This is the first drawing where I feel that I've accurately articulated emotional tone. I paused the movie at the appropriate moment and drew, then hit play and shaded. The only flaw I feel is the shading of the ear, which is incorrect. Simba is looking over The Pridelands just before Nala comes up beside him here, and you can see the dismay and disbelief. The way his mane is blowing in the wind is correct but inefficient; it's only well suited to a mid-state of animation, whereas this is a still picture.

I certainly don't plan to adopt the Disney style of drawing, because our fandom has plenty of it already--and don't get me wrong, it's wonderful, it's just common. I'm going to be very unique. One thing I have to learn from Disney is the expressiveness of characters. Ears, eyes, and many other body language gestures are incorporated into their characters to convey emotion very effectively.

I've to fish very deep for compliments on this drawing from Fox, a fellow artist and my mate, because he's of the opinion that replicating others' drawings is useless. It took some arguing to even get him to say that I did capture the expression and emotional tone of this character, because he believes that it's somebody else's drawing no matter whether I put my pencil to the paper or not. That is his belief, however. I have discovered that my reliance on the original sketches has dropped significantly since I've begun this procedure, though I am indeed hard pressed to say whether it is ultimately going to be helpful to my aspirations.

I'm attempting some original pieces now, but of other people's characters. Gideon's 'Cox' is the one I'm toying with. I think I'm going to sketch him and him alone, probably copy every image of him I can find, and then attempt my own.

~Treth