Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Post #100, Old Portfolio Stuff

100 posts, how times fly.
It feels like I just started blogging, a sign that I am having fun, I guess.

I want to clarify a couple of things:
I do apologize for not having accepted any invitations to join some of you on a variety of social networks. Absolutely nothing personal, but I just don't have the time right now. Maybe in the future some time.
Also, just because I showcase the work of Disney's great animators as well as some of my own stuff from time to time does not mean that I put my work on to their level. These guys were in a class by themselves, and that's that!
But since a lot of you are students and probably grew up with some of the films 
I worked on, having the occasional "Behind the Scenes" post and talking about those movies might be of interest to some of you.
For the classical Disney animation purist, rest assured, there will be plenty more
"Nine Old Men" gold coming this way.

I selected these drawings from my Disney application portfolio.
They date back to 1978/79.
Life drawings, animal sketches, motion studies from Super-8 film and cartoon experiments, where I tried out different styles. (Second to the last)
I keep hearing my life drawing teacher from way back saying: " If you get too confident with your drawing, try sketching with your other hand (to keep learning)."
That sounded funny at first, but it makes sense. What he meant was: don't show off with what you think you know, keep observing and improving instead.

I think if you know how to draw well,  you own something treasured. It shows that you put quality time into observing and trying to understand things.
And it doesn't matter if you are a pencil animator or if you work in CG, good drawing will help you to visualize so much better, and you will be ahead of the game.
In other words, you will know a bad pose from a good one. You will be able to say:
this hand looks awful, but that one looks great. And combined with your acting sensibilities: this is entertaining, that isn't!
This journey to become a good draughtsman is a lot of fun, but of course you never arrive. Hopefully you'll just keep on learning.

My five cents worth of wisdom for the day, here are a bunch of oooold drawings.