No. 157, Plus Your Drawings!

Plus

I am using the word plus as a verb here, meaning to improve upon.  As a writer, I am a big believer in the second draft and the third draft. Parts of the first draft may survive intact, but many times a second and third draft will lead you to a better result.

In the same way, a second or third attempt at a pose drawing in your animation may yield a more forceful, more concise and more effective pose than you started with. At Disney, even the best animator sometimes would go to a colleague if they felt a drawing needed "plussing." At Warner Bros, a storyboard by one team would be reviewed by all the other teams, with a rule that all comments had to be positive suggestions--suggestions for plussing--rather than being just negative and destructive.

Let's look at an example from some animation work that is on my board right now.

I am doing some little scenes that are reaction shots by characters who are watching the Old Man who is ahead of them in the security line at the airport.  One of these is a man who, when driving, would be changing lanes constantly in an effort to get ahead somehow, even though each change of lane advances him only one car-length at a time: an impatient person, to say the least. Anything that slows him down,  makes him angry.

Incidentally, there are three short scenes of this character in this one sequence, and I am animating them as a group so that I will be consistent with him. I recommend this because if you do one reaction shot and then come back a month later to do another such shot, you may not get the same take on his character. All the scenes with him are short and take place in the same one or two minutes of screen time, so it makes sense to handle them as one.

Here are the two storyboard panels illustrating his first scene, where he ostentatiously looks at his watch.

Panel 1: The impatient guy stares resentfully at the old man.

Panel 2: He swings his arm up and glares at his watch.

Panel 1 translated onto the animation board almost line for line, but rather than tracing it I did redraw it freehand because, often, improvements occur to me as I draw.  Here is the animation pose.

Animation pose 1.  Virtually the same as in the storyboard.

Panel 2 is a different matter. I thought I could plus it. I was not quite happy with the tilt of his head, so I reimagined it.

Animation pose 2, version 1. Not quite saying what I want.

This drawing did not please me overall. The eyes were better than in the storyboard, I thought, but the drawing lacked the force of panel 2 from the storyboard. The forearm and hand are scaled a little smaller relative to the head, and that is likely part of the problem.

So, time for another attempt. Sometimes I erase and do the correction on the same sheet of paper, but  this seemed major; I didn't want to be influenced by the ghost image of the erased drawing.

Here is the next version.

Animation pose 2, the second attempt.

Better? Yeah, I think so too! I tilted his head more, and I brought his forearm and fist closer to the "camera", which shows off his monster chronograph watch. The guy is steamed!


This is all a part of teaching yourself to be self-critical. Soon I am going to do a whole post about being properly critical of your own work. Wait for it!