At 10/14/12 01:35 PM, Otto wrote:
I love everything you do, your quality of line is beautiful. Do you think you could tell me a little about your process, from start to finish? I'm curious as to how you work
Thanks. :]
I was about to start working on a picture for Legolass when I saw this, so I tried to keep track of it and take notes as I went along. It's pretty rough, but hopefully they still get the idea across.
THE VISUAL
1. Start with thumbnails. These usually go on the top corner of the page I'm drawing on. I like putting it on the actual page, so I can refer to it without having to look away. I attack them as gesture drawings because having the silhouette lets me layer on scribbles on top of scribbles of what I know are body parts without getting confused. It's also a good time to try out different poses.
2. I start the drawing with the lines of action for each character. It helps me balance the figure and also helps keep my focus while I'm building the characters, so none of the looseness of the original thumbnail gets lost in translation. I never goes as far as drawing an actual skeleton or stick figure. It helps me if, from the beginning, I'm thinking in three dimensions. I go straight into a very, very rough sketch over the action lines, which you can kind of see under everything. The idea of this first sketch over is to stay focused on the flow and weight of the figures as opposed to anything technical about structure.
3. Start definition. This is where I start paying attention to anatomy, and also start working more on things like facial and hand expression. With cartoons, there's a lot more breathing room, so I don't really worry too much about getting everything anatomically perfect, but it still has to be believable. I forgot to scan this step, but before adding clothes and everything, I make sure the figures are down. If I'm ever confused about how a limb is moving, I'll draw "seams" across it that help define it.
4. A little cleaning and more work on details. I still keep the lines light just so I don't have to make any commitments just yet.
5. When I'm finally happy with everything, it's just cleaning and sharpening from then on in. On this though, somehow I messed up the footing for the last image, so I'm gonna have to go back and fix that.
And I will because I'm going to be coloring this. While I'm at it, I guess I'll take notes on that too for Jester and Sock. :]
I hope that helped! That was the very basics of how I do a sketch. There are a lot of little details that I'm kind of anal about, but as far as my general process goes for character drawings, I'd have to say that's it pretty much it.
And just slipping this in here, for the next four days, I'll still be doing sketches for people who donate $5 or more to the ARMSmasters project on Kickstarter if anyone is interested.