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Monday, November 20, 2006

Thoughts on drawing for storyboards-PT 1

I recently took some of the great illustrations from Bill Peet's autobio book and decided to draw over them and find out why I liked them so much. Aside from his artistic charm and wonderful acting and posing choices, there where things about his work that I thought supported what we do in the gesture class. We always look at these and grasp a bit of inspiration from them but then we keep on moving without considering how we can disect them. I know there are many ways of looking at art but for me this is how I looked at it and learned from it.

The terms that came to mind for me where:

Directional Rhythm- Using the lines and composition of the drawing to direct the eye to the point of interest.

High contrast- the point of highest contrast usually helps define the point of interest or the character you want the viewer to see.

Other terms {that will be on the next post, blogger issues} that I didn't write on these overlays, but it is evident in them, where;

Lean- do it when ever possible, even in the slightest way. only draw striaght up and down if the character calls for it. the more straight up and down the drawings, the less life it could have, so if your character is scared stiff maybe straight up and down is what you need. But lean when ever possible.

Perspective and overlap- We've all studied perspective and any book out there on the subject is usually fairly good to explain it but Overlap it extremely important to execute perspective Be it a flower pot, a car, a person or a building you need visual cues of diminishing sizes and shapes relating to each other to really get the effect working.

line density- the best way to understand this one is, if the object is further away, the lines should be thinner. If the object is close the lines should be thicker.

Tone and Value- Again, simply put, the closer to screen the darker it gets.


Life drawing and gesture drawing do translate to story sketching if we know how to bridge the gap. Hopefully these pics will help.






14 comments:

mark kennedy said...

Great stuff, Dave! Thanks for posting! Can't wait to see more!

Jenny Lerew said...

Yes--part 2!

TS said...

I dig it! I loved this book when I picked it up a few years back! I'll have to get it back off the shelf.

I can remember my drawing instructors trying to pound all of these ideas into my head yet it has taken years for most of them to really seep in.

One of the things I find most ironic is that the skills required to make drawings as awesome as these are often the skills that most people refuse to learn. Things like perspective, planation, contrast, etc. are often the lessons that most kids walk out on.

Jeff said...

Gran anĂ¡lisis mi amigo. Si usted no tiene cuidado su blog pudo rivalizar "El Templo de Los Siete Camellos!!" Gracias por compartir el AMOR. ¡Chocolate Sexual!

Dave Pimentel said...

thanks Mark,

You are the king of inspiring posts and boy do you just keep em' coming!

Jenny,
it's coming

ts,
this work is so deceptively simple, isn't it?

skribbl,
dale gas amigo!

donnachada said...

Great post Dave. Looking forward to the next one.

MikeS said...

I certainly appreciate this post, Dave. Thanks for posting it and looking forward to part two.

TS said...

This work is most definately "deceptively simple"!

I think one of the hardest things to do is to keep things un-complicated. But if it were easy I suppose more people would be able to do it.

R.Dress said...

He's just brilliant.
Thanks for these notes!

J said...

Hey Dave!
Thanks for posting these, they're great!
There's so much to learn...
So far to go...
Can't wait for part two.

Matt Jones said...

Excellent Dave, a mini-masterclass in itself. A well informed dissection of Peet's work.

Todd Harris said...

this is really awesome. great post, love all of the direction in this. can't wait for pt 2.

Doron Meir said...

Great stuff, thanks for sharing! Looking forward to the 2nd part...
Gug's blog

Jesse Graham said...

Some good stuff man. Glad you posted it.