1. I posted a quick page of drawing tips by Vance Gerry on twitter and people seemed to like it. That reminded me of this old handout by Disney/Pixar legend Joe Ranft about how to pitch storyboards. It's from an old manual about how to do story at Disney that I'm probably not supposed to be circulating. But I really want people to remember Joe and what a great, fantastic board artist and teacher he was.

    I've posted this before so I apologize to those who've seen it already.

    We don't pitch like this anymore because we don't really board on paper anymore. So we don't really have to stand in front of an audience while pitching, we get to sit in the back of the room while our boards are projected onto a big screen. Those days of standing in front of a big group, pitching drawings you weren't happy about, and bombing in front of an audience are over forever, it seems. It's still nerve-wracking to me every time I pitch though. Some things never change.





    Almost all of Joe's advice is still very relevant to pitching in the digital age. The main point of pitching boards is to give a sense of what the sequence will feel like when it's turned into a film, and that means not slowing down to over-explain anything or get off-track from communicating the story and characters to the audience.

    Here's a video I found online (I think it's from one of the "Toy Story" DVDs) of Joe talking about storyboarding and pitching a sequence.



    Hope you enjoyed the handout. If you have any questions (or can't make out the text), let me know.

    And to end things, here's a photo of Vance Gerry himself, pitching the old school way to an audience that includes Woolie Reitherman, Larry Clemmons, and Milt Kahl.





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  2. Not as in attracting a gathering of people...but as in literally depicting crowds in a graphic way.

    I always like it when I see a book about drawing that covers some subject I've never seen written about before. Jack Hamm wrote some good basic books on drawing that have been around for a long time. They're well illustrated and they're full of basic, straightforward and clear instruction, which is more than I can say for most books on drawing. Also they're extremely cheap. If you search for "Jack Hamm" on Amazon.com, you'll find his books. He has one on drawing people, one about drawing animals, one that's all about landscapes and one on cartooning.

    I'm not usually a big fan of books about "cartooning", because to me, drawing is drawing, and you should start with a realistic approach anyway. All the greatest animators (and cartoonists) started by studying real life and then figured out ways to simplify and caricature what they saw around them. Starting out as a "cartoonist" makes your art very limited and means you'll end up copying someone else's shortcuts.

    For the most part, I can't really recommend Hamm's book "Cartooning the Head and Figure" because it's mostly full of cliched formulas. I would, however, definitely recommend his book on realistic life drawing and anatomy if you're interested, and I'm sure his book on drawing animals is good too (i've got it somewhere but I haven't looked at it in ages).



    But again, I wouldn't really suggest his book on Cartooning to anyone. It was written in 1967 and it's definitely a product of that time. I'm glad it's still published in the same original format, and it's pretty interesting as a bit of a time capsule, but it mostly has pages like "how to draw hobos and tramps" and "how to draw pretty girls" and the like...basically, kind of outdated, quaint ideas about how to draw using formulas. I don't like books that recommend using formulas to draw. I think great drawing comes from observation and learning to see things clearly and with a fresh eye, not relying on shortcuts and formulas!


    The page on "Hobos and Tramps".


    Somebody should make an updated book on drawing that includes formulas on how to draw modern clichès, so instead of "How to Draw Hobos and Tramps" it would teach you "How to Draw Hipsters and Baristas" or something like that.


    Anyway, the page that I wanted to share is one where he talks about "how to draw crowds"...which isn't really a topic I've seen anyone tackle in a drawing book before. Every once in a while, when storyboarding, you'll run into this challenge and it's always a bit tricky. The crowd is never the focus of the drawing (they're almost always a background element), so how do you draw the crowd so it reads clearly as a crowd without being distracting?


    Some rather inventive solutions, I thought. By the way, that odd white shape in the lower left hand corner is in the actual book, it's not a mistake in my scan.

    Some other thoughts on crowds that have helped me over the years...

    If there's a way to throw the crowd into silhouettes, that can work (like this one from Carl Barks)


    Coloring a crowd can get you into trouble. Your first instinct is to give them all different colored pants, shirts, hair, etc. It can easily turn into a lot of little color patches that don't relate to each other and look like Skittles. Somehow, Hergé (or his colorist) pulls it off in these two panels from "King Ottokar's Sceptre".

    It's risky but it works here. I would even say if you're going to do it, choose a couple of colors and repeat them on figures to give the picture a sense of harmony. Or just stick with everyone wearing either cool colors...or warm colors to create harmony and avoid distracting contrast in the crowd. But this panel below doesn't follow either of those suggestions and works beautifully. So what do I know?


    I think it works okay because the figures in the crowd are large enough in the frame that they can stand to be different colors. Also, each figure is pretty much just one color, which helps. When the figures get too small, little pieces of contrasting color get distracting. (like of you colored everyone's shirt and pants differently). Notice how in this panel from "The Blue Lotus" with smaller figures in a crowd, there isn't as much variation in the colors on the characters. Hergé was smart and composed the crowd so mostly we see only the figure's heads in the crowd...that way the colorist can make them all mostly skin color and they blend together. And when it comes to clothes, they're mostly variations of blue with a few green ones thrown in. Not a lot of contrast (there are a couple of orange, brown, red and yellow spots too...but not that many).


    Morris, the artist behind the Lucky Luke series, went even simpler. He just had his colorist make the crowd all the same color in this panel below. It's a trick he uses all the time in his books. Notice how he gave them all black vests to get a little more separation between all the figures and help silhouette the heads clearly. Also they're all about the same size and build so they read as a group. If you start making everyone in a crowd look too different from each other, they become TOO interesting and distracting. Keep everyone in the crowd a pretty similar shape, size and type to avoid confusing the viewer.


    A couple more examples from "Star Light" (artwork by Gorlan Parlov). Coloring a crowd all one color is a lot more common in comic books than you might expect. It might seem like "cheating" but it makes sense. Otherwise it would turn into teeny, tiny spots of color and lose its identity as one thing (it's just one crowd).

    I love how (in the top panel below) there's the foreground group, who are colored darker and with the warm purple tones (both of which make them advance towards the viewer) and then you have the background group colored lighter and with cooler brown and green tones (both of which make them recede into the background), giving the picture depth.


    Also, it's a cool technique to use subtle variations within the palette to differentiate hair, shirts, pants, etc.


    In this big group shot below, the crowd in the foreground is again colored the same way, with little variations within the same brown color scheme. And the background crowd (on the other side of the space ship) doesn't have any variation to make them look like they are father away (objects have less contrast and variation in color the further away from us they are, due to atmospheric perspective--basically particles in the air, like water, smog and smoke).


    Another similar solution from Conrad's "Donito". He draws the foreground characters very distinctly but the background ones are a little more loosely suggested. Then the foreground characters have full color (although they're all very similar in palette). As for the background characters, they're all covered with a blue tone to group them together, and since there's a bit of blue sky behind them, they kind of become part of the background. And as an added bonus, the warm colored (and more detailed) characters in the foreground seem closer, while the cooler colors and more sketchy detail on the background figures help those figures recede into the background. It gives a nice sense of depth to the panel.

    Anyway, that's probably more than anyone needs to know about drawing crowds, but there you go. Someday it''l come up, and now you'll have a bunch of solutions at your fingertips!
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  3. I've been looking for these copies forever so I could post them here, and I finally found them. Unfortunately they're just xerox copies, but I scanned them at a high resolution so hopefully you can see and read them okay. Let me know if you can't.

    These are two pages drawn by Art Adams talking about how to draw different textures. They originally appeared in the (now defunct) Wizard magazine in August 1997. As far as I know they've never appeared on the internet before in their full form. If someone has better copies or scans, let me know.



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  4. Here is another one of Rowland Wilson's handouts that discusses his theories on color and how to create depth and harmony. Unfortunately I only have two of the pages in color. If anyone out there has the colorized versions of the black and white ones, let me know.








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  5. These are from a series of handouts by the late great illustrator Rowland Wilson. I posted these about ten years ago(!) and it seems like a good time to rerun them, for those people who weren't reading the site ten years ago. Or born yet.

    Rowland did quite a few magazine cartoons over the years and helped create the type for "Schoolhouse Rock." He worked at Disney for a while and I used to sit in a cubicle across from him during the making of "Hercules". He was an amazingly nice guy.

    These handouts are about painting light and have a lot of useful information about values and creating focus. Enjoy!



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  6. Here are a couple of useful pages from Andrew Loomis' book "Figure Drawing For All It's Worth" that show exactly which landmarks can be seen on the surface of the human figure.



    Most surface "landmarks" are created by bones that are near the surface, or when a muscle connects to a bone and you can see the result of this insertion or connection on the skin.

    These landmarks are important to know in order to do a solid drawing because these lines that are created on the surface are the indicators of which way a body is twisting and turning in space.


    There are many wide open, blank spaces on the human form so the few surface lines we have to work with become very important, especially from certain angles.







    In my experience, it's much easier to show how figures are oriented in space when you are drawing a figure that is clothed. Wrinkles, seams, collars and things like sleeve openings make it easy to show how limbs and forms are tilting and twisting.




    The top of the skirt and the back line of the girl's top say a lot in these simple sketches:


    Wrinkles can be an artist's best friend when describing form...







     ...but wrinkles aren't necessary to show form and every character doesn't need to be a slob who never irons his clothes. The creases and cuffs of a pressed suit or a plain, unwrinkled dress can be just as helpful. Clothes always have some amount of wrinkles caused by the body moving against the fabric, as well as collars, seams, belts, etc. to show form on the surface. Things like jewelry can help too.





    It took me a while to get used to drawing digitally (and I still spend much of my time drawing on paper), but one of the things I like about drawing digitally is that you can really draw through things like clothes more completely. Here's what I mean:



    So in any case, these landmarks Loomis talks about are important for life drawing to show direction and form, and they are indispensable for the same reasons whenever we depict an animated character that isn't wearing clothes.

    The challenge of designing a character like Tarzan is figuring out how to give his skin enough landmarks so we can see his form as it twists, turns and moves through space without creating so many details that it takes forever to draw or becomes unappealing through too much fussy detail.








    In many of these frames, the cast shadows also help at indicating his form and showing shape.

    So the challenge with Tarzan is to create enough lines to give him dimension and feel muscular without getting too busy or unappealing. But how do you show dimension and form when dealing with a character without all those muscles?

    Ariel doesn't wear a shirt so she presents a similar challenge. However, she's not muscle bound like Tarzan. She's much younger and if she was muscular she'd start feeling older than she's supposed to be. Also, in my experience, the more surface lines you add to a character, the older they start to look. Triton has quite a few muscles so it looks okay to give him lines denoting his musculature, but if--for example---you gave Ariel a line denoting the bottom of her rib cage like Triton has, I think she'd start to look older and more muscular. That might hurt the feeling of the story...that she's a young girl who's a bit naive and vulnerable, and that she's going out into a scary world she's unprepared for. She's on the verge of becoming an adult, but she's still a kid in some ways. 



    But still, you want some kind of surface line to indicate form. How are you going to indicate twists and turns in her torso without some line to show direction? That's why it's so important for her to have a strap that encircles her back.





    As far as the front of Ariel, the two clamshells are helpful for showing form and orienting us to which way her torso is facing, as well as the division between her torso and her tail. It was very smart to design it in the "V" shape. It goes high over the hips and lower in front and that makes it always easy to see which way her hips are oriented. Also, the bellybutton is very helpful to show direction as well as what's happening with the form.

    Bellybuttons are really, really useful for this sort of thing. Belly buttons are great for showing squash...



    ....stretch...


    ...and twists when the hips and shoulders are pointing in different directions.



    The bellybutton is a very useful landmark. Use it to your advantage!

    Mowgli from "The Jingle Book" is another interesting challenge. He doesn't have much in the way of musculature to help show form, again because he's too young. Also, the whole point of the story is that he's vulnerable, so making him slight really helps support that.





    With Mowgli, it seems that the animators often used his elbows, kneecaps and spine to help show form. Also, he has a line down the middle of his chest to help show orientation.

    They also sometimes indicate his belly fat when his torso is bent down towards his hips. It gives him a feeling of "baby fat" that really sells his age and helps show form when appropriate.






    Anyway, take a look at Loomis's landmarks and remember how helpful they can be when trying to show orientation and form in the nude or partially clothed figure.

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  7. I often talk about character introductions and how important they are. I think animated films could be better in this area so I bring it up frequently.

    Why is a good introduction important? It can be a great shorthand to tell the audience exactly who this character is, what they're all about and what they want. Film is all about economy and if you can make a powerful statement quickly then you've done yourself a favor. Strong characters with clear personalities and wants are central to making a movie work. If you can create strong characters with a lot of drive who are in conflict with each other, you are going to have a more interesting and dynamic story. So if you can make a powerful statement right off the bat and communicate who each character is strongly and efficiently, then you can get back to telling your story and you don't have to constantly remind the audience who the characters are and what they want.

    So here's the introduction of Jesus from "The Big Lebowski" (which is on Amazon Prime for free right now, if you haven't seen it or want to see it again). The language is NSFW.



    This introduction does a lot of things well and it has some of my favorite techniques when introducing a character. I always like when we see close shots to see pieces of a character before the camera reveals all of them. It always creates a sense of mystery about the character. What do they look like? Also, it can help create a sense of anticipation so the audience really wants to see the reveal of what they look like from heard to toe, or maybe see what their face looks like, depending on how you do it.

    It's not appropriate for every character, but seeing pieces of Jesus here works well because the little details are interesting and tell you a lot about him. The wrist brace, the jewelry, the all-purple wardrobe and the polished fingernail all give you a good sense of what type of person this is. In the fingernail shot, I like that you can see his face reflected in a distorted way. Again, it creates a sense of mystery about him and makes you want to see his real face.

    The next shots really show a lot of thought an care about his character. Licking the bowling ball...the hairnet...the monogrammed purple jumpsuit...even how intense and serious he is about bowling and how he celebrates by doing a little arrogant dance...all of these great details tell you exactly what type of person he is.

    The other element I always like to have in a character introduction is finding out what other characters think of this person. When you see Jesus's teammate, it seems like this guy looks up to and is impressed by Jesus.

    Then you get the reaction of The Dude and Walter, who tell us what they think of him. The Dude confirms what we suspected: the Jesus is a good bowler, and we find out that The Dude is intimidated by him. Then Walter reveals a different side of Jesus that confirms the creepy vibe we get from Jesus...yes, he actually is a bit creepy. But it's also interesting to see the vulnerability on Jesus's face when that guy comes to the door. It humanizes him a little bit.

    One last aspect I love is the music. The music does a great job of getting us into Jesus's head. That's the music he hears in his head and makes us see how awesome he thinks he is. It's also a nice choice because it's a version of "Hotel California" by The Eagles, which is a band that The Dude says in the film that he despises. So on a subtle level, it's a good choice because The Dude and Jesus are antagonistic towards each other.

    So that's about two minutes worth of film with a ton of information packed in, and it's entertaining to watch as well, which, in some ways, may be the most important part of any character introduction!
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  8. One of the aspects of making mainstream feature movies that may or may not be obvious is how much the format can affect content.


    There's a good reason that a movies tend to be two hours long, as Hitchcock says. We humans can't really sit still for too long, and once you hit that two hour mark, you're really pushing it. So films are made in a certain way because of this basic fact of human physiology, and many people may not even be aware of it.

    Films (at least American, mainstream ones) tend to have a fairly brisk pace. Most films don't linger in one place too long. There aren't usually a lot of moments of characters interacting or having introspective moments other that what's necessary to convey the plot and emotions. Very rarely is there a "time out" for any kind of diversion that isn't absolutely vital to the plot and the story being told.

    It's worth noting that in animation we work with even smaller running times than our live action counterparts. In general, animation is much more expensive and labor-intensive than live action, and every minute you add to the running time equals a lot of money that has to be spent to get it done. Also, we tend to aim for a general audience, and that can include young children who aren't really able (or interested enough) to sit through a three-and-a-half-hour director's cut of a movie.


    Over my years as an animator and a story artist, this has always lead to one of the most difficult (and ironic) balances that you have to strike as an animated film maker. Animated films are all about character and personality. My favorite moments in animated films are little moments where some character shows really fun behavior that shows how their mind works. I love it when an animated character does something that only they would do. This is one of the areas where I feel animation outshines live action all the time. Animated film makers are great at finding moments that speak to who a character really is and portraying their inner qualities through performance.

    And those are always the moments that I love to storyboard. I always look for ways in my boards to give characters behavior and "business" that shows the audience who that character is and what they are thinking.

    The rub is that these are sometimes the first moments to get cut out, because we are always wrestling with keeping the film moving. We are always trying to get the pacing to be quicker. We are always trying to figure out how to cut the unnecessary parts and get to the heart of the story sooner. Because, as Hitchcock also said...


    Audiences are really good at detecting what is necessary to the narrative and what is unnecessary. Whenever you're taking them down an extraneous side avenue, they get antsy. They check out. So you have to keep moving.

    When I worked on "Tangled", there was a constant fight to whittle down the beginning of the movie. People would always give us the note that the movie doesn't really start until Flynn and Rapunzel get together. So we were always trying to tell the audience what they needed to know up front for the movie to make sense, but not give you too much and to keep moving as quickly as possible. And so it's been on every film I've worked on: that balance of having fun, getting a few character moments here and there, but not lingering too long or where it's not necessary.


    We've all had that feeling when we walk out of a film and we think back on what we just saw, and suddenly you remember this one part that didn't fit. "Why the heck was that there?" we wonder. And sometimes you'll hear later that it was a piece of a bigger story that got eliminated late in the game but that piece got kept, for some reason. It's funny, though, that without realizing it, we've all become accustomed to looking at films as a whole and detecting the parts that were unnecessary to the telling and identifying those pieces easily.

    Imagine what books would be like if they had to be read in one sitting. They'd be the same way, I suppose...much tighter and without much of the internal monologues or character interactions that are what make a good novel so mesmerizing. One of the strengths of a great book is how you think about it when you're not reading it, considering what you've read and how you feel about it. Since a novel can be read over days...or weeks....or years, the author doesn't have to edit themselves as rigorously as we do when we make films. In novels, there is time for extraneous detours and exploring different avenues and getting into deep character.

    Which is what is so interesting about the state of entertainment these days. The relatively new phenomenon of modern television shows and their format has changed all that, and added a great alternative to telling a story in movie form. I feel like now, more than ever, stories have the option to be told in the way that suits them best.

    For example, when you look at the Harry Potter films, you can see what a struggle it was for the film makers to fit the books into a film format. So much of what made the books great had to be eliminated to get the films down to a reasonable length.

    By comparison, look at the "Game of Thrones" series. Because each season is 12 episodes and not a film, there's no time limit, and they are able to get much more of the feeling of the books into each season. There's time for detours and subplots that don't necessarily go anywhere. And when you finish watching a season, you don't reflect back on it and think "wait a minute...that subplot never went anywhere. Why did they include it?" with the same critical eye that you would if a movie did the same thing. Because a season of GoT isn't meant to be consumed in one sitting like a movie, we're more forgiving and we're willing to sit through more leisurely paced episodes, where the film makers can explore characters and linger in corners of the world that are interesting to visit just for fun and atmosphere.

    Side note: yes, I am thinking what you're thinking. Why doesn't Netflix or HBO turn each Harry Potter book into a season of shows so that, freed from time restraints, they can get much more of the content from the novels into each season? I think they should. I would watch the heck out of that (personally I would wait until Daniel Radcliffe is old enough to play Snape. But that's just my vision).

    Anyway, Hollywood, call me. I've got many, many more brilliant ideas.


    So to sum up, different stories are suited for different mediums. I think we really are living in a new world where film is no longer the "best" medium to tell a story. I'm so glad that shows like "Game of Thrones, "House of Cards", "The Walking Dead" and dozens of other shows have really shown what you can do with a season of episodes. And every story is better suited to one medium or the other. And when they're done well, both can be really engaging, entertaining and memorable.

    Someday I'd love to see an animated show that feels like Disney or Pixar, but is stretched out over a season like "Game of Thrones". That way there'd be more time for character and to explore the avenues that we can't explore in those type of films right now.

    Or do the Harry Potter thing. Whatever. Your move, Netflix.
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  9. A couple of posts ago I talked about how important it is to give your figures lifelike, natural poses and that you should avoid drawing figures straight up and down.

    It's probably obvious, but the same thing applies when drawing four-legged animals. Animals aren't tables, and their legs rarely form a perfect square with their necks posed straight up-and-down (unless they're posing for a portrait, like this horse).


    Looks stiff and unnatural, right? Also very uninteresting.

    If you're drawing an animal that isn't sitting or lying down, look for ways to find variation in their leg positions to add interest and variety. Don't have all four legs straight and parallel to each other. Sometimes it's helpful to think of the leg positions by where they touch the ground.


    Also, remember that the neck is a great opportunity to show character and expression when drawing animals. A neck that juts forward can indicate aggression, curiosity, determination, etc. A neck that's pulled back can indicate hesitation, surprise, fear, etc. A neck that droops can indicate weariness, exhaustion, etc.






    I'm no animal expert, but it seems to me that most four-legged creatures have the same kind of trouble that we have when standing for long periods of time, and I've definitely seen dogs and horses that are standing around shift their weight in order to relieve tension in their shoulders and hips. I haven't spent a lot of time around horses but I've definitely seen them lift a hoof from time to time to (I assume) adjust their stance and alleviate tension on their joints (like in these two photos).



    It's an interesting touch that can add character and specificity to what would otherwise be an average standing horse pose.

    There are some exceptions, however. There are some animals that tend to have a solid, table-like stance most of the time: heavier animals, like cows, oxen and water buffaloes are so heavy that (I assume) they tend to keep their legs spread wide and keep a stance without a lot of variety or variation in leg position. I think they do this to accommodate their heavy frames and bulky bodies. It's hard to find a picture of a water buffalo that isn't squarely centered over four firmly planted legs.




    Also, they don't have nearly as much variation in their neck poses as, say, a horse or a dog does. To draw a water buffalo with their neck pulled all the way back would look weird. It wouldn't look much like a water buffalo anymore, really.


    So, more than anything, I suppose the takeaway from this post is to look for variety in poses when appropriate. When drawing an animal, do your research and figure out what kind of flexibility and variation of movement is typical for that type of animal. Also, let their personality dictate their range of movement and expression. One of the things that animation does better than any other medium is investing animals with personalities and character, and it's always a bit magical to see a well animated animal that retains the characteristics of an animal and yet has that sense of human personality that we all sense sometimes in the beasts around us.
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