Someday, after I've cobbled together some level of mastery over...
Figure Drawing
Animal Drawing
Environment Drawing
Anatomy
Character Design
Composition
Perspective
Lighting
Color
... I would like to tackle ANIMATION - something I've never done beyond making flipbooks as a kid (inspired, of course, by those awesome little pictures on the lower right corners of the pages of the Animorphs series.) I would actually say that the ability to make short animations of my own is the end goal of all this drawing business... at least for now.
Whenever I finally DO get to that point, I'm sure I will be using Rhino House as a tool. It looks like an incredibly useful database. As always, I'm extremely impressed by and grateful for the amount of art education tools available for free on the internet - like ProkoTV and the Figure & Gesture Drawing Tool.
In the meantime, at least I've got this video to clear up the mysteries of animation for me...
(Animation by Giovanni Braggio for his thesis film at The Animation Workshop, Denmark.)
Stan Prokopenko, the master of simultaneously entertaining, enlightening, and FREE Youtube videos on drawing the head and the illusion of depth (who I've talked about before), is FINALLY starting a long-awaited figure drawing series.
The videos will still be free, but there will be extra content for paying viewers too. I have bought Stan's Portrait Drawing Fundamentals DVD and I will probably take the plunge for the premium figure drawing access as well - his content is just too good. I'm really excited to see what he has to offer in this series.
Visit proko.com/figure to learn more about the figure drawing series, which will start "airing" on June 17th. For all of Stan's current videos, check out his YouTube channel, ProkoTV.
This may well be my only post for June 2013 (although I will try to not have that be the case)! As promised, this month has been throwing a lot at me, but I have kept up with daily sketches and have kept the stress relatively under control... this year in general, I've surprised myself with the amount of work I can handle, which is a nice thing to discover.
I know I haven't had a lot of time for the blog lately, and I'm sorry, but I happened to check on it today and realized that it just passed 10,000 pageviews! I don't know who's out there reading this besides my family and friends, but obviously there are more of you, and I just want to say thanks for reading... it's wonderful that we live in an age where great information can be so easily shared among people who have the same interests (in this case, great art)!
I just love that particular little comic... because it's so true.
I heard about this through a post on Cartoon Brew, which highlighted Swarr's recent endeavor to turn his webcomic into a weekly online animated series. The interview is great, talking about the pros and cons of big-budget TV network animation versus online animation.
In response to where he finds the time to animate a series on top of having a full-time job, Swarr says, "I wake up very early, every morning at 6AM. I exercise, get my morning chores done, and get to my desk for at least two hours of work before going into Nickelodeon. This is the best way I’ve found to make sure I have a sizable block of focussed uninterrupted time to get stuff done. Also working in the morning insures that I’m not exhausted from my day job." Personally I've found this to be the best recipe for myself to get my daily sketches done as well - I'm often too tired to turn out anything good at night, and I find my mind is clear and open to all the possibilities drawing has to offer in the early morning.
That's it for now - I will be back as soon as I can with updates on my current CDA class, Landscape Painting with Leighton Hickman, who is a great teacher. So far, I have this to say: painting is hard.
