Showing posts with label Bill Peet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Peet. Show all posts

A Kick in the Head, Part Five

A couple of posts ago I encouraged you to draw with more appeal; this post is all about making your poses more expressive.

I think most people don't draw as expressively as they can. They don't push their poses and expressions to the point that they could and ambiguous drawing is the result. We all know that one of the hardest parts about drawing is crafting an image where anyone that looks at it can tell exactly what the characters are thinking and feeling. It's not easy, and like all the other posts in this series, that's why I'm bringing it up.

Sometimes I think people restrain their drawings because they want their drawings to look "pretty", and they're afraid that pushing the expressions too far will make for an "ugly" drawing.

To me, nothing could be further than the truth. I really love drawing pushed expressions, in fact, without that, I don't think drawing would be much fun. My favorite drawings of mine are the ones that have the most caricatured expressions.

Drawing expressively doesn't mean giving every drawing over-the-top broad wacky expressions, it just means that whatever the feelings and attitude of the character you're drawing, every element of their body (their face, their posture, etc.) reflects what they're feeling, and their attitude is very clear to whoever looks at the drawing. But the expressions should be appropriate; subtle for a subtle expression and pushed further for a more extreme expression.

Maybe another reason that expressiveness gets lost is that people are trying to draw "realistically" and they think only "cartoony" drawings are expressive. But real people can actually be pretty expressive. Also, we're not trying to recreate realism, every drawing is a caricature of reality on some level and every piece of art we create should be making a statement, right? Isn't that what makes it "art"? Besides, photography (and our own eyes) are great at capturing realism. Recording the world on paper exactly as we see it seems like a silly reason to draw.

It's possible that some comic books may have had a bit of a negative influence on expressive drawings. Sometimes comic book drawing is really technically good but without a lot of pushed expressions. I think sometimes artists that gravitate towards comics get really interested in drawing anatomy, vehicles, environments and dynamic angles but acting and emotions on the character's faces seem to be a low priority. I've seen really great looking comics that are drawn well but you can only tell what the characters are feeling by reading their dialogue balloons.

Of course, there are also plenty of great comic book artists who draw "realistically" and dynamically but also with great expressions that totally communicate to the viewer.

Will Eisner - a real master of finding the balance between drama, realism and caricature.




Jordi Bernet





There are a lot of other great comic artists who are good at this, I know. Alex Toth and Joe Kubert are also artists that can draw realistically, dramatically and also expressively.

Some other examples of expressive drawing:

Andre Franquin






Chuck Jones



Bill Peet










Quentin Blake








Ronald Searle





Sorry, these aren't the greatest examples, and I know I always return to the same artists over and over again as examples - I'm always pressed for time in scanning and posting. I'll try to broaden my examples in the future.

As always, look to real people and real actors to inspire you in finding great expressions.

It's always educational to see an actress who can remain attractive and appealing while being expressive. Two actresses who do a great job playing quirky characters with unique and odd expressions and pull it off in an appealing way:

Natalie Portman in "Garden State". She did a great job of using her face to show the oddball nature of her character but doing it in a really charming way.





When you think of the acting style Natalie used in the "Star Wars" movies it becomes even more apparent that her expressiveness in "Garden State" was a choice because it fit the character. In the "Star Wars" movies her character was a leader who was royalty and had to always appear strong and in charge, and always formal in all of her relationships. I point this out to illustrate that her odd and quirky expressions in "Garden State" were a conscious choice and not just her default acting style. It's a good illustration of the point that different characters have different levels of caricature that are appropriate to their personality and environment.

Gillian Jacobs in "Community"









More Community screencaps can be found at the Fishstick Theatre.

She has a great face and on the show she seems to always have a bit of a tweaked expression on her character's face even when she's just sitting and listening to another character talk. Her expressions are never symmetrical...always a bit off-kilter, which fits perfectly with her quirky character Britta.

A quirky, oddball character has a certain range and type of expressions that are appropriate for that character but wouldn't be right for other types of characters. And if all your characters have tweaky, weird expressions, then they don't seem quirky, they just become your style of expression because they don't have straighter, more subtle expressions to contrast with. So find the right range and type of expression for each character and each project. Again, push yourself - don't draw the same stock faces and gestures over and over. Study, observe and find new ones!

Drawing expressively is a lot like drawing appealingly, in that I've never heard someone say "Oh, that guy draws too appealingly" or "that guy draws too expressively". You can never have enough of those things; they both make drawings great.

A Kick in the Head, Part Two

A few years ago a bunch of us were looking at portfolios for possible trainees at work and it struck me that we were rejecting all of them because their drawings all lacked one thing: appeal. It didn't matter how great the staging was, or the acting, or the drawing; if the applicant's work didn't have some amount of appeal to it, they were passed over.

I realized that all of the people that work in Story at Disney have a lot of appeal in their drawings. We don't really talk about it much, but it's very important. When we screen our work for the studio we are basically screening the whole movie in storyboard form to see if the story and characters are working. The whole studio is invited, and they all have to sit through an hour and a half of just storyboards cut together with music borrowed from other movies and voice acting done by people in the studio instead of the final voices. There's no color and no movement - just our static drawings - so the whole thing is very rough around the edges. Anything we can do to make the experience more pleasant for the viewers help them have a more positive reaction to our work and to the movie in general.

I include this along with "Silhouette" as a "Kick in the Head" because it can be easy to find excuses to let appeal drop from your work. It's too easy to let deadlines and time pressure convince you that you shouldn't take that extra five minutes and go over your drawing one more time and try and make it more appealing. It's easy to say to yourself, "it's only the story that matters, and clarity, and I just don't have time to draw appealingly, it's not important".

But here's why it is important: unappealing drawings can kill an otherwise good idea. I have seen this over and over: a really good idea gets storyboarded with unappealing drawings and the idea just dies. People can't put their finger on why it doesn't work but they know it's not quite clicking, and it's only because the drawings are not very appealing. And so a new idea is brainstormed, and it gets rewritten and reboarded all over again, when the old idea was good, it just didn't get presented right. Everyone responds to good design and appeal on a deep level and they aren't always able to articulate the fact that they're being turned off by unappealing drawing and it's affecting the way they react to the ideas. But it definitely happens.

Ideas can be unappealing or appealing as well. As you storyboard and make choices about how to present the characters and situations, you should always strive to find the charm and entertainment in every idea in the most appealing way.

I don't exactly know how to tell anyone to improve the appeal in their drawings. We all respond to it on a deep level and I think we should all make sure to listen to that voice that tells us when our drawing could be more appealing. Make appeal a priority in your work and study the work of artists that you find appealing.

Vance Gerry once said that he felt Robert Crumb drew well but that his drawings were unappealing. I think that's a great observation.




Being able to draw well and being able to draw appealingly are two totally different things.

I once drew a lot of flak for saying that this Jack Davis drawing was unappealing to me.



I think a big part of what makes this drawing unappealing to me is the level of detail. The Robert Crumb drawings are like that too. When Jack Davis draws with less detail I find his appeal goes way up. But that's just me.



Proportions are very important to appeal. The proportions in the Crumb and Davis drawings are part of what makes them unappealing to me.

In general I would say that it's more appealing to emphasize the more expressive parts of the figure: like heads, eyes, mouths and hands.



Also you should de-emphasize the parts that are unexpressive, like noses. This doesn't mean leave them off, or make them small, necessarily...it means just don't give them as much emphasis as the more expressive parts. What do I mean by this?

In the movie "The Prince of Egypt" there was a conscious design choice to elongate the area of the nose on the faces. This has the side effect of pushing the eyes and mouth far away from each other.



I think in general it's better to put the eyes and mouth as close to each other as possible. What the mouth does affects the eyes by pushing up or pulling down on the lower eyelids, and when the eyes and mouth get too far apart it can be hard to maintain that effect between the two. That's why drawing certain animals with long faces - like goats and horses - can be challenging and you have to work extra hard to make them appealing. Also the nose isn't an expressive feature - it doesn't add much to expressions, or change from expression to expression like the eyes and mouth do - so I think it shouldn't get the same kind of "real estate" as the mouth and the eyes do.

Some clues to appeal can be seen when you look at an appealing drawing of a character that's supposed to be ugly.



Check out more Ariel and Ursula development here.

Preston Blair talks about Rhythm as an aid to appeal in his books.



Appeal is a deep, personal thing that means something different to everyone. All I can say is, make it a priority in your work and it will come through. Some artists that I find appealing are:

Quentin Blake




Richard Scarry




Earl Oliver Hurst



Freddy Moore




Mary Blair



Bill Peet




Chuck Jones




I don't know what else to say regarding appeal, just be aware of it and feed yourself a good visual diet of appealing images to inspire you and give you something to aim for.