Making a motion comic Parts 25: Skeching out the "motion test".

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LuisEscobar

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Edited By LuisEscobar

For Parts 1 and 2 (Which deals with the story as an Harry Potter antithesis.) CLICK HERE 
For Part 3 (Which is about thinking about what style to use)  CLICK HERE
For Part 4 and 5 (Which is the about how to begin designing urban sorcerers) CLICK HERE
For Parts 6, 7, 8 (In which I'm just refining the characters from Part 4 and 5) CLICK HERE
For Part 9 (In which I design a Raven, begin designing the location and attempt to color the main character) CLICK HERE 
For Part 10 (Where I finish the final design of the main character) CLICK HERE 
For Part 11 (Where I work out the design of the location) CLICK HERE  
For Parts 12 and 13 (Where I write about design principals, among other things) CLICK HERE 
For Part 14 (Where I go into why you need to study the real before you can really do cartoons well) CLICK HERE 
For Part 15 (Where I design a viper with a human face and do some tonal thumbnail studies) CLICK HERE 
For Parts 16 - 18 (Where I rough out the drawing below) CLICK HERE 
For Parts 19 & 20 (Which deals with perspective cheats, shading and adding tone) CLICK HERE 
For Parts 21 & 22 (Where I experiment with final lines and looks) CLICK HERE
For Part 23 & 24 (Where I finish a color rendering of my concept drawing) CLICK HERE
 
Five months ago I started blogging about my process for a personal project I'm working on on my site (luisescobarblog.com). It's going to be done in a Motion Comic style. I thought you might be interested so I'm going to be posting up the process  here too.
 
PART 25
    

 
 
Alright, so it’s time to start adding poses for my “motion test”.  I’m limiting the poses to five total (including the last pose, which I’ve already finished and colored). If I think I need to add an anticipation pose (antic) or an overshoot (ovs) I’ll put them in later. For now I’ll just want to draw clear, well drawn “key” poses.

Easier said than done.

For the first time since I started writing my process, I didn’t want to post up my drawings.  I’m having sooo much trouble with these drawings.  I’m not happy with them at all. Still, it’s part of the process. I need to show them even when I think I’ve failed or when my skills aren’t up to par.

Generally, when I begin posing out a scene, I draw the gestures of all the poses I’m going to use.  I do this so I can check if my poses are going to work how I want them to, without having to go into the labor of making pretty drawings. This is what they looked like:

Looking at hot dog….

About to take a bite…

and sees something...

reaction shot from pull out (as will be seen further down below)…

Once I’m satisfied that I’ve got the poses that I want, I then begin to flesh out the drawings.

Okay, so I’m used to drawing bug eyed yellow people for a living. The style of the show is such, that I don’t really need to give them really naturalistic poses.  When I’m confronted with characters that DO need to give natural poses to, it suddenly becomes really difficult.  I can’t rely on the bad habits that I’ve picked up in my last 17 years.

So here’s me, trying really hard to make Rob look like he’s holding a hot dog very naturally:

As I drew the drawing above, I realized I hadn’t really worked out Rob’s model as much as I thought I had.  Especially the hair from this point of view.  Also, I wasn’t too sure about the nose, mouth and chin relationships.  I drew the drawing below over the drawing above:

I still didn’t like the drawing, though I thought it was getting better.  I took some time solve the hair problem and I drew the drawing below:

Better hair shape but I STILL didn’t like the drawing.  It felt staged.  He just didn’t look natural. Who holds a hot dog and admires it like that? It looked a bit weird. I thought perhaps it was just a matter of turning the head and shoulders:

But it was even worse when I did that.  I didn’t even bother drawing a nice version, I could tell it wasn’t going to work right away.

I went online and Googled people holding hot dogs. I must admit, in the back of my mind, there was this thought that perhaps I should change the hot dog to a hamburger or a pizza, because the idea of a pretty boy in a tight shirt admiring a hot dog seemed to hint at something I didn’t intend. In the end I convinced myself not to. Mostly, because I personally love eating hot dogs and I just wanted it to be a hot dog. I also looked at it as a challenge to myself.

One of the things I looked for, were photos where guys held hot dogs without it being an ad.

I found that the ones that looked most natural to me, were the ones where guys held something else in their other hand, like a drink. Another thing was that they didn’t really hold the hot dog up high, but kept it at chest level.  So I gave Rob a drink and lowered the hot dog:

It was better.  So I cleaned it up a bit so I can see it better:

…and RUINED IT, by giving him a crazed expression.  I’m going to need to go back  to the drawing above and figure out a better expression than the one I gave him.

I got frustrated and decided I should just keep going with the other poses and come back to the first pose later. Here’s pose two:

As you can see from all my drawings here, I don’t have a light touch.  I scribble a lot until I find what I need. I explore until I can visualize where I want to go and then do another pass to clarify the scribbles:

Once again, fail. I don’t think this reads the way I want. It’s too stiff. It needs to be redrawn in a different way.

I moved on to the next panel anyway:

Not sure about this one either. I’ll need to see what I do with the panel before it, in order to decide whether or not I should keep it. I cheated drawing it because all I did was cut and move the face and arms around from the pose before, instead of redrawing the pose.

I kept going and drew the last pose:

Not sure how it’s working so far.  It seems off. Especially because of the slanted background.  I may need to slant Rob a bit.  Also, I think I need to move the camera down so Rob’s feet aren’t on the edge of the frame.

Overall, I’m just frustrated with the work.  I need to work through it though.  I know at some point, I’ll hit something I think is working and I’ll come out learning something.

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IcePrince_X

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#1  Edited By IcePrince_X

thanks. 
 
I am learning alot from this.