example. You can see the same principle here. Usually with a dog or a quadrupedal animal there's an analog to the human body part. So the forearm will have its equivalent in the dog. It's not just a completely different design. The dog bones have the same range of motion as the corresponding human bone. And again, we have the same principle here. We have the corresponding parts of the bird anatomy to the human anatomy. And they bend more or less the same way. So when we design things like clothing, it's really nice to have some method beyond just the shape looks nice. What's the actual form? We're drawing volumes, not lines. In this case we're drawing a beautiful infinity loop. This figure eight loop. That's my personal preference for drawing little bumps and variants into it. But the major forms are these lovely zeroes, zero shapes or figure eights. The same thing here. You can see that we have the necklace draping around the neck, but it's not just drawn as a flat thing. I've designed it with a figure eight or a zero shaped loop. And that way there's construction going on. It's not just a flat object. Another good principle of drawing is the point of origin. And this allows us to control creases so the creases don't just appear arbitrarily. And it also allows us to control them in motion. So as the figure moves, the points of origin control the creases and we don't see floating. Points of origin also apply to an anatomical features. Look at the inside corner of the eye and notice how the creases are all originating from a single point of origin. On the outside corner of the eye, the two crows feet also originate from a point of origin, and that allows us to have much more control. Stops the lines from floating. And you can have as many points of origin as you feel you need. A really great drawing technique is to just imagine a Zorro mask around the eye area and then to draw that entire mask. It'll help you to visualize the expansion and the contraction of the facial features. And here's the same principle applied to a more traditional head. So when we have our characters designed then we need to make sure that the different people on the production draw them consistently. This is less of an issue if you're working on a CGI or a Flash or a Harmony project, but if you're working on a traditional project, it's really crucial. So the model sheets will show the characters in turnaround. You can't just show a character in one angle. And also it'll usually give you some idea of the proportions. You can also have model sheets for the head. And this is a really nice one. It's got the five figures in the top right in different angles. 'Cause those can be very, very difficult angles for a trainee animators or people unfamiliar with the character. You know, how do you draw the figure from these radical angles? And on the bottom row we have different mouth shapes. And sometimes two productions, if they're really well run and they have the time, will do pose sheets, and these will give you like really strong, dramatic poses of the character. And this will give you design solutions for really difficult angles. Here's another character in the turnaround. In this case I show how we can construct the character around different volumes and masses. We're not just giving the five head height formula here, but we're also flagging the fact that the body is built around a very simple elongated bean shape. So that might not be obvious to a person who wouldn't have this kind of model sheet on hand. The other sheet you might have on some projects might be character size relationships. So we have size model sheets that will show people the size relationship between the human characters or maybe the giant martian robots who invade the earth, and in this case four-to-one ratio. And as long as you maintain that ratio, you'll be good. This is an example of the kind of thing you'll see in some of the older animation guides, template character designs. These were really dominant in the 40s and 50s. So you have the doughboy on the left. That basic formula has been used for Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Donald Duck, as well as female characters like Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck. The baby has been Tweety bird and any number of tiny characters. And so on. Those basic types were found to work. They were cranked out in movie after movie. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a formula, makes money, makes people happy. But what if we want to go beyond that. So you see on the right side they have two characters, the crazy bird guy and the other lanky figure. They're kind of variants of the lanky character that you see fourth from the left. We can take these basic forms and expand on them. But we can also even blend between them. This was a fun experiment I did where I took each one of those stereotypes and I just did about three in betweens between each of them and the hypothetical number of variations that you could come up with is huge. When we arrange the potential number between each one of those stereotypes, we have an infinite number of potential designs. I hope you'll find some of these rules of thumb will help to strengthen your existing drawings and to help tie them down so that you can begin to approach animating in traditional styles.