Wow! My Kickstarter Is Off To A Great Start!

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Illustration by Cedric Hohnstadt

I’m truly blown away. My new Kickstarter, the Pose Drawing Sparkbook, has had a tremendous first day.

In the first  24 hours it passed the $2,000 mark (I’m currently at 26% of my goal). All 50 of the early bird specials have been purchased; the project is featured on the “Popular This Week” page under Kickstarter’s “Publishing” category; and it has received over 800 “likes” on Tumblr. Big thanks and high-fives to all of my fans and backers!

This is a fantastic beginning but there’s still a long way to go. I’m told that most of the contributions to a Kickstarter project happen at the very beginning of the campaign and again at the very end. The first 48 hours can be crucial. So I’d like to humbly ask all of my blog readers to please spread the word. Let’s make this thing happen!

In addition to the Kickstarter page, you can also remind your friends that I’m giving away a free download of 100 sketchbook ideas to promote the project, no strings attached. Just point them here: https://cedricstudio.com/sparkbook/

In the mean time, I’ll be working hard to spread the word and keep buzz going as well.

New Kickstarter: “Pose Drawing SparkBook” + Free Download

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Illustration by Cedric Hohnstadt

I’m excited to announce the launch of my first Kickstarter, the Pose Drawing SparkBook! It’s a super-charged sketchbook, custom designed to help artists put more life and personality into their drawings. It will include 100 drawing exercises, 32 pages of instructional content, and hundreds of additional drawing ideas in the back of the book.

I’m really excited about the potential for this book to be a great resource for storytelling artists of all kinds – whether they work in animation, character design, storyboards, cartoons or comics.

To help spread the word I’m giving away a free list of 100 sketchbook ideas taken from the back of the book. Get yours here:

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In order for the SparkBook to become a reality I need to raise enough funds. In exchange for a small contribution to the project you can get several rewards, including the book itself (with free ebook version) or other resources I’ve created. You can read all about it and watch a promo video over on my Kickstarter page.

Would you consider helping spread the word? Just use the share buttons below, or copy and paste the following into your favorite social media:

Free download: 100 Sketchbook Ideas For Posing Your Characters: http://bit.ly/15kOpi2

Thanks a bunch!

Sketchbook Update: Getting Dressed In A Hurry

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Sketch-"Getting Dressed In A Hurry"

Very soon I’ll be launching a Kickstarter project, a new tool to help artists add more life and personality to their poses. In preparation I’ve started doing pose sketches to communicate various themes and situations. I’ve already posted a page of sketches playing off the theme of “tired”. Here’s one of a man getting dressed in a hurry.

Once the Kickstarter launches I’ll also be giving away a freebie for artists to help promote the project. If you’d like to be one of the first people to be notified when it launches, just send me an email at cedric@cedricstudio.com.

Mother’s Day Sketch

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Mother's Day sketch by illustrator Cedric Hohnstadt.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

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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.

sketch-weasel-doctor

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

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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!