How do you take a drawing from "good" to "amazing?"
Many mentors from all corners of the internet believe the answer lies in "attitude." According to them, putting personality into your gestures/sketches is the single most important thing you can do to make your drawings stand out and have people connect to them on an emotional level.
Disney's Nine Old Men referred to this concept as "sincerity" and described it as the act of transcribing on paper what makes a character unique -- and therefore believable.
So how can you go about practicing sincerity in drawing? The answer from online sources: observation.
In a few lecture videos below, Glen Keane explains how he likes to make mental notes about what is going on with the pose he is sketching. He will ask himself what it is about the subject he’s drawing that makes them unique and worth depicting. He will not only put a verb to the action of what is going on but also observe exactly how the character performs the verb.
The drawing has to be saying something – it has to communicate a feeling or a unique characteristic of the subject. Capturing this attitude takes a gesture drawing to the next level.
Keane begins his lecture at 2:17.
Many mentors from all corners of the internet believe the answer lies in "attitude." According to them, putting personality into your gestures/sketches is the single most important thing you can do to make your drawings stand out and have people connect to them on an emotional level.
Disney's Nine Old Men referred to this concept as "sincerity" and described it as the act of transcribing on paper what makes a character unique -- and therefore believable.
So how can you go about practicing sincerity in drawing? The answer from online sources: observation.
In a few lecture videos below, Glen Keane explains how he likes to make mental notes about what is going on with the pose he is sketching. He will ask himself what it is about the subject he’s drawing that makes them unique and worth depicting. He will not only put a verb to the action of what is going on but also observe exactly how the character performs the verb.
The drawing has to be saying something – it has to communicate a feeling or a unique characteristic of the subject. Capturing this attitude takes a gesture drawing to the next level.
Keane begins his lecture at 2:17.
All the things that you observe out in real life help you put truth into the characters you animate. Your observations help you make each character unique. Just think about it – when you sit down to animate, you start with nothing and have to create a believable performance out of that thin air. You’ll need to know a lot about human behavior to do that; you'll need to know where to draw inspiration from.
So what are the little things that people do in real life? How do people differ? How would a shy person walk? A confident one? Through these observations, you'll have a reservoir of impressions to pull from when the time comes to animate or create a character design.
So what are the little things that people do in real life? How do people differ? How would a shy person walk? A confident one? Through these observations, you'll have a reservoir of impressions to pull from when the time comes to animate or create a character design.
As Glen Keane says in the above video:
“If there’s anything that I want to communicate to you guys, it’s not principles of animation in terms of squash and stretch and overlap and anticipation. I mean, there are a lot of things that are really essential. But the most important thing that I want you to come away with is learning to see. Or I guess I should say, learning to observe.”
Here are a few extra quotes on the connection between sincerity and observation:
“My sketch books and the figure drawings are the source for everything I’ve ever animated. It’s all these observations. The little things that make a huge difference. You don’t see it unless you are drawing it, and you have to draw it. In order to draw it, you have to have observed it. You can see it, or you can really see it” – Glen Keane
“DUUUUDE, we live in permanent Christmas-land. There are all these presents, all these great faces, moments and stories just surrounding you, and you only have to open your eyes and look at them to have them. Incredible!” – Iain McCaig
Lastly, here is a link to a brief documentary about animation. About halfway through the film, Glen Keane and Joanna Quinn explain how they use their sketchbooks to make sincere observations that can later be used for their animation.
I hope these explanations prove helpful.
As always, thanks to the artists who have shared their advice online for us to teach ourselves.
You can read more of my Teach Yourself blog posts here