Last Night's Lesson

[Charles]

Thought I'd try something a little different on the Gallery by starting a topic dedicated to the showcasing lessons from the evening's previous class at The Animation Academy in Burbank.

Sharing the educational experience.

Last night a student in Character Design asked for assistance in a specific direction. He was having difficulty simplifying his concept designs so they would work in a more animated context. Most of what he was doing was too realistic and he needed help turning his characters into something different than his usual approach.

I began by letting him describe to me a character he had in mind, and from his description, I drew this in a manner similar to the way he was handling things, with a few stylistic embellishments of my own.

Then I drew another design where I purposely distorted, exaggerated and simplified elements from the previous sketch.

I finished up with a very graphic interpretation of the character even more simplified than before, eliminating everything but the essential features necessary to communicate the design.

This helped him, and perhaps it can help others out there who may be dealing with similar issues in their work.

[Charles]

Here's a lesson from class about how to manage conceptual character sketches by relating them to production.


The original concept design for this guy involved drawing the character with his arms at his side.

By drawing just one arm extended to the side with palm facing the viewer, essential information is included in the concept appropriate for digital modeling of the design.

By duplicating the extended arm, copying it over to the other side of the character and erasing the original arms in Photoshop, the design is in the proper format for CG modeling.

You can also draw both versions of the arms simultaneously, extended for modeling, and at the sides for a natural pose.

[Charles]

This was last night's lesson last week on this night. Got out my brushes and acrylics and had fun with a traditional painting demo for Visual Development. Everyone enjoyed it and we all had a good time.

Last night in Vis Dev I showed how a simple tonal drawing done with Col-erase blue pencil could be enhanced with the use of Photoshop by virtue of transparent tints.

[Charles]

Last night in the Visual Development class I teach, I was working with my students to get them to grow into a medium that will abridge their image manipulation options. In other words, a permanent medium such as black line. The intent was to encourage confidence and discipline in the execution of their personal art.

In this demonstration I was helping them to understand how to develop a concept sketch with a suggestion of dimensionality and form as well as appeal in design and pose.

Next, I used blue pencil to layout the image, create a middle tone for certain shapes and punch everything with both solid black areas and black line.

Fun stuff, plus I did even more which I'll follow up with later.

The great thing about making demos a part of the educational experience is that they get everyone motivated, both in terms of showing how it's done as well as stimulating imaginative concepts. The energy that comes back through my students inspires me to create even more.