OUAN404 - Study Task 5 - Life Drawing and Animation

As mentioned in the post about the importance of life drawing post, when it comes to creating animation a fundamental understanding of anatomy and form with the human body is an essential skill, due to aspects such as; movement, expression and gesture as well as understanding the volume of objects and keeping that consistent frame to frame.

Entertainment Studio, Disney, have the tradition of having available, free life drawing classes for its artists within its studios. They more than anyone understand the importance of accuracy in anatomy when it comes to animating and therefore the imperative need for life drawing. These classes are used to back up the idea that capturing the anatomy and the senses of motion that drawing from life offers improves the gesture in animated drawings. One of the visual development artists at Disney, Dan Cooper, also stated that whilst you can use other references to animate from and practice gesture, drawing from life gives you 'structure, perspective and a certain vitality through rhythmic gestures'.

By using simple lines, animators should be able to give a figure life and personality. By personality I mean a certain individuality that isn't just simply a standard pose or stereotypical expression. As well as this, the figure should look like it is existing in a 3D space, to make it feel like it is existing in the real world or a real world, which is important when it comes to placing a character into an environment and making the two aspects interact with one another. I think it is also important to understand the difference between drawing figures for illustration, and drawing figures for animation. The illustrator drawing the figure will only need one view of a model, whereas when it comes to animating a model, multiple views will be needed through different poses in order to generate the movement through a sequence of images. In essence although the training for both develops the skill to observe and translate what is seen onto paper, there is a certain analytical aspect to drawing from life for animation and a further understanding of the way the body moves that isn't necessary for illustration. Furthermore, when drawing models for animation there has to be as little individual technique as possible, as longer animations generally have many individuals working on them and each artists style must adjust to the direction of the whole production.