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characters in action
Actions say more than words
Thinking, discussing, researching, planning, are all important parts of the creative process. But for a visual artist learning to tell stories – nothing beats learning by DOING.
Creative Time
Ideal Creative Schedule
make it up as you go
I think it’s fair to assume that we spend a lot of time drawing characters singularly or in pairs. And the idea of drawing groups of characters can be a bit intimidating. One of the ways to overcome this is just start drawing groups … right? Easier said than done, drawing a group is complicated, with a lot of moving parts making it seem overwhelmingly difficult to figure out!
A possible way to, figure it out, is to start by practicing with randomly placed shapes within a composition and build up a story intuitively as we draw. Like everything in learning to draw, if we do it enough we’ll get good at – or better at the very least!
More in the video below (3 minutes)
opening doors
In learning our craft we’ve spent a good amount of time(hopefully!) learning the basics of drawing, of anatomy, and of figure drawing. And once we’ve had plenty of practice drawing the basics we can start thinking about character design, and spend a significant time (again hopefully!) building characters. After that, we might start thinking about putting those characters in comics, or animation, or whatever else we can dream up. But first …
I’d be curious to know how much time we’ve practiced drawing those characters doing stuff besides a T-pose or a turn around? Perhaps it makes sense we might want to spend a bit of time (and hopefully a lot!) learning to draw our characters in action, whether in magical combat, or simply opening a door. More in the video below (3 minutes)
key frames
A good exercise is to start drawing characters in our sketchbooks doing stuff – and not just hanging out. Give them a job, something to do. Make their life exciting, so our drawings will be exciting. And while we are doing that we will get better at drawing them.
Starting with a cheap sketchbook or just loose pieces of paper draw out some frames on a spread (2 facing pages). Come up with a list of single word actions or activities that your characters could perform. Using a pencil, ink pens, and grey markers (or a grey ink wash) spontaneously sketch out characters performing those action s in a sequence that works together, the example here is up, over, and down. Do about 5-8 panels minimum or as many as time allows.