Drawing Lab: Israel Saeta Cabrera, 13 March 2014
Learning the simple basics of animating characters and creating an illustration (regardless of technical ability).
Through a series of exercises, this workshop will explore how to animate characters; animating a pose, not actually creating movement.
Characters should tell a story, whether it’s a Michelangelo’s or a stick figure. This workshop will provide students with some simple basics on how to do this. During the workshop, students will be encouraged to experiment and hopefully learn other simple techniques of their own. Students will create a simple illustration including a character, props and background. The session will finish with a group discussion on the work produced during the workshop.
Duration: 2h 30mins
Materials: Sketchbook or loose paper to draw on, any size but no smaller than A5. Any drawing medium is fine, pencil, pen, watercolour, etc.
Exercises
Stick it to ‘em! (15 mins)
Produce a minimum of 4 or 5 stick characters in some dynamic poses, whether humans, animals or anything else. Some material will be brought by Israel for the class to use as reference.
Copycat (15 mins)
Show each other your figures for reference and creative input. Create a few more characters inspired by each other’s works or refined some of your original figures.
Flesh on the bone (30 mins)
Choose one or two of your favourite characters that you just created and build them up a little in terms of body structure, clothes and props. At this point it might help if you think of your character(s) back story and personality: a warrior, magician, famous person, comic character or even yourself.
10 MINUTE BREAK
Practice makes perfect (10mins
In preparation for the final illustration, create some small rough sketches and choose the one that you like the most.
One image is worth more than a thousand words (40 mins)
Using the image from the previous exercise, create an illustration with your character using all you’ve learnt. Don’t get hung up on technical ability, it’s about the impact of your illustration and if it tells a story, not how well it’s drawn. Remember that above all it should be fun,
be creative!
The WOW effect (30 mins)
Everyone’s work will be displayed and discussion encourage in order to examine each other’s works.
