Thought I’d share a card I sketched for my wife on Mother’s Day. She’s much prettier and slimmer than this, and usually not grumpy at all. But when you have young children there are definitely mornings that feel this way.
Character Design Shuffle App
A popular exercise for cartoonists and character designers is to randomly pick from a list of characteristics (occupations, personality types, animal types, emotions, etc.) and then sketch a cartoon character based on them. Some artists, such as Chris Ayers, actually keep a Ziploc bag full of little slips of paper with such traits written on them. They pull out a few and then sketch a character that matches whatever combo they get. After reading one of Chris Ayers’ books I created my own ziploc bag, which I blogged about here.
Stephen Silver recently released a terrific iOS app called “Character Design Shuffle” (iTunes link), which takes this concept into the digital age. Simply select from a group of categories, hit the “Shuffle” button, and then draw the results that pop up. It’s a terrific tool and in hindsight its amazing someone didn’t come up with this idea sooner.
I’ve had the app on my phone for a few weeks but have been so slammed with work that I didn’t get a chance to try it out until this morning. The app gave me this description: “Female, Weasel, Doctor, Scurrying, Devastated”. The above warm-up sketch is the result.
Notes On Gesture Drawing
Last November I attended the CTN Animation Expo in Burbank, CA, where I gave a lecture on business tips for self-employed artists. Towards the end of the conference I attended a late-night gesture drawing workshop hosted by Dave Pimentel. For about an hour or so a costumed model (the terrific John Tucker dressed as a hobo) struck some wonderful one-to-five-minute poses while we sketched furiously and listened to Mr. Pimentel walk around the room sharing his pearls of drawing wisdom. It was all very inspiring. One of the downsides of living so far away from California is that I rarely get the opportunity to attend a life drawing session that puts the emphasis on character and acting rather than anatomy and realism.
I was thumbing through one of my sketchbooks and came across my drawings and notes from that night (Sorry for the poor scans, blue pencil is not scanner-friendly). I had jotted down several notes from Mr. Pimentel’s comments as I drew and thought I’d pass them along. There’s some great advice for any cartoonist or character designer to keep in mind while he draws:
- Think *shape* with your gestures.
- Focus on four things: acting, expression, character, and movement.
- Push the poses!
- Draw from your shoulders, not your wrist.
- Center lines are a crutch. You don’t need them.
- Contour lines are OK as long as you are defining a shape and not just contour for contour’s sake.
- Don’t draw the model. Draw a *character*.
- Never draw the straight, literal pose. Push the angles!
- Stare at the pose for ten seconds, study it, and then draw until you need to look again.
- Think about squash-and-stretch as you draw.
- Think in giant swoops from chest to toe.
- Find all the angles you can squash and stretch.
- Think about adjectives as you draw.
- When indicating hair, sketch in the direction of the haircut.
And finally, my favorite tip….
- Put the “life” back in life drawing!
Sketchbook Update: Duck Dynasty
Lately I’ve been enjoying A&E’s hit show Duck Dynasty. We “cut the cord” and dropped cable a couple of years ago but I recently caught some episodes in a hotel room and watched a few more on the show’s website. I think I’m hooked, and might have to pick up a season on DVD.
Normally I’m not much of a fan of “reality” TV shows but this one is different. I recently read an article that described Duck Dynasty as a reality show that feels almost like a sitcom, and I have to agree. There are colorful characters, sitcom-y storylines, and lots of funny zingers, all wrapped up in a wholesome family-friendly package. The main difference is that the characters appear to be real people more or less playing themselves. Despite their scruffy beards and redneck ways, for the most part you laugh with them rather than at them.
I know that “reality” TV is often an illusion, with lots of writers and producers orchestrating things behind the scenes. This is the first time, at least that I’ve noticed, that the two formulas of “reality TV” and “sitcom” have been blended so successfully.
The most popular character seems to be the eccentric, cranky-but-loveable Uncle Si. He never goes anywhere without his plastic tea glass, which was given to him by his mother when he left to serve in Vietnam. He is constantly saying “Hey!” and calling everybody Jack. How can you resist drawing a guy like that?
I’ve noticed Si is one of those people who “talks with his hands”, but often while keeping his elbows in. So I tried to incorporate that into the pose.
Sketchbook Update
When I’m not busy working on client projects I try to noodle around in a sketchbook. Here’s a few recent scribbles. You can also see my latest sketches as they happen by following me on Instagram.
Sketchbook Update 12-26-12
Most of my client work is done digitally on my Cintiq, but when it comes to personal sketches every once in a while I go back to my roots and draw on good-old paper. Often I doodle on blank greeting cards. If one of them turns out really well I may mail it out as a special promotional piece, either to stay in touch with a past client or to try and build a stronger connection with a client I hope to someday do work for. You can see a few samples of those sketch cards in this blog post.
I’ve recently joined the cool kids over at Instagram (find me at “cedrichohnstadt”). I post some artwork now and then but mostly I just browse the amazing work of other artists to help me get inspired. Recently I had the rare privilege of taking the entire afternoon off to go sit in a bookstore and just sketch for fun. I cranked out these three sketches and posted them on Instagram, but thought I’d also share them here as well.
