Improve Drawing and Character Design Skills with 2D Animation

are you interested in getting better at character design or your drawing draftsmanship skills a lot of beginning animators tend to think that before I even begin animation you have to be good at drawing or drawing characters since we deal with character animation in some ways I've been conditioned to think that even before you start animation you have to have good drawing draftsmanship but what if I told you that drawing character design and animation go hand in hand what if I told you that doing hand-drawn animation can actually help improve your drawing draftsmanship and character design skills so if you're thinking about improving your drawing craftsmanship or getting into character design I want to talk about why you should try animating your characters or just try animating already [Music] hey guys it's like open Toa and today I'd like to talk about how hand-drawn animation practices can help improve character design skills character design is an integral part of an animation project the way I'd like to describe character design to someone who's not an animation is like it's kind of like the costume designer to a live-action movie maker in character design you create the look of the stars for the project's based on their personalities their overall story and their overall role in the world you make visual design choices whether shape gesture and the overall art direction these will all influence the character design I can go on and talk about what makes great character design to me but that's another video for its own if you want to be a character designer for animation and maybe games and get better at drawing characters why not try animating them I'll be talking about my experiences doing character design work for animation translating preexisting designs into animation and reflecting on my work especially with the DreamWorks as kipo show ran by rad Sechrist whether it's your own original character design or someone else's character design why not give yourself a random animation test and try animating those designs here are some of my top reasons and advice for you to try animating yours or someone else's designs number one you put them in actual situations where you'll notice design problems if we just deal with character design alone we just look at the drawing and design aspect but if we put them in actual scenes and sequences where they actually move you start to figure out if your design works in actual animation it's kind of like test running a product that sounds good on paper but would put into actual application there will be performance issues one thing we tend to forget about character design especially for animation is that we don't really consider about how things are when they are animated things like how they move how they interact with the world or how they act by animating our characters in a scene we give them context for them to act in still drawings of a character design with numerous poses just saw an idea it's all about making those ideas work one practice that will help a lot is to get a friend or colleague that you look up to that has a good eye for drawing and design to do draw overs for your key poses since they might be able to see some that you won't be able to see an industry example of this is an animator working with the lead character designer when I do character design work for the industry I'm usually paired with a director or the main character designer for the show I'll send my keys to the character designer and they'll do draw overs to make the design work better or to make it match with the overall direction of the project and at the same time they'll give me notes on what to do or what not to do with the design it's kind of like we're forming a style guide during the stage a character designer that I worked with once told me that this type of relationship was incredibly beneficial because the animator would put the character in two scenarios and situations that the character designer would not really have considered and that seeing those characters finally animated helped them see a different perspective one thing that I benefited as an animator is that I did learn a bit of drawing sensibilities from the designer it's kind of like getting draw overs and feedback from a teacher which in turn would help me gain more knowledge to become a better draftsman number two you start seeing designs for functional purposes this is where you have to think about the overall mechanics for your characters and how to show that visually how do they turn around if you have turnarounds how do they transition into expressions and how do you keep it all consistent with the other characters in their world and know this does not always mean super accurate solid drawings detailed Anatomy or high level draftsmanship we are thinking about designs that match their world and their rules some character designs are fully detailed whereas some are more stylized and graphic and we'll need to break form to make it work or to break and cheat drawing rules to make the design work some use closer to lifelike anatomy whereas some would go for more rubber-hose looks for the limbs some characters move in full detailed motion whereas some will snap into their poses some designs don't use real-world rules and others will favor rules that can only be done in a medium like animation if a character is squashed and stretched in their poses how will that look if a character talks how would we portray those mouth shapes with the mouth shapes move in a fluid and detailed way or will it just be a series of mouth shapes depending on the vowel and Constanze part of a character designers job and an animators job combined is to design and animate a character that warts in an established design within the rules set by the Direction itself number three you explore an animation style that best suits their design this is very similar to my last point which is not every design or style can be approached in the same way for example while animating something like The Flintstones in full detailed Disney animation might sound cool on paper it might not be the best way to utilize the more graphic hanna-barbera designs there's a reason why characters are designed in certain ways whether its budget in the animation or whether it's a stylistic choice you have to be careful to choose an animation style that does not break or ruin the design now that you have character design it's also time to think about the actual animation design that best works with the character design in design we're making choices of what to take in what to take out what to push or what to prioritize the same thing can be said about animation design you kind of have to ask yourself does this work better limited or fully animated do thinks transition clearly or do the characters just snap in two poses when I did animation tests for keep oh and this was way back before near would be the animation for that show I wanted the animation sensibility close to how the showrunner rad secrets would storyboard which is only having aspects of the character move rather than the whole character so if a character would wave only his arm would move if the character does an awkward smile only the head or just maybe even the mouth would move you could give keep Oh Disney style classical animation with subtle acting nuances it's not a bad style but I don't think that would help the snappiness which in the visual gags of keepo something like early 2000s guerrillas would best work for keepo in fact me and rad were talking about tech on King Crete when looking at keepo so I explored a few tests one where the animation was done mostly in threes like an enemy this is an early test to see if threes fit keepo or just to see the character animated the second being fully detailed with a lot of keys this was just to get the character acting done and this was done in mind with another animation studio that was going to make rigs for the characters rather than hand-drawn this just served us character acting inspiration the third one being more stylized only certain parts of the character moves this was me thinking about how rad secrets was bored and how we could translate that mentality into animation one thing I was doing at capo was also experimenting with a visual language so for example how would smears be portrayed that works well with the designs of the characters instead of just swipes and motion words what have we made actual shapes based on the design choices like bold hard shapes and this is where I'm actually thinking about how we can make character design work with the animation style number four you find design solutions that might help the design work better and more efficiently for animation short hands shapes structure and construction and graphic decisions have you ever designed a character for a project animated it for a while and then when you see the first time in the most recent time you animated them they look vastly different it's because the more you jar your character the more you start defining better shapes lines and other design choices that might make them more efficient for animation that's why most of the earlier drafts of pencil tests and character design differ so much from the final output or the final product animators and designers have found solutions that actually fix the designs for their project if you saw my previous video about mistakes that you can make when making your own short film I talked about when you animate your characters for the first time it'll be marginally different from the next time you draw them it's because you're developing muscle memory you're solving design problems for that character and these will start to alter the original design itself and the more you design draw and animate those characters you start finding solutions that might make the design much more efficient for animation and simpler to approach you develop a better and faster shorthand for those characters so when you have to draw them again and again it just becomes second nature there's a saying from a Disney animator I might be wrong if I said it might be Glen Keane again I might be wrong but this individual said that you don't really have a final character design until you've actually started animating them to see if they actually work animated and that's where the problem-solving starts number five you give your designs life the benefit of being an animator is that you can give a drawing life with acting nuances character attitude and personality all these other things look one thing that's great about preparing model sheets or character reference sheets with expressions and poses is having extremes with an overall ideas for your designs the way I see model sheets is that they either serve as inspiration and they serve as a way to keep designs consistent throughout the production so artists use this to make sure their drawings are consistent with every other shot when you animate your design stone you start finding the subtle nuances in your drawings for your characters depending on the acting so let's say you're animating a design to a voice recording where they talk you don't try to make your key drawings hit the exact drawings and key poses from the model sheets again they're just there to give ideas and how a character would display some of these attitudes but you start finding other ways for our character to emote or to express while fitting in the realm of those model sheets it no longer just becomes a character's design or a character model sheet with just a few drawings it's a design that now has the capability to be alive to emotes and to Act number six it's great for practicing draftsmanship and consistency and hand-drawn animation especially traditional style animation you have to draw so many different images just to get a simple movement for your characters so you know that saying where artists say draw a lot to get better while animation can help that especially if you're dealing with drawing figures and full-on characters however one misconception of younger artists and animators is to get better at drawing you just have to draw a billion drawings of cubes poses hands etc just to get better address and ship and to be honest I don't think that's true however if you draw with intention that will help a lot and the great thing about animation is that you already have a scenario you have your characters doing your thing you have a certain goal in mind for them and you're creating drawings to get closer to that goal you're thinking about the right acting choices the best way to draw the character how that character will move from one pose to the other you're actively thinking and you're actively solving problems and that's a thing that's gonna help you get better at drawing when you're doing hand-drawn animation for your characters you're constantly challenging yourself not to just draw a lot but you're also trying to sell a specific idea in your animation with these designs so instead of drawing a lot mindlessly you're drawing a lot with intention that has given you challenges to problem-solve one thing I like to do especially if I want to get better or to expand my mind where I have to challenged myself and I have to think things differently is that I like to take someone else's character designs and try adapting them for animation so if I want to get better at fight scenes and anime style animation I will look at sucka I'll look at Legend of Korra avatar and try animating those designs if I want to get better at more stylize designs I'll look at Bruce Timm and try animating his designs animating someone else's designs especially just for yourself is a good way to actually study someone else's drawings and it kind of brings you out of your own tunnel vision where you constantly have your own world to deal with but when you take someone else's designs it's a whole new territory that allows you to just experiment and to see things in a different perspective anyways that's really all I have to say if you want to go into character design for animation and maybe games you should just try animation try animating those characters so that you can actually get a better understanding of that character live in their shoes and understand their intentions that's all thanks bye interested in learning hand-drawn animation or learning how to finish an animated shot from beginning to end have a look at the store where you'll find the complete introduction to 2d animation video course tutorials and other resources learn classical animation approaches drawing lectures techniques and other process videos visit the store through the link in the description below

Channel: Toniko Pantoja

Views: 50,833

Keywords: Toniko Pantoja, Youtube, Animation, Tutorial, Advice, Lesson, Vlog, Adobe, Photoshop, Animate, Flash, After Effetcts, Premiere, Video, Film, Drawing, Tips, Gestures

Id: e05nT6wDQGU

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020