Character sketches 29/03/2015

To be able to draw convincing character animation in 2D, you have to practice drawing the characters a lot. That way, you start to get a feeling for the "volumes" of their body.

Without help of 3D software, you need to really do the "3D modeling" in your own head. It takes practice. The bodies in 2D animation are often made up of simple primitives first. For example, the head is a sphere, with the chin added and a cross drawn on it to know where the eyes and nose should go. 2D animation is about volumes of the shapes, not the lines around them. Even though that's all you see of them. It's never completely perfect though - even if you check famous 2D animated movies, there's still something organically imperfect about the characters as they move. It's possible to render 3D animation with so called "toon shaders" these days, but it makes human characters look less interesting, perhaps because that organic imperfection is missing. I would limit the use of toon shaded 3D object to hard surface objects, like airplanes and such. Anyway, I hope you enjoy today's sketch.

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