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Drawing and thinking of attitudes, gestures, and emotions...
a year ago
One of the things I *LOVE* doing is drawing facial expressions and attitudes. To some extent I also love drawing body language but the nuance of that is less pronounced than drawing the face because body language is an outgrowth of your state of mind and the first place your inner thoughts become revealed to the outside world is on your face. More fun for me is that your facial expressions are the purest "picture" of your inner personality. Everybody can convey the same emotions, but the "coloration" of that emotion, the intensity, and the spark of your expression is going to be unique to how you think and feel. Drawing expressions and attitudes is inherently linked to the design of the character and the more design and exaggeration you put into it can further separate two characters that are otherwise doing the same thing but with different designs. Think about various live action and animated scenarios where two characters have their brains switched and suddenly you (as the viewer) need to be convinced that the same character personality traits are inhabiting a completely different body. That's also the fun of watching a good comic doing an impersonation of another well known character.
I think about this ALL this time and it's what I endeavor to learn anytime I'm asked to do a commission for somebody. I don't want to just draw a character's *design* I want to draw them *thinking* and *doing*, and to that end I often engage in long conversations with folks to try and get them to communicate what makes their character tick. It's important to know that personality is NOT backstory, though backstory can highly influence your personality. Personality is expressed in little moments of situational storytelling: how do you feel when you wake up with a pain in your ankle, what does your face look like when you've got a great secret and want to tell everyone but you made a promise, what are your movements like when you've been hard working for 8 hours but you haven't eaten in 12? Every character will look a little different in each situation and the same character might not behave the same way if they've slept well, eaten recently, or are now in a bad mood.
When thinking about personalities I usually suggest to people to think in broad baseline attitudes because that helps enter into your character's usual mindset. These baselines are your character's natural outlook on life: grumpy, suspicious, absent-minded, sunny, noble, naive, and so on. These baseline personality traits can sometimes be well known ("Man, Gary is always so emo about everything.") but for the most part real people downplay their attitudes in normal social interactions because that's how you avoid drama and get ahead in life. But when you're DRAWING characters and telling stories then it really helps to thinkin about these baseline attitudes and find ways to SHOW them. It pays off to be bold and exaggerated in these aspects so that the audience you're performing for can instantly see and understand the thinking going on inside the character's head.
Why am I writing about this? This is something I've been thinking about for a long time and it's a conversation I repeatedly have with people when getting started on character commissions and I thought some of you might be interested in the thinking behind it all. I'm ALSO writing about this because I just watched a video where Tom Hanks gives an entertaining acting lesson to an audience and ALL the things he talks about plays RIGHT into what I've been thinking about for years. It gets to the heart of why your character is more than just happy with a latent interest in being mischevious. Your character has desires, has experienced many things that shaped how they express themselves in moments of delight or frustration, and when you think about all the different ways your character can act in a specific way at a specific moment under specific circumstances then you'll start seeing your own art and the art you commission become a lot more alive and unique in personality.
Take a look at this video and enjoy the possibilities when you think about your own characters.
I think about this ALL this time and it's what I endeavor to learn anytime I'm asked to do a commission for somebody. I don't want to just draw a character's *design* I want to draw them *thinking* and *doing*, and to that end I often engage in long conversations with folks to try and get them to communicate what makes their character tick. It's important to know that personality is NOT backstory, though backstory can highly influence your personality. Personality is expressed in little moments of situational storytelling: how do you feel when you wake up with a pain in your ankle, what does your face look like when you've got a great secret and want to tell everyone but you made a promise, what are your movements like when you've been hard working for 8 hours but you haven't eaten in 12? Every character will look a little different in each situation and the same character might not behave the same way if they've slept well, eaten recently, or are now in a bad mood.
When thinking about personalities I usually suggest to people to think in broad baseline attitudes because that helps enter into your character's usual mindset. These baselines are your character's natural outlook on life: grumpy, suspicious, absent-minded, sunny, noble, naive, and so on. These baseline personality traits can sometimes be well known ("Man, Gary is always so emo about everything.") but for the most part real people downplay their attitudes in normal social interactions because that's how you avoid drama and get ahead in life. But when you're DRAWING characters and telling stories then it really helps to thinkin about these baseline attitudes and find ways to SHOW them. It pays off to be bold and exaggerated in these aspects so that the audience you're performing for can instantly see and understand the thinking going on inside the character's head.
Why am I writing about this? This is something I've been thinking about for a long time and it's a conversation I repeatedly have with people when getting started on character commissions and I thought some of you might be interested in the thinking behind it all. I'm ALSO writing about this because I just watched a video where Tom Hanks gives an entertaining acting lesson to an audience and ALL the things he talks about plays RIGHT into what I've been thinking about for years. It gets to the heart of why your character is more than just happy with a latent interest in being mischevious. Your character has desires, has experienced many things that shaped how they express themselves in moments of delight or frustration, and when you think about all the different ways your character can act in a specific way at a specific moment under specific circumstances then you'll start seeing your own art and the art you commission become a lot more alive and unique in personality.
Take a look at this video and enjoy the possibilities when you think about your own characters.
I admire the amount of life and animation you bring to your character sketches, and I've collected a number of your doodle sheets to use as inspiration. I wish I could draw as well as you do!
And thank you!