comics reference
Aug. 19th, 2006 12:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashWally Wood's '22 Panels That Always Work'. What's interesting is comparing the label put on it and the actual use - while it's been distributed as a way to keep things visually interested when you're handed an overly-talky script, a teaching tool, its original intent was for Wood himself to use as a cheat sheet, but his assistants wanted copies, and they spread it to people who ended up working under them at other places.
It's not surprising that this became an instructional tool and a valuable reference** - these little distillations of knowledge get passed around like this. More than a few of my handouts in animation school were third-generation Xeroxes of stuff that originally started as studio tools. I learned the rules of 'shag always comes in threes' from a set of notes that seemed to originate in Oliver and Company; the tricks to defeat unconscious, weird, slanty asymmetry in your drawings were demonstrated to me in a handout originally made during production of Tthe Little Mermaid.
Cartoonists are hungry for tools to make their life easier, for these little nuggets of truth that are glaringly obvious once someone's put it into a handful of sentences or drawings. And now, they end up on the net, sooner or later. We won't let the best stuff go out of print. I've heard more than one story of Figure Drawing for All It's Worth being the course materials for a figure drawing class, despite it being out of print for years - it's a succinct reference, it's not allowed to just vanish, not when Xerox machines can make it available.
**or so it seems; personally, I'd never seen this until earlier this year, but then again I hung out in animation circles, not comics circles
It's not surprising that this became an instructional tool and a valuable reference** - these little distillations of knowledge get passed around like this. More than a few of my handouts in animation school were third-generation Xeroxes of stuff that originally started as studio tools. I learned the rules of 'shag always comes in threes' from a set of notes that seemed to originate in Oliver and Company; the tricks to defeat unconscious, weird, slanty asymmetry in your drawings were demonstrated to me in a handout originally made during production of Tthe Little Mermaid.
Cartoonists are hungry for tools to make their life easier, for these little nuggets of truth that are glaringly obvious once someone's put it into a handful of sentences or drawings. And now, they end up on the net, sooner or later. We won't let the best stuff go out of print. I've heard more than one story of Figure Drawing for All It's Worth being the course materials for a figure drawing class, despite it being out of print for years - it's a succinct reference, it's not allowed to just vanish, not when Xerox machines can make it available.
**or so it seems; personally, I'd never seen this until earlier this year, but then again I hung out in animation circles, not comics circles
no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 07:09 am (UTC)I ask because I've been tossed into a character design position and while I do enjoy drawing characters I've never put much thought into them beyond if *I* like them or not. So this kind of info is really interesting to me, too. ^-^;
no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 07:30 am (UTC)Keep 'em different sizes, and put them on a place where the body beneath is definitely convex.
Chuck Jones' design of Wile E. Coyote is an example of this: he's shaggy and unkempt and scruffy, but he's actually a very sleek design. Except for the exuberant floofs of fur at all his joints, that both show that he's furry and suggest that he's kinda scrawny and underfed...
I'd throw in some visual examples, as this is much easier to explain that way, but I'm tired and cranky right now. *grin*
... oh, what the hell.
here: notice, 3 tufts of feather-hair on her head. it looks "random". if there were 2 or 4 it would look "regular".
here, note the underside of the tail of the one on the left? it's the 'showing convexity with fur floofs". but only two, so it looks kinda weird.
see the shoulders? three little foofs.
Not the best examples but I don't feel like going trawling through my sketchbook scans!
Three is kind of the magic number for 'random' elements in the simplified realm of animation design. It's enough to hint at detail without actually cluttering up the place with real detail, and it has that 'natural' feel of oddness. Plus it can be kind of physically pleasing to scrawl out three little shags in a row.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-19 07:56 am (UTC)He drew three rocks because he wanted to convey "some rocks". Two rocks is not enough; it conveys "a pair of rocks". Four rocks conveys "some rocks" but it is one more rock than necessary. At least that's how I remember hearing it.