Arnold Studies

Here's someone who actually has accomplished things-and is a real character on top of it.
I'm really starting to wonder how trying to draw realistically can help cartooning. The closer I study what things really look like, the more I realize how much more complex reality is than cartoons. That probably sounds obvious.
Some things just can't be captured in line alone, for one thing.
I have been trying to figure out the mechanics and structure of the whole mouth area and it's a nightmare of complexity. -at least for me. It sure has nothing to do with the way we cheat mouth shapes for cartooning.
I have the typical cartoonists' problem of drawing eyes and heads bigger than they are in reality. When I think of how many cartoon productions have tried to animate in a realistic style, my mind boggles at the pure futility of it. It's hard enough to do one drawing that's remotely realistic, let alone trying to move it in space.

I think cartooning is almost a completely different art than illustration, even though you sometimes see some overlap.

Cartoonists - at least the best ones- rely more on imagination than complex drawing skills. The kind of skills that great illustrators have must derive from some totally different otherworldly sense than what cartoonists create with.

Does All This Human Drawing Help Cartooning?

Honestly, I'm not sure yet.
I'm realizing that I use a whole different type of thinking when I copy live humans (or photos of them) than when I draw cartoon characters and I haven't yet figured out how to link the two types of reasoning.
Boy I see even more mistakes when I compare the drawings to the photos after I blog them. Like many cartoonists I tend to shrink open spaces when I copy real things. I gotta try to fix that.

I find a lot of interesting subtleties in anatomy and perspective as I copy-but will remember them after the photos are taken away? Maybe if I did this every day for years.
I had a whole bunch of theories to go with these drawings, but it's too late at night and I'm beat, so I'll have to save them for later.
I don't see realistic proportions very well. I make the feet and hands too big.
One of the reasons I've been brushing up on human drawing is because I have to design a T shirt with Marvel characters on it and I wanted to do a sort of caricatured Kirby style. I'm already running into many problems to solve.

Caricaturing The Body

Sure, people have funny heads but doesn't the body deserve some ridicule as well?
I remember when I was a caricaturist at a theme park during summer break, my caricature boss told me what I was doing wrong: "You aren't drawing the heads big enough. A 'caricature' is when you draw a really big head and a small body. - oh and you take one feature -like the nose, and you make that really big too. - and put a wart on it." He also told me to have the small body holding a balloon- "That's what makes it funny." Or if it was a hot babe, "Draw her in a martini glass." Who knew the secrets of caricature were so simple!?
It might be harder to caricature bodies, but some people's bodies are just begging for it - like this actress'. Every time I see a full picture of her, the first thing that strikes me is not her face but her crazy proportions. If they ever make another live action Popeye movie, she could play Alice the Goon.

I know when a lot of us do caricatures we have our stock fatty body shape and our stock muscley shape, a stock skinny body but there are a lot more subtle variations that arrest the sharp eye as well.

Next: Is all this human drawing crap actually going to improve my cartooning?

The Stiff Period to the Fluid Period. No Balls on Balls

I'll get to the Popeye toy real soon, but first to set it up.
here is another sample of a lesson from the mysterious secret cartoon college:I suggest (if you don't already) supplementing your cartoon studies with some life drawing. (I know this is a photo, not a live model)

Why should you?

Because when studying Preston Blair type construction - made of spheres and pear shapes, there is a tendency for some cartoonists to think cartoon characters are made up of balls piled on top of each other. Or they draw the balls and pears too mechanical and not organic enough.

Also another point: THE STIFF PERIOD OF LEARNING
Any time you learn a new concept or drawing skill, when you actually first try to draw it you will probably be very stiff, because you haven't practiced the concept enough for it to sink in. This is the tough period of learning anything.

Drawing 1 - STIFF, study drawing. Slow and careful, grinding my teeth

When I first drew this guy, I slowly, carefully blocked in the construction first - having to think about the types of shapes that make up a strong man. I couldn't use balls and pears because real life is made up of more complex parts. They are still solid forms, but bendable solid forms. They are complex organic forms.

Once I finished the first drawing, I knew a lot of things I didn't know before: How the traps are shaped on one side compared to the other in a 3/4 pose. What biceps look like from 2 different angles in relaxed mode. How the biceps fit next to the triceps and the space between.

How muscles weave in and out of each other under the skin. The feeling of flesh, not just the wooden proportions of man.

How the 6 pack works as a whole unit before it's split into parts

How big pecs hang in repose (it's very important to know this, especially for you girls)

etc.

Drawing 2 - Looser yet still solid, more organic and confident, more fun to domy conservative attempt at Chloe's style

Then I redrew the drawing faster and looser - while still trying to keep all the forms solid, but to make them less stiff, more flowing: more ORGANIC

Some artists go too far in the direction of organic lines and get wobbly formless characters. I actually really like this one below. It's very funny. Some artists are too stiff and draw mechanical characters.Ever see those Gene Deitch Tom and Jerrys made in the 60s in eastern europe? They are a total misunderstanding of the 40s American animation style. The characters are drawn stiff and move stiffly. They look like they are made of badly drawn balls stacked on top of each other. Here's a weird combination of wobbly and stiff at the same time. That's an achievement! Whenever anyone draws Tom and Jerry now, they give them these bulbous balls for toes that they never had in the original cartoons.

The trick to good drawing is to combine solidity with fluidity. And life.

You have to look at both sides of an object (say a bicep) and draw the whole form, not two lines on either side. Look at the form inside the lines.

I made a mistake in my muscleman drawing above that I warn everyone else about: the side of the man's head that is closer to us (on the right) is too cramped. I squashed the space between his face and cranium. Lots of us have that problem.

Preston Blair Forms don't work for everything!
I saw one student's attempt at caricatures and he was trying to construct them as if they were Preston Blair forms.

That doesn't work.

When you draw from life- DRAW WHAT YOU SEE

Don't try to impose what you think things are supposed to look like. We aren't made of balls and pears. Only old animated cartoon characters are because those kinds of forms are easier to tun in space and they provide a simple foundation for many other concepts and principles.

What you learn from drawing from life and using your eyes to observe new things can then be applied to your cartoon drawings in simplified form.

Very Organic and Solid Preston Blair FormsThese drawings are not remotely realistic. They have no real anatomy. They are entirely made up of animated cartoon forms - spheres and pears. Yet they don't look mechanical and they are full of life. They aren't balls piled on top of each other.
Here it is done wrong: 1980 Tom and Jerry at Filmation, Balls on balls. A complete misunderstanding of the 40s style. We used to laugh and cry at these model sheets at the same time when working on these cartoons. (Thanks to Tom Minton for saving these hilarious monstrosities)



These Eisenberg characters are much more convincing as life forms, even though they have no literal realistic anatomy.

That's because they obey some principles of reality. They are organic and solid at the same time. Asymmetrical in a natural way. They have weight. They are not robotic.

See how the arms wrap around that log? They are flattened at the bottom, but bulge out at the top where they are not being compressed against anything. That makes sense and makes the drawing believable and alive.You can really feel this drawing of Tom smashing into the log. It makes sense. It isn't random distortion. (His belly is accidentally painted wrong; that's why he looks skinny at first.)

It's organic and solid at the same time - and obeys some expected sense of physics.

Don't draw stiff (except when learning and you can't help it). Don't draw wobbly. Aim at drawing convincing solid organic life.

SOLID, YET PLIABLE OR "ORGANIC"

Can Life drawing Help Your Animation?

I think so - if you apply something new that you discovered from life drawings to your cartoon drawing. - But not if you look at the 2 disciplines as being mutually exclusive artforms - or unrelated - as most portfolios I get from animation schools indicate.Thanks to Olivia for finding this drawing on Katie Rice's site.

http://funnycute.blogspot.com/2005/07/spumco-bjork-video.html
Make sure you hunt around her site. She is a great example of a cartoonist who first observes lots of interesting things from life, and then applies them to her own unique yet very cartoony style.

When I do cartoons of real celebrities, I start by doing regular caricatures - semi- realistic ones to analyze the structure and specifics of the individual, Then I try to simplify that into animateable shapes. The first animateable models are usually stiff because they have no context or spontaneity. They are merely conscious analyses of the basic shapes of the individual subject. Once you start animating you loosen up and start to caricature your own caricatures as your subconscious takes over. Or at least - you should.Animating Bjork added a lot of ideas and techniques to the way I draw girls in general. It got me away from doing the stock Preston Blair girl, who is really Elmer Fudd in drag.

Bjork is pretty, but not at all in a generic way. She is so amazingly unique that you can't take your eyes off her. The way she looks, the way she moves, her expressions, her timing, her singing are pure charisma. This is great inspiration for cartoon characters. In the end, we are looking to animate charismatic characters, not stock genericism. Aren't we?



These models are all pretty stiff, but are a starting point. This is a step by step procedure. You start drawing with your brain, but aim to draw from the heart. That doesn't happen instantly. You have to first absorb the knowledge slowly and then forget about it and let your pencil be guided by your subconscious. Not easy, and it hurts to go through the stiff period. A lot of lesser men give up during the stiff beginnings of learning something new and that's a dirty shame. Take the pain and shame like a man and get over it. You'll be so happy when your new knowledge becomes second nature. Otherwise you will be stuck, a slave to formula for life and unhappy, maybe even without knowing why. That pain and shame is essential to your progress. Embrace it. Kick the walls if you have to. But get back to the drawing board and force that stiff information into your head. Then lay awake nights obsessing over it. That's your tax for being gifted.








People ask me all the time - "should I study life drawing and will it help my cartoon drawings"? I wish it did more often, but usually it doesn't.

Again, It can if you apply something you learned from it.

Doing caricatures from life, then simplifying them into animateable characters is great for breaking habits and inventing new styles and ideas. But you have to let the subject of the caricature influence you, not the other way around. Don't impose your "style" of caricature upon the model. Or worse, Hirschfeld's. Open your mind and let the specific new information change the way you assume things should look. Otherwise you are looking at the world through thick gauze and missing out on the tons of interesting new information staring you in the face. I wonder how many people understand what I mean by this.Don't throw out your cartoon instincts just because you are taking in some new observations from life. Mix the 2!
I think that the combination of strong cartooniness and conservative but acute observation and caricature from life will make you a better cartoonist. The 2 together add up to something greater than live action or stock animation. It helps you get a style and be extra specific, rather than just follow animation formula.

I'll post some clips later of how each individual animator did his own unique version of my caricature of Bjork. Aaron Springer. Erik Weise. Sanjay Patel. All great cartoonists with their own styles.

http://specials.bjorkish.net/imissyou/