Hands and Feet

There's always this thing people say "oooo hands are so hard" or "oooo portraits are the hardest" - to be honest, it's all pretty hard, BUT it can be simplified, in actual fact, hands are a shape, made up of shapes, just like the face and the figure. It makes it so much easier to digest thinking of it like that. At iAnimate, we had a great lecture from Stephen Melagrano about appealing hand shapes, describing different poses like leaves, for example. Anyway, after watching Rad's old lecture yesterday, I found another on his blog "Hands and feet" and it's great, and i'm only a little way in. Check it out here.

I'd definitely recommend spending some separate time on studying hands and feet, as these are some of the most important tools in gesture. As stated in "Drawn to Life" - you can read a pose with just hands and feet, but the pose isn't as clear if you just draw the torso. I think it's important, as it can be a common thing in life drawing or gesture drawing, and you see multiple times the feet and hands are cut off. They are essential body language tools, and definitely one to keep an eye on.

I've started a small board on hand references

http://www.pinterest.com/indi_pops/hand-references/

and have a ton of different feet and hands and body l; language references on animpin http://www.pinterest.com/ejsu28/reference-feet/

Maybe watch one of your favorite movies and sketch the hand gestures, it'll really help if you're into animation too. Man, I need to go draw now.

Rad the man

Yelllooo me maties!

Over the last week I've been re-watching one of Rad Sechrist's old lectures (If you don't know who Rad is I'll put all the links at the bottom).

He's brilliant and has some superb stuff on his blog too. He was asked about how to draw a good freehand circle, and one of his mentors a long time ago got him a massive wad of paper, and made him draw a whole lot of circles. So I was playing around, and ended up playing with bubbles

But aside from that, there was also a point he made about how sometimes people scribble a super rough idea first, it just looks like a blob, and then draw out from that. So that's where the girl above playing with bubbles was born from. I really like the technic, adds spontaneity to the workflow for sure! TRY IT! :D

Rad: a storyboard artist at Dreamworks.
Rad's Blog: Rad How To
LECTURE

Day 35

Well this morning was a bit unsuccessful, but hopefully I can make up for it throughout the day :D

Thought I would post some more links today

Animation Mentor Lectures - small video demonstrating the lectures and how they are utilised, if you interested in attending

Thoughts on animation - this is a little old now, but has some great workflow tips and tricks

Rad How To - Rad is a dreamworks storyboard artist, great blog! I'm actually going take a look at this later and do some sketches and notes.

Also! HAPPY 25th BIRTHDAY PIXAR!