Lately when I think of life drawing for animation, I keep coming back to Glen Keane. He really epitomizes what I mean to life draw like an animator. I love his passion for the art. I love in this podcast Glen speaks about hitting a wall in his animation:
"when you run up against a problem, you always think it's because, 'Oh I'm not good enough'. It's not that. You've hit the limit to your knowledge, and you've gotta go out and observe and get something more. Those are the best times, when you're... in a rut, and the world is open and you're ready to learn something new. You've gotta go, you've gotta take advantage of that." -Glen Keane
Watch this video and I want you to just think of how you draw. Do you draw from life? Is there passion and soul driving your pencil? Are you telling a visual story? Glen Keane is a master draftman, artist and animator who does all of this and so much more. He is a gleaming example of how drawing from life can make you a great artist. Here are some of his sketches
Glen Keane was born on April 13, 1954 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Bill Keane, the creator of the popular comic strip Family Circus, and the late Thelma Keane, being one of six children. Glen was greatly influence by his father being a cartoonist but found that his style of drawing would soon become very different than his father’s. While Bill didn’t have much formal training and tended to draw more simplistic but sincere drawings, he urged his son to pay close attention to bold, passionate drawings as well as ones that have real life and solid anatomy to them. In the fourth grade he gave Keane a copy of Dynamic Figure Drawing by Burne Hogarth (highly recommended by the author and studying it will make animating worlds easier) and soon he was attending life drawing classes. What Glen did take from his father though was an ability to communicate an expression and feeling through a pose and to make his work clear. He would constantly draw in the desert and found that he had developed a very personal and intimate relationship with drawing and painting.
During high school, however, he was a great football player and wasn’t the typical cartoon geek that a lot of Disney animators come from. After high school Glen had to choose between taking a scholarship to Arizona State to play football and going to the California Institute of Arts to pursue a career in painting and drawing. Since he felt that drawing was like breathing to him and he just had to do it he picked the later option. However an odd twist of fate happened when Keane’s portfolio that was intended to go to the School of Painting was accidentally sent to the School of Film Graphics, where he was accepted. “I never planned to be in animation,” he remembered. “It was something that just sort of happened by accident to me. I wanted to go into painting or illustrating. I just knew I wanted to draw. I didn’t know anything about animation. My portfolio went to Calarts to get sent to the school of painting but somehow or another it got sent to the school of animation, and I was accepted into that. I thought ‘Oh well, I’ll give that a try.’ And I found out about animation. It was a combination of all the arts together. And there was always this sort of ham side of me that wanted to act and I found out animation was really answering that desire. I love to draw figures and realized that animation requires a good understanding of anatomy and figure drawing, so I could use all that information in animation plus acting.”
In the summer of 1973 Keane worked part time at the uninspiring, low quality studio Filmation on some of their poorly made TV series. However everything changed when members of the Disney training program came to the school and presented their tests. “Suddenly I realized I could do that,” Keane fondly remembers. “I didn’t feel I was good enough to be an animator but that I felt I could do.” Around that time he applied for a job at Disney and showed his portfolio to the great Eric Larson. Instead of marveling about what Glen was showing from what he had learned at Filmation, Eric just flipped through the portfolio really quickly, stopped on one drawing (a very simple, rough drawing of a figure), and said that if he could do some more like this one maybe he would have a chance. He also advised Keane to forget everything he learned about animation at Filmation because Disney wanted people who knew how to draw that they could teach how to animate. The young man quickly started spending excessive time sketching and worked hard to improve his skills. In 1974 Glen Keane was hired at the Disney Studio.
This week we will begin to put into motion our characters. It's not enough to simply design a character. The character needs to be thoroughly practiced and posed. Fine tune your character and alter it if you need to, until it's comfortable to animate. IN DETAIL describe how to approach this character in animation. If you were working at a studio, this would all need to be clear on paper prior to production. It makes more sense to give the animation team as much information possible before they animate, rather than try to explain it during animation or the revision stage. Time is money, and you will surely learn that as an animator, you want to have as much information as possible from the start. Too often, I see unnecessary revisions after scenes have been fully animated. Something as simple as a detailed model sheet could have been enough to prevent such set backs. Plan, plan plan.
Below are some wonderful drawings from Hans Bacher's blog. Designed by CHEN-YI CHANG for Disney's Mulan.
Your end goal is to have many industry standard portfolio pieces as possible. Keep asking yourself, can I animate these characters? Are they esthetically appealing? How do the forms move in 3 dementional space?
Here's a beautiful piece of animation I found while looking through the 11 Second Club. The short film was originally created by BJ Crawford for his 3rd year film. He says he recently finished it up in collaboration with many talented animators and artists. It's never too late! Feel how the characters move. They seem 3 dementional!
Nailing down a character design for your films can be intimidating and overwhelming. It seems like a simple enough task. There is a vast artillery of influence ranging from Mickey Mouse to UPA, from Sleeping Beauty to Triplets of Belleville. What hasn't been done before? What can you create that is uniquely yours?
This is a very important step in the pre-production stage. The look and feel of a character can influence what audience will think of them even before they move. There are many aspects to consider for character design, but I find these are the most important concepts to employ.
Silhouette
Simple shapes will make up your character. This is to help construct the character and gear it towards animation, but also to establish the character type. The weight and strength of a character should be obvious right away through silhouette. Look at your character from a distance. Even though you are not able to make out textures and details, they should be easily recognized. Think of the type of personality you want to give your character. If you have a villain you may want to make them large and ape like in silhouette, giving them a strong, intimidating physique (Gaston, Bluto, Ursela). Conversely, you may want your villian to be thin and wirey, taking on more of a evil mastermind role (Cruella Devil, Scar, Jaffar)
Plan
What makes you like your favourite characters? How are they constructed? Can they be easily animated and deconstructed into simple shapes? It can be helpful to think of these things. What makes some more successful and appealing than others? You may surprise yourself. Honestly, consider the painstaking hours of work that goes into animation. The design that you may have in mind, might be a great illustration but not so easy to animate. Pose out your character and don't be afraid to change or even scrap your idea to move into a more affordable direction. Also, consider your story. What will your character need to perform? Does the design allow for these actions?
Colour
Colours can help to further reinforce your character's personality. Evil colours tend to be dark. Light colours or bright colours tend to be more playful, good and pure. Walt Disney was a master at creating mood and atmosphere. Colours were no less intentional. Lots of blacks, dark purples and unnatural colours were used in many if not all villainous Disney characters.
Colour can also be very distracting. To maximize your use of colour, use it to highlight where you want the viewer to look. If you use lots of colour all over your character there won't be any focus.
Expressions
Dive in and experiment what range of expressions you can hit with your character. Will your character allow for wild and exaggerated jaw drops and bug-eyed surprise? or is your character very human like and stays within a more subtle range of emotion. Examples of this could be found in the work of John K. or Tex Avery. When excited their character's eyes pop out of their head, jaw drops and tongue rolls out of their mouth. Harley Quinn is more human-like and natural. She can be expressive, but really stays within the same range as you or I would.
The animation in this video is just so fun, clever and appealing. Watch it starting at 1:50. Limited animation at it's best. I love this style. It must have been so much fun to work on this.
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