Gesture Drawing For Animation
her arms, pulling her hair, about to push the towel
over her hair to dry it. You feel the hair below her
left hand hanging; you feel the right arm cocked
and ready to push forward. You feel the back
stretching and the left side squashing, you feel the
downward motion set up by the angles of her
forearms.The body is also balancing, twisting and angling.
You feel she is thinking about what she is doing—
not just frozen into a still life.Now there is a list of verbs that should develop
into a drawing that has the breath of life in it. The
pose could be described by nouns: “woman after
bath,” but verbs would charge it with the life
giving qualities of bodily movement, rhythm,
motion and action allowing the viewer to
participate vicariously.Draw with a Purpose
To doodle, according to the dictionary, means to scribble aimlessly. A drawing on the
other hand has an aim; it has a reason for being. It may be an illustration, a depiction, a
caricature, a recording of some incident, a person, or a decoration. When making a
drawing for animation or for animation study it must be saying something, that is,
depicting an action or a mood, otherwise it becomes a mere doodle.
If you wanted to play Mozart music on the piano, you wouldn’t doodle on the piano
hoping someday to come across something that sounded like Mozart. No, first you would
study the rules—the rudiments of music and then with a little practice you could bring
Mozart to life. Drawing is no different.
An animator cannot relax into the luxury of doodling, for his drawings have to “say”
something, must communicate something.
So.... whenever studying drawing to better yourself for animation, don’t doodle (draw
aimlessly). Draw with a purpose—go for the gesture. Save your doodling for telephone
calls.
Dividing the Body into Units
All too often in sketching, if you don't see the whole figure (the figure as a whole, that is)
it is possible to end up with a delightful drawing, but which is at variance with the pose
or gesture. This is fine when doodling—to start out with a nothing in mind—somewhere
on the paper—and end up with a presentable drawing with a gesture of its own (but not