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tonight im finishing my rendition of Leonardo's Cecilia- so you may imagine what chaos im in LOL
sorry for the late reply, I only saw your message today xD
you are completely right about what you said, I know I should practice drawing every day, and for the most part I'm just really lazy :/... a couple years back, I got me lots of books on anatomy drawing and still haven't opened any of them
anyhow, Id love to see your sketch work, fell free to post some on my profile on send by message :) Id love to see what they look like :))
Of course I'm interested, you Mr. Perspective is heaven sent. Thanks.
January 2012 Edition
Do you have an idea of what skills you want/what you want to draw?
I'm actually not too into animating itself, and I know this because I don't have urges to open up easytoon and start animating. For now, I just appreciate their drawing skills the most.
I took some community college and some more specialized classes in art/concept art. After a certain point though, I think I was wasting time (at least for what I wanted to do). I think it might be good if you're sort of not sure what to study, bc it gives you stuff to experiment with, but if you have a good amount of direction/understanding, it may not be as useful (or possibly a negative/bad influence, depending on what you want).
I think the most important thing is to have good direction initially so you don't develop weird habits and/or waste time. Of course, it all depends on what/how you want to draw. It's just that simply drawing out something cool in line with a pencil has consistently been the challenge/real test of skill for me so I treasure that skill the most. But I think influences make a huge difference on how a person draws. Which isn't surprising...I mean people draw what they like to draw, after all.
Nobody actually perspective-plots out shadows for characters and whatnot, because it's a pain and doesn't always work for more cartoony stuff. You can do it in architectural environments I guess, just to make sure your shadows aren't conflicting or something. I did learn how to plot it architecturally, but...I never use the approach for character bc its just...not practical. But if you possess understanding of 3D forms and space, you should be able to eyeball it. Your brain already understands 3D enough to plot shadows and know how it will be cast. This comes after you draw the char/comp, and then decide the direction/angle of light source. Then you just plot the shadows that are cast/on the form. After you're able to do that, you should probably learn to not be so formulaic because it may not be the most interesting way to do shadows. Also seeing how people simplify their shadow shapes and see how they plot them for certain things/situations can help you get a general idea of how to handle such a lighting situation (like the shadow shapes that will be made from bottom lighting on the face, etc). Trying difft lighting situations and deciding which will be best to push the storytelling.
For the overall comp you need to decide how much and what will be in shadow. You need to just decide what should be put in shadow ("cut out") to push the comp. I think people naturally, when they are able to draw something, want to have it in plain sight because after all, they learned how to draw it (like an arm or face or something), but that may not be the most interesting or best way to push the comp. So you can sort of tell who's more comfortable drawing when they're willing to sacrifice a lot more information to push the overall visual interest. Also deciding what to give more detail (like closeups). Experimenting and looking at people who are good at really "candid-looking" and interesting comps can probably give you a better idea.
TBH I really hardly spend any time practicing shading. I guess I did early on. It sort of comes naturally when you get a better feeling of forms and 3D space (assuming you generally know the forms/planes of what you're drawing). I think the much harder thing to do is draw naturally and in an interesting/appealing way...drawing freely.
For shadows, it's actually very formulaic and generally quite simple IMO. If you can properly plot form/cast shadows (understand forms and how to shade forms like cubes/etc), then that's all there is to it. Then on top of that the "shadow shape" can look interesting or not depending on what you decide to simplify or group. I think a good way to think about this is by simplifying your shadow to one value (like one tone of gray or black or something). Then I think you start to think about the shadow shapes and can easily see what effect the shadow you placed has on the read. Sort of like this. Of course this is only how I approach it and there may be other ways that are more desirable.
Nichijou is genuinely quite funny to me, so I always enjoy watching it. I'm also watching Dantalian (mainly due to Gainax/certain animator involvement) but the last episode was just...odd. I should probably catch up on Mawaru but I heard the last eps weren't that great.
Background art really can be incredible, I agree. That is sort of a different skillset though and does require probably a good amount of studying/experimentation, and for now I'm just trying to learn more character/human stuff (such a monumental task for me). Of course I definitely do want to learn it for sure, since it makes such a huge difference on the comp, but just not at this moment.
Well many animators do start off SURPRISINGLY chicken scratchy, and that's their approach. I don't want to do it that way, but...I can't say it's wrong or anything. If they can get the proportions right then that's probably all that matters. I could probably pick better lines on the second pass, but...I don't really care to make finished work right now.