The Pose Drawing Sparkbook is 100% FUNDED!!

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thankyou

The Pose Drawing Sparkbook just broke the tape! We are now 100% funded and this thing is gonna happen! Woo hoo! (Hard to type this while I’m dancing a jig.) Thank you all so much!! I’m sending a fist bump with this message – just touch your knuckles to the screen.

We still have 8 days to push forward toward some awesome stretch goals. Let’s see if we can make the Sparkbook even more awesomer!! Feel free to tell your friends and followers that the Sparkbook train is now leaving the station and ask them to jump on board.

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Attack of the Killer Word Balloons! (Why Artists Should Study Silent Storytelling)

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Attack of the Killer Word Balloons - Illustration by Cedric Hohnstadt

News about my Kickstarter the Pose Drawing Sparkbook continues to spread! More sites are featuring it including On Animation, Animator Island, ShowMeTheAnimation, ComicRelated, and even a concept art blog from Brazil. But the biggest news is that the Sparkbook is now on the pop culture blog BleedingCool.com. I wrote a short article for them called Attack of the Killer Word Balloons (Why Artists Should Study Silent Storytelling) and whipped up the above image to go with it.

BleedingCool has a pretty big audience which is great exposure! I had hoped the article would run on Saturday, which is what prompted me to try the Special Weekend Stretch Goal. Since the article didn’t go live until Sunday evening that momentum didn’t get a chance to build like I had hoped, but a lot of backers still stepped up to the plate which is great! Thank you so much! You are helping us get to 100% faster, which means we’ll have more time to add some awesome stretch goals.

We are almost there! As I write this we are 92% funded with almost 300 backers, so we could cross the line as soon as tomorrow. Once that happens I’ll be announce some great stretch goals so stay tuned! In the mean time it’s not too late to back the project and get your own copy of the Pose Drawing Sparkbook, plus other goodies like a webinar, sketch club membership, and original art.

Special Weekend Stretch Goal!

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Special weekend stretch goal! If my Kickstarter, the Pose Drawing Sparkbook,  hits $10,000 by noon Monday (central time) I’ll draw a silly cartoon for my backers (written without dialogue, of course). More info here: http://ow.ly/nOqBx

Sparkbook Snippet: Acting With The Entire Body

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(This excerpt is from the Pose Drawing Sparkbook, a super-charged sketchbook designed to help you put more life and personality into your drawings. Think of it as acting exercises for your sketchbook.Read other snippets here and here.)

Don’t limit your acting to just the face and hands. The head makes up less than ten percent of a person’s body. You’ve got another ninety percent of your character to work with. Don’t let it go to waste! Is your character crying? Don’t just add a tear; hunch the back, droop the shoulders and bend the knees. Is your character feeling joyful? Don’t just smile; arch the back, raise the arms, and get those toes a-dancin’.

As an example, let’s travel back in time to the year 1800. Two southern gentlemen are having an argument. Insults fly and tempers flare until finally one of them shouts in a furious rage, “I challenge you to a duel!” How might you draw that pose?

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This first attempt is generic and boring. There’s nothing special about it. Other than the facial expression, it tells us almost nothing about what the character is feeling. To illustrate, look at what happens when I simply change the eyebrows:

Duel-2

Suddenly it turns from an active, angry pose to a passive, worried pose. One subtle difference has completely changed the pose’s meaning. Why? Because the pose was weak and generic to begin with.

Here’s the same emotion with poses that use the entire body. Notice how much more clearly the attitude reads:

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Here’s another example of the power of body language. I’ve purposely left the faces blank to show how much you can say with just a pose.

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Before you get caught up in a detailed drawing, start by simply roughing in the pose. Use stick figures if necessary. If the pose doesn’t read clearly at the beginning, no amount of detail will fix it later.

Read two more Sparkbook Snippets: “Action Reveals Character” and “Personality and Emotions”. The Pose Drawing Sparkbook is now available for pre-order. Also, don’t forget to download your free list of 100 Sketchbook Ideas as my gift to you.

‘Animation Insider’ Interview

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Recently I was interviewed by Mike Milo over at Animation Insider about my work and about my upcoming Pose Drawing Sparkbook. Thanks Mike!

Sparkbook Snippet: Action Reveals Character

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(This excerpt is from the Pose Drawing Sparkbook, a super-charged sketchbook designed to help you put more life and personality into your drawings. Think of it as acting exercises for your sketchbook. Read other snippets here and here.)

Action Reveals Character (Excerpt)

Once you decide who each character is, you need to find ways to introduce them to the audience. Here are three common shortcuts you can use to help people get to know your characters quickly:

1. Appearance (e.g. muscular or skinny; casual dress or formal; etc.)
2. Dialogue (Are they talkative or quiet? Do they use short sentences or big, fancy words? Is his voice strong and low or high and weak? etc.)
3. Behavior (how do they respond to a given situation.)

This book is about poses so I’m going to skip the first two and focus on behavior. There are two ways you can use behavior to show a character’s personality: by what they do and how they do it.

1. What They Do. When your character faces a problem, how do they respond? Suppose your character is a tiny grandmother.  While walking down the street, a thug pulls a gun and demands that she give him her purse. Does she obey? Does she refuse? Does she go on the offensive and start swatting him with her purse? Does she panic? Does she try to outsmart him? (“Hey, what’s that over there?”) Does she scream for help? Her choice tells us something about her personality.

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2. How They Do It. Suppose this tiny grandmother has some moxie and decides to simply refuse. The next question is, how does she refuse? Does she cross her arms and put her nose in the air? Does she wag a finger in his face and say, “You should be ashamed of yourself!” Does she brush him aside and keep walking? Does she put her hand on his arm and say, “What you need is some warm milk and cookies”? Each response will tell us something about her personality and her outlook on life. The more you can say with a character’s actions the better.

Something as simple as entering a room can tell us a great deal about a person. On Seinfeld Kramer would always explode into Jerry’s apartment.  The door would fly open and he’d come skidding across the floor. That energetic burst, combined with his wild hair and crazy clothes, instantly told you what kind of person he was: Confident, free-spirited and eccentric. Before he even says a word you get a sense of who he is. That’s good visual storytelling.

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Read two more Sparkbook Snippets: “Acting With The Entire Body” and “Personality and Emotions”. The Pose Drawing Sparkbook is now available for pre-order. Also, don’t forget to download your free list of 100 Sketchbook Ideas as my gift to you.