Animation, Illustration, and Painting

What I want to write about today is my personal philosophy about the 3 different disciplines in art I am coming across during my studies: animation, illustration, and painting. Perhaps it is not so much a philosophy as simply the way I see art. There are just so many aspects and skills we need to develop, sometimes we're at lost as to what the heck we should focus on.

Everyone has a different opinion, and here's my take on it.

I would like to split the ingredients of good art into 2 main categories: the foundation, and the pretty trimmings. And I believe that BOTH are equally important. I just think that the foundation should be developed first before putting on the pretty trimmings. It's like baking. You can't make the cookies without the flour (the foundation) but you can't make GOOD cookies without the chocolate chips and butter either. But then, what is the foundation? In animation alone we have to worry about motion, line quality, being on model, anatomy, proportions, personality of the character, etc. How are we supposed to juggle it all?

Well, there is one line I have heard that I agree with wholeheartedly, and that is: structure is everything.

I think we should approach each piece of art we make with building up an appropriate structure/foundation first. But each foundation differs from discipline to discipline. Here are the things I feel to be the understructures of the 3 different areas:

Animation - the key to animation is motion, and line. Take away the pretty drawings, the proportion, the nice cel-shading or coloring, and you will still have an animation. An animation that does not move, or move properly, is no animation. In order to create motion, lines must be use, therefore effective use of lines (using no more and no less than what is needed) is also necessary to the foundation.

Illustration - the key to illustration, and by illustration I mean fully drafted and rendered using pencils/markers, etc, is value. The value of each shade, and how well they contrast against each other, and how they draw the viewer's eye. Take away line, color, etc, and if your values are good, you will still have an illustration. Take away value, and you have a piece of lineart, or flat colorwork.

Painting - the key to painting is color. Here's the topic that got me started on this whole post. One of my classmates believe that in painting, color doesn't matter as long as you get the value right. But I submit that color is the essence of painting. And understanding color and how it works is most important. Without using great colors, what you have on your hands is simply a colored illustration. It's not a true painting. If you take away great layout, perspective, value, or anything else, but have color, it is still a painting, but if you take away color, it is no painting.

So those are what I believe to be the "flour" of each area. I think that if enough time is spent developing them, at the end of the day that's one of the main things that will separate the good art from the bad. The other thing that will make a piece of art even better is when you use "pretty trimmings" and apply them. The pretty trimmings are basically principles from the other areas of art, even beyond the 3 I just talked about. For example, if you have good motion in your animation, and then apply the anatomy you've learned in figure drawing, with perspective from layout, with value from illustration, and then on top of all that, good color theory from painting, the final result will be like a triple chocolate chip cookie made from the finest ingredients. It will definitely be better than the animation with only good motion and shaky anatomy. But I'm also saying that the one with good motion and shaky anatomy is better than the one with perfect anatomy and crappy motion.

/end rant

This is one of the things I love about blogging, in writing this post, unorganized as it may be, I am able to let myself hear the thoughts that I never even knew I had. Maybe I am merely regurgitating what everyone already knows but I feel that before putting this down to paper, I never really -understood-, but now I have. And in doing so, I hope I can "walk the talk" and produce better artwork from here on out.

Also I will be taking a short break from updating this blog since it's reading week. Next post will probably be sometime in the middle of next week. For now I'll be working on assignments at home =_= and catching up on sleep. I really want to go out for/or make sushi though, I am positively wilting from withdrawal, anyone up for some raw fish and vinegared rice?

Scribbles: faces and clouds

There was a digital painting due today. I manage to scrape together something to hand in, but I'm hoping to rework it as soon as I get the chance. I wanted to do so much in this painting, but I simply ran out of time and had to rush. I even had to stoop to the burn/dodge tool to bump it up a bit and try to hide the flaws. (how atrocious!) I would consider this to be a work in progress, there is much I want to learn through it. I just cropped out the parts I am ok with, the final product will be more refined and hopefully totally different when it comes down to the details.

Now for some random ramblings. This past week's been pretty tough. In the first semester of this program, I pulled a few all-nighters, two to be exact, and after that I swore to myself I would never ever lose sleep over anything. Sleep is just so wonderful and amazing to me, and no amount of deadlines will deter me. So far I've been successful at scheduling my time so that I would never have to go without sleep. I'm pretty proud of that, but my record's been semi-broken on sunday night. That night I stayed up to finish an animation assignment, slept for two hours, and went to school. I got home yesterday at around 8pm and immediately started working on the digital painting assignment. I slept for another 2 hours, and then worked all the way till 9 am. According to my schedule I was supposed to be done both assignments by saturday, but...I got pwned by animation. It took up my entire weekend.

Anyway my point is, despite the lack of sleep I was surprised at how functional I was throughout the nights. Usually when I attempt an all-nighter, I'd either fall asleep unwillingly or end up staring blankly at the wall because of fatigue. I have a theory that because I've been sleeping so well lately, I have charged the extra batteries in my body so it can still handle a couple of nights of unsleep. That's like a camel with 2 humps storing water or a cow with 4 stomachs. Anyway I just found that pretty cool, in a vague sort of way, and I am more determined to stack up on sleep so I can save up for emergency all nighters. Which will hopefully never have to happen again. As you can probably tell from the lack of coherency in my writing, I am now at my limit, and need to really go to bed. Good night!

Life Drawing - learning muscles

I finally got around to sorting out my pile of dusty drawings from a couple of weeks ago. We've been learning the muscles in class, and it's wonderful! I love it so much more than the skeleton, even though I acknowledge the importance of both. Anyway, we have an amazing teacher. Somehow he was able to teach us the skeleton and muscles in a way that -stick-. Well, personally I don't have the greatest memory in the world, but after hearing his lectures I was able to remember these things just by recalling the way he talked about it. It's really hard to explain, but I'm very happy that I'm learning, and not struggling as much. Of course, I still have lots to work on in my drawings, but I feel that I'm able to absorb the knowledge that will help me improve. =D

Drawings still taking a dive though, time to do some extra sessions again! *drags feet* haha I'm not lazy, I just hate going home so late in the winter XD


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Scribbles: concept

edited: take THAT! hahaha ok now they look slightly better after a good night's sleep, (ooor I made it worse, I dunno -_-) and my conscience is appeased. hmmmm I need to learn how to draw handsome men, not just pretty/ugly faces.

Doodles of characters I want to use in a painting I'm working on. I know I have a bad habit of putting my characters in very typical/neutral expressions, but this is just a basic blueprint for me to work with when I develop their features in a more realistic style. haha one of them have bed hair -_- I tend to go overboard with hair, hopefully they won't turn into monsters.

ps: new life-drawings coming soon! I've been quickly backsliding (back diving, committing figure drawing suicide, etc) in that area, but I'm much happier with my other courses, and I have wondrously brilliant plans to get back on track with life drawing, so it's all good. for now.

Character - Guy Design

Found my guy! I doodled a bit more trying to come up with the right face. I didn't want him extremely good-looking. In fact, I wanted to make him kinda ugly. But I hated the first two sketches I did, when I put them side by side with the girl, the contrast seemed a bit too much. So I softened his ugliness a bit. Now I think he's kinda cute, tired/overworked, and eternally clueless, which is what I'm going for based on the script. Submitting these for review today, we'll see what happens! =)

Layout - Dr. Frankenstein's Lab

Cleaned up version of this image! =D I cropped out the roof part because the perspective is a little messy, and also because it'd be way too long to post. Not perfect, but I had lots of fun with this one. Also, the character designs are not mine, they were provided already.

Anyway, watch Carrie Underwood's Ever Ever After music video! It's adorable. And James Baxter animated it (that and also the clips in the movie "Enchanted") Like every girl, I've been conditioned by Disney movies when I was young, and now I can't help but smile and feel a surge of warmth at bouncy, optimistic songs and simplistic true loves and happy endings. It's totally not real life, but it brings a good feeling: nostalgia of simpler times and carefree childhoods.

btw thanks guys for the recommendations of music and shows a few posts ago, I've been slowly checking them out and I'm really happy to find good entertainment/music!

Character - Girl Design 01 Color

(click for better view)

The coloring process was quite challenging. I set out wanting to do something different, I wanted to try cel-shading or a very graphic coloring style. But the requirements of this assignment was that we have to use 3 textures and a hair brush -_- so in the end I had to soft-shade it to make the textures blend in a bit better, thus destroying any cel-like shading. What's stupid is that at this size you can't even notice the texture. Well, I think part of the problem I have with this is that I'm not used to a) painting a solidly inked character b) painting cartoon-y/anime c) using textures. So the result is mediocre. I will continue to experiment and practice though, I need to expand my painting methods. *_*

Character - Girl Design 01

(click for better view)

Just another sketch. Further exploration of the girl character from this previous post. And I got to design my first outfit! Always wanted to do that. ^__^ This assignment reveals yet another area (posing) that I need to work on. (Yes her legs are weird, and her hands, and etc.) =D Despite all the difficulty I've been having, character design feels more...fun, than before.

Random: Within the past 2 weeks, we've had 3 separate days of non-stop dawn to dusk snow-action. On one hand, it's nice to have an excuse to sleep in and cut classes =P but on the other hand, it's getting really depressing, especially when you can't skip and have to commute for 4 hours to school. (when it normally takes half that time.) I want spring!

Characters - Boy and Girl

A conversation between a couple. A typical exchange of neglect, misunderstanding and frustration. Initial concept sketches.

Layout - Frankenstein's Lab Rough

(click for a better view)

Sorry for the lull in art updates, I've either been sick or working on really crappy artwork that I don't want seen. T_T I'm pretty happy with this layout so far. I missed last class though so we'll see if my teacher likes it. I know it's not the clearest image ever, but I'll post an inked version of the final in a few days. Now...time to go back to character design. *sobs*

And while I'm thinking about the topic. You may have noticed that Ashling is not my real name. No huge surprise, as everyone uses a nickname nowadays. =) I've been trying really hard to just go by Ashling here because I absolutely adore it. But as time goes on I will be posting more and more original artwork, and even though I don't consider my art to be worthy of stealing or even remotely great, I want to get into the habit of protecting my stuff as much as possible. And I'm not sure if copyrights still work if I label it with a handle instead of my real name. So I guess I'm stuck with using my normal name on labels until I can get it legally fixed (and I'm considering adopting Ashling as a second name, when I get off my lazy ass to look into all the paperwork, but that's in the future.) Don't get me wrong, I like my own name, but...have you ever made up a name you like so much you just want to change your old name to the new? You know that feeling. This is the first time I've ever felt so attached to an identity lol. Ooh internet.

Well anyway, back to work.

Oscar Wilde

Although I have read a variety of books in the past, I have only found two authors not of the fantasy or modern-day genres that have made a lasting impression on me. The first is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and the second is Oscar Wilde. Like many people, I found him when I picked up a copy of his only novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray for my English course in high school. I immediately fell in love. It was a relatively short book, but it was drama and beauty and dry humor and tragedy all rolled into one, with an all-encompassing comment on the human nature. It was beautiful. Soon after, I borrowed the entire collection of Oscar Wilde from my teacher and devoured all his work. Most of his writings were plays, but there were some really nice short stories written in folk-tale style, and some poetry as well.

I have not thought about Oscar Wilde recently, however, I came across some of his quotes while I was browsing around. Once again I find myself chuckling at his wit and sarcasm, and I thought it'd be amusing to share some here.


- A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

- Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

- America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

- I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.

- A true friend stabs you in the front.

- Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

- Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

- A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

- I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

- Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

- To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

- One can survive anything these days, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.

- He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.

- There is no sin except stupidity.

- In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

- To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.

- What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.