Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Note
Here's where drawing training comes into play
in a huge way. How do you know what propor-
tions are right for a body unless you've trained
yourself to see and understand what is right?
Drawing is the cheapest, quickest, most porta-
ble way to
train
your eye to see what is right.
(If you look at drawing simply as a
training
exercise
for something you
really enjoy doing
,
you'll get really good
really fast
and not even
know you're doing it.)
Drawing is just understanding mathematical
relationships. (Hello? What is modeling?)
Any-
one
— and I mean
anyone
— can learn to
draw and learn to draw
well
! It's just a matter
of doing whatever it takes to trust that you will
see from your own drawings the same quality
of mathematical relationships that you see in
“good” drawings.
The Vilppu Drawing Manual
by Glen Vilppu
(available through the Animation World Net-
work, http:www.awn.com) is the
single most
helpful topic on getting someone from square
one to having their work look like a master fig-
urative artist in simple, understandable,
achievable steps. (While working at Disney, I
took Glen's life drawing classes and was
dumbstruck when he was able to get produc-
tion assistants to create life drawings that
looked as good as a full-on animator's draw-
ings in a matter of a couple of months!) To put
it bluntly: If you want to learn how to draw fig-
ures well, get his topic, read it, and do the
exercises. It's as simple as that.
However, even if you're not a master figura-
tive artist, you can still make sure your
character's proportions are correct by loading
into your backdrops images of characters in
similar poses that you know
are
correctly pro-
portioned. By working from something that
is
correct, you are training yourself to
expect
to
see those same correct proportions in your
own work. Pretty neat, huh?
Figure 9-39
Figure 9-40
15. Select
Activate Sub-Patches
for the
box, and move the points of its middle
Y segment
down
to indicate the thick-
ness of the shoe's sole.
16. In a Top viewport, drag the points
around so the box begins looking like a
shoe.
