Inspiration: Toby Shelton's blog

I haven't really been keeping up with posting a lot of links this semester. Lots of good stuff out there on the web, but I've been preoccupied with other things. Sorry for the lull in posting.

Just in case you haven't discovered it for yourself yet I want to point everyone towards Toby Shelton's relatively new blog  "Stuff I Did (when I wasn't doing other Stuff)"

Check out the great examples of storyboards and model sheets on Shelton's blog:

(amazing selection of How To Train Your Dragon storyboards)

Drawing tips on things like hands (can never have enough of these reference sheets) -

Model sheets:

(click any image to enlarge)

The above images are just a small sampling to whet your appetite. Go check out Toby Shelton's blog . Add to your bookmarks. Check back often.

Drawing for Animation: Construction

James Baxter demonstrates how to construct a character for animation:

If you've not seen the sequence that James supervised for Kung Fu Panda go watch it here:

Kung Fu Panda Opening Dream Sequence

Also, as I mentioned a few posts below , Don Bluth has been posting some animation tutorials on YouTube to promote his longer Animation Tutorial DVD's . These clips are excerpts from the longer videos, but contain some good information on how to construct a cartoon character for animation:






And here's an interesting demonstration by Glen Keane on how he approaches animating a scene. Glen's initial approach is to get the feeling , to capture the "forces" that are animating the character from the inside.



Each of these artists has their own approach to drawing, but all have in common their use of the principle of constructing the character from basic forms in a rough drawing before going over top of those forms to draw the details of the character in outline. (it's like drawing from the "inside out") One thing I've noticed is that a lot of students are still trying to draw too "clean" , drawing in outline , but without any structure underneath the outlines of the drawings.

More Dan Haskett

I consider Dan Haskett to be one of the finest animators/designers working in animation. One of the things that is a mark of a Haskett design is the immense appeal that he brings to his designs; his character designs are constructed of streamlined and animate-able shapes. Here are a couple of his designs as examples. I'll try to scan more of Haskett's drawings that I have in my collection and post them here.


[click on the images to see larger]