No. 165, Gesture Drawing at the Old Ball Game

Baseball Drawing Fun

Yesterday I went with my wife and some friends to a local baseball game. The team is a collegiate woodbat team, a member of the West Coast League.  It was a beautiful baseball day, sunny and warm with a nice breeze.  I thought to take along my sketchbook to do some action gesture drawing.

Regular gesture drawing is usually done with a short pose of from one to three minutes.  I enjoy that, too, but what I call Action Gesture Drawing is not from any held poses at all. Your subjects are moving about all the time and unaware that they are being drawn.  This can be very difficult in activities where no one holds still at all, or hardly ever.  You see someone in conversation at a park, they actually are holding still, so you start a drawing and suddenly they shift their weight or otherwise change their pose.

Turns out, baseball is ideal for this. In baseball, as perhaps in cricket and a few other sports, the players repeat their poses many times: the batter takes his or her stance, the catcher squats down to give signals or receive the pitch, and the pitcher has a number of standard moves and poses in his repertoire.

Just as batters and pitchers and fielders have to warm up before they are ready to play, so does the gesture artist need a few moments to get warmed up for a good session.  Here is my whole warmup page, so that you can see that there are bad drawings among the good.

My warmup page, showing some unsuccessful sketches.

Here are some of the better ones...

This right handed batter is ready for the pitch.  First I drew the angles of the forearms and the bat; the rest I filled in from repeated pitches.

I believe this was another right handed batter. he has swung at the ball and at this point has already let go of the bat with his right hand. His whole right arm is hidden behind his body.

Our seats were along the first base line, so we had good views of the pitcher and batter, as well as the catcher. This pose of a left handed pitcher is not one that is held at all, so I had to watch him pitch several balls to get the drawing done. After this the left leg swings forward; in a quarter of a second, the pose changes dramatically.

Here is a complementary pose, the delivery by a right handed pitcher. Again, the leg that is behind will swing forward rapidly.

Here, the pitcher waits for  s signal from the catcher.

Last, here is a young man who probably imagines himself behind the plate or on the mound someday.

Every so often, I will encourage you to do life drawing to improve your observation, an important tool for the animator. So try to always have a sketchbook at hand. These drawings were all done directly with a fine line waterproof marker, but whether you use pencil or pen, keep drawing!

No. 164, Smear Drawings and How to Use Them

If you look back at the video in post No. 162, you will see the character, Nelson, glancing quickly right and left before going into his cringe. This was done with the use of smear drawings, which I have mentioned before. Chuck Jones The Dover Boys  makes use of this technique extensively for quick transitions, so if you have this cartoon on DVD or can find it on You Tube, take a look.

Here is how they are supposed to work, based on a supposition that the frame speed is 24 frames per second.

You create your starting pose, A...

... and your ending pose, B.

Then you do this weird inbetween drawing that will appear on one frame only; this is very important.

If the movement is left to right, you trace the left contour of drawing A, then the right contour of drawing B.

Contour A shown in Red.

Contour B shown in Blue.

Between those contours you handle the shape like a piece of taffy stretched across between the starting and ending contours.

As appropriate, include an arc of movement in this drawing.

The result will be a smear or blur that can be a quite effective transition. The viewer will not be able to focus on the inbetween but the effect will be of a smooth, although lightning fast, movement, rather like that of a bird suddenly moving its head.

Here is the smear tween laid over the two key drawings.

This is the smear tween alone.

This will work fine in black and white, but it works even better in full color.

Above, the three images in color.

Colors actually track better than lines. Here I have limited myself to just two colors, but more could also work. But more than 3 or 4 colors will not make the effect any better, and it is a lot of unnecessary work. They say that light colors track better than dark ones.

Let's now look at a video of this effect, created in Flipbook through Autodesk Sketchbook.

Note: For the best effect, try looping this video. See instructions at the top right of this page if you don't already know how.

When you loop the video, you will see that this effect--having no anticipation nor drag nor follow-through--works just as well backwards as forwards.  I hope you enjoy using this fun effect!

No. 163, My Next Assignment...and Yours!, part 3

"Take" Two

This scene posed some problems I had not anticipated. But I finally got it sorted out. Here is the result, with discussion following.

If you compare it to the video in the previous post, No. 162, you will see that I have taken out the quick head movements at the beginning and added a classic Hollywood cartoon "take"--a sudden movement indicating surprise or shock.

Sometimes a move in animation that isn't working quite right is best handled by coming at it with something altogether different, rather than continuing to fuss with the original drawings.  I was slowed down in my posting to this blog by summer weather, yard work and fun with some house guests who came up to stay with us during Independence Day week.

But I have also taken the time to clean up all the drawings, so you are seeing this much as it will appear when inked and painted.

The next scene I do will show you what this same character does when he comes out of his cringing pose to find that his fears were unwarranted. Is he relieved? Yes, but he is also angry!