Emails I get.

"If you were an evil villain...

"Hi Jef, 

I was wondering, If you were an evil villain, what would you be? I kind of lean towards demon from hell. And lets face it, a demon from hell can fly, breathe fire and still fit in your house. So you have the cool factors of dragon with the convince of sleeping on the couch or a normal bed... Anyway, I realize that not everyone wants to be compared to that  and I'm sorry if being called a demon from hell offends you. I can also see you as a bear that uses a burrito bazooka or a sith lord. But I figured I'd ask you. Also people still ask about that semester and  what happened. So I figured if I was going to talk about what its like to see you mad I'd ask you. 

(Name removed to protect dignity)

I like orc warlord as a villainous position. But again ... Sith Lords shoot lightning"

----

"Office Appt. 

Mr. Jeff, 

It has been quite some time since our paths have crossed. (I emailed your school email already last week, but I really hope I didn’t receive a reply because you didn’t check it and not because reasons.)

This is unacceptable.

Fill out the proceeding form with a black pen (not blue) in triplicate (by hand each, do not use that triple page thingy with the yellow and pink pages that fade all the information, I mean, who can read that):

Official Office Questionnaire

1. What times and dates are you available for a meeting of utmost importance?

[END OF QUESTIONNAIRE - THIS PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK]

Please respond in a timely fashion,

Mdme. (Another name removed to protect dignity) IV, Esq., PhD."

Pushing your figures: Leading OR Head Shoulders Knees and Toes...

We discussed leading the other day, and by that I mean using a part of the body to be the main part or start of the action. There are lots of ways to lead and all these ways say something more or push the character but NOT doing so leaves your figures feeling stiff.  So I drew these in class requiring some class participation below:

Seeing as the head is at the top of the body (usually) we started with that.

 

All poses may not be as active so here is 'leading with the head' a little more naturally.

 

Just like the song, "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes", shoulders are next.  Shoulders tend to be pretty aggressive if you think of breaking a tackle in football or body checking in hockey or a space warrior babe alien thing. 

 

But shoulders also act as shields to try to protect feelings or the spirit inside as in the case of a shy person as suggested.

Next most logical body part to lead with is the chest.  This may be considered the "being on display" pose, the look-at-me walk etc.  Leading with the chest can express confidence, superiority, heroism, confrontation etc.

Working our way down, we get to the stomach. I going to digress for just a moment and say, I had a room mate, a well fed room mate, back in college who lead with his tummy.  If you were having a conversation (or doing any sort of activity) The tummy would arrive first, leading the 'mouth' which would drop whatever opinion the room mate had at the time. Below are just two examples of stomach lead.

 

Which brings us to the pelvis. All of us, at some time place our weight on one foot shifting our bodies into a contrapposto position.  This is a form or leading with the pelvis and there are lots of methods to this type of leading, four are below:

"What about twerking?" "Ahem...yes that is form of leading with the pelvis...but I'm not going to draw that." "Ahh." "...Um try this."

Leading with the knees tends to push the body backward awkwardly, this is great for describing a lanky or under-exercised figure.  But, if you look at people taking a photo on their cell phones, they tend to lead with the knees to try to angle the body back to get more into the shot.  If you look at "the Lovers" from Commedia del'arte, you will find that these characters (who usually lead with the chest) may fall back to lead with their knees when they stand still and let the warm emotions of love and happiness wash over them.  Same is true of people who are experiencing a true emotion.

Leading with the toes lightens the character's movements.  A sneak, sashay, or sexy walk (though a sexy walk also is a lead with the chest and shoulders as well) are examples of leading with the toes.

"Can you lead with your arms?" they ask.  Of course!  Leading with the arms of hands gives purpose to the intended action of the appendages and they really to have a reason to up.  It's very hard to sneak with the arms up as it places you off balance, in this case, arms are better positioned near the core of the body to act as ballast.  A high dive is an obvious lead with the arms/hands, entering a dark or smokey room would be cause to lead with the arms/hands to prevent collisions with unseen objects is also a good use of the arms leading.

More on leading later, for now think about what your character would lead with and continue to push your posing and animation. Thanks for stopping by!

Costume Basics

Welcome back, more notes for class.  Hopefully the images are self explanatory, I don't feel like writing out a bunch of text.  Biggest unsaid thing is to keep your characters simple for now, too much detail will make it hard for someone else to translate your drawings.  KISS Keep it Simple Stupid! I used some concepts from current students to show simplification.  I will post their examples here when I get the chance.  I mention folds here as wrinkles are the little random "cracks" that happen to cloth when it's left in the dryer or on the floor for too long. And so, cloth when it's just hanging makes pipe folds.  Cloth tends to move outward in accordance to the number of folds.

When material is fixed at more than one point; pinned to the a wall, draped across knees or breasts or held by the fingers etc. the material seems to favor diaper folds and folds tend to radiate diagonally until they hang back in pipe folds.

 

Though there are many types of folds, a group that you see on a daily basis is known as compression folds, most notably the zig zag folds.

 

No matter what type of fold, if they are happening as part of costume, remember there is is something under the material to support it.  Cylinders, boxes, wedges, spheres and cubes make up the construction underneath the material and effects its action.  Note: Folds generally radiate from the joints.  Look at how the the joints effects the flow of the material.

 Those forms, when put together make up the figure and you are essentially 'dressing' your figure or character.  I would suggest against trying to just draw the costume without underlying construction because the costume will always seems to "float".

  

Remember, the fewer folds in your drawing, the neater it will look and not give the impression that your character has been wearing it to bed for the past three months.  A nice neat, sports coat below with untidy example next to it.

 

Well dressed big guys.  Max!

 Cloth does what the body tells it to do, often you get many examples of folds at once.  The spiral folds of tight or thing material of the undershirt with a t-shirt that makes (basically) a giant pipe fold at the bottom hem. this guy is happy because he's got his coffee and a choice team shirt...add your own favorite logo here.

  

Don't be intimidated by hats.  We will cover those in the next post.

 

Contemporary characters?  How about some Spidey?

Now that you have an idea of what goes into drawing costume, you can start putting clothes that make your characters.  BUT, keep it simple for now.  Look at this guy's Hawaiian shirt, what would you do to simplify the designs?

 

Without fail, every semester at least one student comes up with a space warrior/assassin (thanks video games) so what would happen if you changed out of teh Hawaiian shirt and strapped on a handy blaster? Bucket top boots, woot!

  

 I love "Ghost In The Shell"  A great futuristic assassin...or ladies in spacesuits...

Or a viking character is another at the top of the list, keep that maile simple!  Don't draw every ring in the armor or you'll go crazy and push anybody who has to draw it off the brink.

  

Animation vikings! Fur needs to be simple too or else it will look like spaghetti, that's in the next post.

 Here's a wonderful viking (even though liberties were taken with the horns).

 Pilots, whether in human form or as an anthropomorphized animal, should be streamlined here.  Leave out the buttons, buckles or patches (if possible).  I am including model sheets for these examples to compare.

 Ah, here we go, an anthropomorphized pilot. Awesomeness!

 Another pilot with and "animal" face.  I love you, Porco.

Samurais and ninjas and other historical warriors are extremely cool but find something about them that is new and hasn't been done already....unlike the guy below with the same old, same old going on. I need to check all my Samurai sheets.

 Ah the spirit or ghost form.  The most often line I hear from students is, "I don't need to show weight, it floats." Floating is a huge animation problem and makes the character difficult to believe.  Suggestion: make your character touch the floor and give it weight, and we will believe it's ghostliness even more. Again, I have to post some model sheets that fit this but here's a totally awesome link to compare.

 

But here's a ghost character with lots of weight:

Cowboys.  Not many of these being done anymore, which is a little sad, but hats make figure eights.

Grim Natwick!

And Yosemite Sam, my favorite cowboy.

Uptight 1770's guy. That's a trope isn't it?  I guess I'm glad I'm not from the 1700's (even though my students think I am) because I would have had to be uptight (which my students think I am).

 Nifty story art for Beauty and The Beast:

A lot of bird characters this semester.  So...here's a guy in a bird costume. KISS! Quack!  Maybe it will fly over the ocean carrying an elephant by the truck...maybe...

 

Hmm...Maybe a little Tex Avery?

 Monsters.  They always seem to be sort of like therapods, So here's monster guy.  Soft fabric...you just wanna give 'em a hug. I think this should be made into a costume. If I wore it, would you hug me?

 Cool monster(s) from Art Adams.

And trench coat guy.

My favorite guy in a trench coat, Inspector Gadget.  This fan's site is pretty cool if you're into the Inspector, Penny and Doctor Claw.

A hula hooping fire dancer.  Never been done in class before.  I cannot hula hoop to save my life but here's my attempt at such a thing - from the rear of course, because big fat guys hula hooping...
Looking through my model sheet collection, I can't find a hula hooping character (which means I need to look harder) but I did find this link.

Thanks for stopping by.