Posing: Action and Reaction

 The most obvious simplest way to compose 2 characters talking to each other is

have the one who is talking lean towards the one who is listening
the listening character leans back at less of an angle than the speaker leans forward

Aim the eyes at each other too for good communication between the characters

Of course you don't always want to use that formula. It wouldn't be natural.

Here the character talking is leaning back and thinking out loud while the other character leans in the other direction-but she connects to him with her eyes.

 In continuity, you should vary the degrees of action and reactions and have the characters take turns.

Variety of poses and expressions is more natural than repeating the same poses or having each character in the same pose in a scene.

Oh and thanks to Ger Apeldoorn, Mark Christianson, Mark Kausler and Yowp for making these beautifully drawn comics available to the world!

CONTRASTS in successive poses

The same concepts that apply to individual drawings can also be used in actions - the differences between separate poses. Some differences are subtle, others are more dramatic. You need a variety of differences between successive poses in order to give focus and pacing to the different ideas you want to convey through the characters.

BTW, look how little space in the head that the face actually occupies. Most of your head is empty space. Mine too.

Ed Love: Connecting Held Poses

From :"Drooler's Delight":
Ed Love is great at varying how he connects his bold and clear poses. Here's a real simple general way:

STRETCH WOODY'S NECK

Here are the 2 poses we see and feel in the animation. They are holds. They are drawn with perfectly clear negative spaces, contrasts and lines of action. The action happening between them is visually obvious. Buzz stretches Woody up. The action is clear in just the still poses.

But to feel the the distance (or contrast) between them even stronger, Ed Love has created 2 more poses between them that caricature the held poses. He has made an anticipation pose and an overshoot pose. These 2 poses created more space between the extremes. That extra space gives the action more punch than if he had just inbetweened the 2 holds. (The farther you travel in the same amount of frames, the more punch the action has.)



Not every part of the second pose overshoots. The overshoot is focused on the main part of the action: Buzz' arm stretching Woody.
Focus of action gets to the final pose first. The rest catches up.

Here's a longer clip with more poses and more ways to connect them.

BUZZ ABUSES WOODY

A good animator like Ed Love varies the way he connects consecutive poses. He doesn't always do an antic and an overshoot, and he doesn't time the connections the same way for each pose. What he does do is control the whole sequence with a hierarchical structure of poses. Some poses and actions are more important than others, and he uses all the drawing and animation tools to keep your eye following the important parts of the action. He does it all with flair and fun too.

The more variations you use in your poses and actions, the more natural the characters and animation feel. Lesser animation uses the same handful of formulaic ways to connect the same stock poses over and over again and the action gets monotonous and robotic. At least for me.

Remind me to tell you about the stock Canadian anticipation pose sometime.

Preston Blair Lessons

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-1-construction.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-2-squash-and.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-3-how-to-check.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-lesson-4-2-legged-characters.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/05/animation-school-lesson-5-line-of.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/animation-school-lesson-hands.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/animation-school-lesson-6-construction.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/animation-school-7-when-generic-is.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/06/animation-school-8-proportions-affect.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/01/animation-school-lesson-9-_116873606139658339.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/01/animation-school-lesson-9a-tom-and.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2007/03/animation-school-lesson-10-copy-old.html

Cartoon College for Free

Hi folks.

I decided to do a private blog for the cartoonists who are really serious about learning to draw funny cartoons.

Obviously I can't give everyone individual notes, but folks like Rex, Mitch, Geneva and others who have shown aptitude and dedication deserve some extra hep when I have time to give it.

If you have been invited, it means you have already shown that you are serious by doing many of the lessons and applying the critiques. It also means I think you are very talented. The combination of natural talent and actual study of real principles will make you functional.

FUNCTIONAL is much more important than mere talent. It means you can get out of your sketch books and into actual cartoon making - with stories and characters and personalities and continuity.

There are certain skills that I need to make my kind of cartoons and here are the main ones:

Construction:

This is number 1. All other skills will be made easier if you conquer this.

You need to be able to draw characters that can turn around in space and that have perspective.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/01/first-steps-for-ross-basic-construction.html

Line Of Action:

Each character should have a definite direction in his or her pose. The construction flows along the line of action.

Hierarchy:

This is an extension of construction. It means you have a structured plan for
anything you do - a story - a character -a composition - a song - and then that structure has levels of parts that fit within the structure without contradicting or cluttering the main idea.

Composition:

Your characters should fit within the background in a way that:

1) draws the attention of the viewer to what's important in the scene,

2) is appealing for its own sake

You should be able to see the overall composition easily, whether you have a lot of detail or only a little.

Appeal:

I like cartoons that look nice, are cute even when they are supposed to be gross or funny.

Part of appeal comes from good construction and drawing skill, part from natural flair and talent. The combination of the 2 is unbeatable.

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/12/disney-principles-appeal-1.html

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/12/appeal-in-ugliness-basil-wolverton.html

Style- angles against curves- variety of shapes, asymmetry:

Style isn't drawing flat, like so many cartoon studios today think. It's having control over a variety of types of shapes, contrasts and the other principles of control. When you have control over everything, then your personal style can shine through.

______________________

Part of my reason for giving away free training is selfish. The kind of cartoons I make require these skills, and I can't afford to teach them during a production. Cartoon budgets go down every year and so I need people who already understand what I'm looking for and are functional.

I always want to do layouts in my cartoons - it's what separates my cartoons visually from so many others, but layout is mostly not done anywhere anymore. Nowadays, they just design the characters from a couple different angles, take them into Flash and then move the still pieces around like paper doll puppets. I can't make my kind of custom stories and acting using that system.

I need talented and SKILLED people to help. It's worth it to me to help out before a production begins, but it will be up to you to practice and apply and critique yourselves according to what you learn. I will give some critiques and everyone here can learn from each other's studies.

If you wanna be invited to learn all this stuff, then do the lessons that already exist on this blog and if you show lots of talent and dedication, I will invite you to a blog that is dedicated just to lessons and critiques.

Animation School Lesson 7: Combining Construction With Clear Silhouettes

Drawing principles is not easy. There are so many to balance at once. I ask students to copy good drawings from old cartoons or from good comics just to see how pro artists use principles.
The next step is for the student to try drawing those characters in their own poses to see if they can apply those principles themselves.


Here, Geneva tried her hand at doing some poses of Tom. My critique was that they were good construction but didn't have clear silhouettes.I said to use negative spaces to make the poses read better and she redid them like this:

Now they are much better because you can read them more clearly. So construction is very important, but it is just step 1 to being able to control your posing.

See how Harvey Eisenberg does it:

http://comicrazys.com/2009/08/10/red-rabbit-red-rabbit-comics-1-1947-harvey-eisenberg/
This cover is a masterfully controlled collection of drawing principles all in perfect balance and clarity. Everything is solidly constructed and there are negative spaces separating each visual element - making them all read at once.

An encyclopedia of animation and cartooning techniques in one scene

Design and Appeal

Design and appeal aren't exactly the same things but they are related. This character was designed in a modernistic style (for 1944-45) by Hank Ketcham. It's very different than the mid 40s WB style. But this cartoon is animated by Bob Clampett's unit of guys and the combination of styles is spectacular.

Hank's design is appealing and the poses drawn by this animator are extremely appealing. You can take a design and draw it in appealing poses - or not - depending on how appealing your own style is.

Line Of Action

The features of the character's design are stretched along clear and strong lines of action.

Construction and Related Features

The construction in most of the drawings is great. Construction, by the way is not merely a solid looking drawing. That's only part of it. The other part is that each of the features fit into the larger forms and weave in and out of the expression and pose. Remind me to do a whole post about that. A house can be solidly constructed, but a creature has to have construction and fleshy parts that stretch and squash, push and pull and all cause each other to react sensibly.

For example - look at his smile line and cheek and the back of his cheek in the profile - they all relate to each other and together create fleshy forms that flow around his head and make his expressions.

Arcs

When this guy turns his head moves in an arc which helps make the action smooth and pleasant.

Overlapping Action

His hair doesn't get to his poses as fast as his head does.

Asymmetry

Note that his expressions and poses aren't perfectly even on both sides.

Funny Expressions

His expressions are not only clear and direct functionally, they are funny and fun to look at. They are beautiful designs in of themselves.

Specific Expressions

A lot of the shapes used to make his expressions are customized to his thoughts. They aren't stock expressions. When you watch this part in the clip, watch his mouth shapes change. You can't find these shapes on any model sheets or in other cartoons. The animator is making them up as he goes along - by feel and instinct. He's acting.

Spontaneity and Looseness

In the animator's rush to make his poses and emotions flow from one to the next, he made a mistake in construction on the odd pose, like the one above. But it's a great pose anyway.

Flow - Organic Feel

To make characters both constructed and flowing is no easy feat. It takes a lot of study, thought, practice and skill.

Exaggeration

Drag

The faster the action, the more drag you can use. This whole action here is amazing as you'll see when you watch the clip. He does a whole whirly sort of overlapping action as he brings his mop into the scene.

Anticipation and moving holds

In the middle of the clip it cuts to another animator.

The timing of this animation is full of variety, some slow soft parts, some fast wild parts and it moves very naturally, even though it uses all kinds of technical drawing and motion principles. It doesn't come off as a formula.

WATCH SOME GENIUS ANIMATION

The first scene was animated by Rod Scribner, who I think is the most talented and versatile animator in history. (take a look at some of his UPA style stuff and see how cleverly he approaches it). Most animators have their basic principles and if they are extra gifted, maybe one or 2 strengths on top of them. Scribner puts together all kinds of skills and makes them flow as if there was no effort involved at all.

The second scene also moves beautifully, but the drawings aren't as fun as Scribner's. They don't have as much appeal. Appeal is a very rare trait and can't be forced without looking contrived - although many do try to contrive it. Some people just have it naturally.
This cartoon is full of great stuff, and I'll post more soon.


This is a great scene to study and copy the drawings if you are a student trying to learn classic skills.