- Hey everybody. Aaron Blaise here, and
welcome to another episode of Aaron's art tips, number 12. (upbeat music) Okay so today, I'd like
to talk to you about clarity in your expression. When you're drawing,
whether you're trying to do figure drawings or you're
just doing characters, you're doing character design, you're doing animation,
any of that kind of stuff. When you have a character design, sometimes that design
can be kind of complex. And more often than not,
I see people sometimes get bogged down in the
details of the face, that sort of thing. And the expression tends to suffer for it. So I wanna talk to you about that today. First, I just want to
give a shout out to Wacom and all of their products. I just got a great, I got
a show you right here. I just got my brand new
wacom companion in the mail. Very excited about it. Very, very cool device
that I've been using. And it's a little portable
Cintiq, look at that. 13 inches, I've got the
full version right here. And I've been using it, been loving it. Very cool device. Now I'm not locked into doing my digital work in the studio anymore. I can actually go outside
and draw and paint and do all kinds of fun stuff. So anyway, give their website a look. It's Wacom.com. That's Wacom.com And check out their products. It's very, very cool, I'm
gonna put this right over here. I've just been having
a lot of fun with it. And also, I've talked about it before. I work on my big 24 inch Cintiq HD, and I absolutely love it. Also, I want to mention
to you that you can see more of my tutorials on my own website. Right now it's called
CreatureArtTeacher.com. That's the Art of Aaron Blaise, and it's CreatureArtTeacher.com. The reason I say right now is because I'm gonna be changing it up. We're going through a refurbishment on it. And we got a lot of really
exciting things happening. I brought in two great
friends that are helping me redo the whole thing. Nick Burch and Clint
Weldon are gonna help me kinda refurbish the whole site. And we've got a really,
some really exciting things that we're gonna be offering
in the next few months. I'm gonna be offering
entire courses in animation, drawing, painting, that sort of thing. We're really kind of taking
things to the next level. Some of you've been asking me if I'm gonna be offering
that kind of stuff. And the answer is yes. So be very patient. The first phase is just kind
of refurbishing what we've got. And then the next phase is we're gonna be slowing adding animation. We really want to make
art education affordable. I feel strongly that art
education has gotten expensive. And I think it's a little bit obscene. So I wanna make sure that I can share some knowledge with you guys and make it very affordable and hopefully I can do some
good in the art world. So once again, let's go
back to why we're here. And that is to talk about today's art tip. And that's clarity of expression. So I get caught up in the same thing. You know sometimes I'll get, especially when I'm first
learning a character design, if I'm animating a movie
or something like that. And I get so caught up in trying to get the character on model, that the expression tends to
suffer and I get lost in it. And years ago when I
was learning animation, just getting started in the industry, I was working on, it was
either the Rescuers Down Under, or it may have been Aladdin where I was a little
further into my career. But I was still struggling a little bit. And I was working a lot with an animator by the name of Mark Henn. Some of you know who he is. He's a legend in the industry. Mark is incredible. And he's really known
for his female characters and how simple and beautiful
and subtle they are. And I asked him one day about expression, and how he was able to
get such clear expression. And so he gave me some really great advice that has stuck with me 25 years later. And I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna pull over an image, and you guys are gonna probably laugh, but I'm gonna show you something here. Oops, let me grab it here. - All right, here's an image that I just sketched this out really quick. And you're saying, "Okay, what the heck?" Well, all these faces on here, we draw these when we're five
years old, six years old. All these characters,
if you look at these, they are extremely clear. You can see happy, you can see sad, angry, surprised, really
angry, and really happy. The reason being is it's so simple. And that's the key. Keep your expressions simple. Even with complex designs going
on in the character design. And so one of the things I think about when I'm creating an
expression with a character, I think about these expressions first. And I'm gonna show you what I mean. I'm gonna knock this down a little bit, knock that off to the side. And that's the key, the
more detail you get, the more messed up the stuff
you put on all these iconic happy faces and sad faces, the more diluted the
expression will become. So let's create something new here. And I'm going to go eight by 10. Let's see here, I gotta tone it. I always gotta tone my image here. Okay, so, here we are. So let's say we've got the
character from the new movie that I'm directing right
now called Art Story. We have a character named Walter. And he's the star of the movie. He's this kid that gets lost
in these worlds of paintings, and he goes from painting to
painting with his grandfather, trying to find their way back out. Now when I'm drawing Walter, I'll go through the usual
construction process. I'm gonna go ahead and grab a brush here. And let's, okay, I've
already done another layer. Let's grab that. And so I'm gonna do this, here we go. So when I'm constructing Walter, let's say we wanna make him happy. Well, Walter definitely has a certain construction to his face. And his nose in here. Now he's got, he's a relatively
simple looking character as far as the amount of
features on his face. But one of the things, if
we're gonna make him happy, one of the things I always think about is I go back to those iconic
happy faces, sad faces, that sort of thing, this is
something that Mark told me, and I'll just literally,
happy, eyebrows up, you can draw the eyes in very quickly. Oops, not those eyes. Let me do this. Drew them too close together. But the idea being that I'll just quickly, quickly, very quickly, lay these in. And then I'll build details on top. So let's knock that down. Let's put another layer on top. I'm gonna blow this up. So now I know that he's smiling, I wanna pull that cheek up a little bit. I know that he's gonna pull some skin up from the chin up towards
the corner of the mouth. So I'm gonna pull that in there. Okay. Let's get the nose in here. And I'll just follow that line. And then I can get the flesh
of the cheek to come up there. And I'll know that he's
gonna have some of that flesh coming up under his eye. And I can work on the
shape a little bit more now that I've got it roughed in, like so. Okay. I'll just sketch that eye in there. Very quickly. There we go. And you can see, just by thinking about those very simple icons, those very simple happy
faces, the sad faces. You've got a leg up on getting your image, your expression nice and clear. We'll throw his hair in here. There we go. Let me just grab this here. Move it down, there we go. Drawing him right off the page. Now you can see, I've got a nice, clearly happy, smiling Walter. Let's take that and let's shrink that down, we'll just put that off to one side there. Let's do another one. So let's see, so we've just done happy. Let's do really angry. Let's do really angry. This guy down here, down the lower left. Because that can get really complex. Once again, I want to do the same angle, just to keep things simple. And I'm gonna turn those off
so they're not in the way. And I'm gonna increase my brush size because I like to draw
with a big brush at first. Okay so now, so now he's really made. Maybe he's (growls). He's coming at (growls). He's coming at the camera. I'm gonna know that his mouth is open. (growls) His face is gonna be a
little bit stretched. This is the other thing to think about. Always, always remember
your anatomy under the face. One of the things I always
see with cartoon characters, especially younger people that are trying to draw expression, especially with open mouths, all the sudden they'll forget that jaw, and you know, the jaw pivots right here. Ah, ah, ah, see that? So sometimes they'll
just take the whole jaw and move it down and it
all the sudden just becomes a squishy, weird looking thing. So if Walter's mouth is open, his jaw still connects back here. So I wanna make sure we don't forget that. But once again, remember. remember this face right here. It's just this bah, you know, this mad open mouth, and
all that sort of thing. And that's what I'm gonna
do on Walter's face here. So once I find that nose. Okay. (growls) I can get that lip in there. But I'm thinking about
this shape for the mouth. That's mad, right? Once again, I just rough it in there. Because I'll go in later and tie it down. And the eyes, ah, he'll
be really (growls). Big and open, right? So let's really open those eyes. Open those eyes up, like so. And the other thing that
really shows anger and threat is you'll get the whites
around the irises. Right now that looks surprised, right? That looks really like scared. Once you get, boom. You gotta get that and that. That shows angry. Keep it simple, okay? We'll get those eyebrows in there. Now all the sudden, he's furious. Look at him, he's screaming. Let me, brrr. Let me do that, okay, good. Now let's lighten that up. And now that I've got
it kind of roughed in, now I can sit down and relax. And I can, I'm gonna make
that a little smaller so I can get some more detail. Now I can sit, and this is
what I do in my animation, I'll scribble animation
out just like this. Very rough, very sloppy. But clear, that's the key. You gotta be very clear. So now once I've got everything working. Now it's just a matter of tying it down. So I'll go in and I'll
put the nostrils in, get this eye, maybe you see the corner of the eye right there. Get the eyelashes in there. Get the eye, there we go. And get the furrowed brow. Eyebrows there. There we go. Pull the bottom of that
eye down because (growls) what happens (growls)? It pulls down, right. So do this. Pull this mouth down. Now what happens when you pull
the corner of the mouth down? Well it's gonna stretch that skin, right? Get a little bunch up of the skin. See some teeth in there. (growls) Looks like he's trying to scare somebody. But what I've done, and I'm
thinking about that jaw, thinking about that jawline up here. So what I've done, my phone's going off, we don't like that. (phone ringing) Sorry about that, I forgot to
silence it before I started. So here we go. We'll get the hair in there. Actually, I'm curious,
let's turn these back on. Yeah, there we go. Just so you can see, if you kinda dart your eye
back and forth between the two, you can kinda see him animate, right? That's kinda cool. Let's merge those. Let's take these. Let's merge those. Let's take this. Shrink it down a little bit. Hit return, let's take this one. Move it over here. Make it a little bigger. What? You can see him start to animate. I drew his head a little different. But if I, let's do this. I'm gonna take this, this is just a little experiment. Just wanna see what'll happen. Let's go ahead and just for fun. (sketching) Just color him in like so. So and then we'll merge those two layers together. Now watch. Boom, boom, boom. You see that? Now you can see, you see
the anatomy connected, and you can see him
animate there a little bit. See those eyebrows? That's all thinking about
how the skin's gonna stretch, how the jaw's gonna move, but most of all, thinking about those really simple, simple, iconic, where are, there they are. These really simple, iconic images. Keep those in mind. When you're trying to lay down, no matter how complex the character is, draw those in and then build
the anatomy on top of it, and I'll guarantee you'll
find that your expressions will be a lot clearer and the acting in your animation or the expression in the illustration
you're trying to do will be a lot clearer. So I hope that helps. Hope you learned something today. Go out and try that, because it'll work. I swear, I've been doing it for 25 years and it works every time and I still do it every time I draw an expression. So anyway, until next week,
I'm gonna be back on track, sorry I missed last week,
but I was in California pitching Art Story to a
potential investor out there. Things seemed to go pretty well. I'll be able to share more as things get rolling down the road. But anyway, until next week, happy drawing, happy
painting, happy photography, and I'll talk to you next time. Thanks, bye.
