Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Draw over for Steve LeCouilliard

Here is a draw over for Steve LeCouilliard. Steve is a fantastic artist and does great comic work. The information below applies to page layout for comics as well. you want to lead the eye with gestures and shape design. As far as the construction mentioned here, most of this I learned from Charles Hu and kevin Chen. If you guys want to draw realistic characters I can't imagine trying to learn that on my own. You can learn how to draw cartoons, because the construction is much easier to see and there is plenty of how to books and reference, but for realistic figure drawing, there are no good books on the market. The only book that has a little bit of good information is figure drawing by Andrew Loomis. everything else is hard to find hidden secrets that only a few artist in the world know about. This is actually part of the reason I started this blog. this information is sooooo hard to find, and it can be soooo frustrating trying to find it. And in a side note, there is no such thing as a good drawing or a good artist. Every drawing can be better, every artist can be better. You just draw the best you can and try to keep on getting better. I constantly take my drawings to artist and they find tons of mistakes with them, or ways to make things better. It can be discouraging if you think you "did something wrong." That's not the case. You just do the best you can.



15 comments:

  1. thank you for doing these "handouts" of info. they are a goldmine, and you are completely right, there is very little people that give away these great pieces of knowledge. so thanks once again.

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  2. Tons of gold stuff you've put in Rad. Thanks!

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  3. Rad

    Thanks a lot for all of this, I hope you get to publish a book with those priceless tips some day.

    I have a question about your "big even spaces" note on the first drawing: is this issue just a matter of pose or a combination of pose and body proportions?

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  4. Fabio: it just has to do with flat graphic elements on the page. If you pretended like it wasn't a person, and just looked at the lines dots shadow shapes and so on on the image.

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  5. these are getting better and better.

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  6. Fantastic and very useful! So great to read a good argument for something that feels instinctively right: 'less is more'. Your example of the bad shop display is brilliant. When there are too many accessories going on in a design, I always feel like it's hard to pick one main one, one that pops out and becomes the characteristic element. The rest is for balance only, and should never compete for attention. But I've never thought about it as a pattern, so a great new insight today. Thanks!

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  7. Your blog is amazing. I've learned so much already. I can sense myself putting it into place when i sketch. Thank you so much.

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  8. Ming: You can have tons of details and stuff, as long as it's well organized and design. Nico Marlet did this well in the new art of "How to Train Your Dragon" book. He has tons of tiny details all over the characters and dragons that are really well designed.

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  9. Great things to learn everytime I visit your blog..
    it's funny that you mentioned Kevin Chen, I remember he used to put some amazing drawing notes on conceptart.org (I think!) and was a great help then I lost them and couldn't find them online anymore.
    I try to learn whenever possible so your notes really make a difference and keeps the motivation going as well.
    Thanks

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  10. There are a ton of Kevin Chen notes on the character design resource site linked to the left.
    http://www.characterdesigns.com/index.php?sitepage=tutorials

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  11. You have a really great blog!! very educational and inspiring!! Thanks for taking the time to explain these things in detail. I always just start to draw, now I'll think more about the choices I'll make!

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  12. thanks for taking your time to teach us, it really helps. That competing for attention analogy with the toys is amazingly clear. Your blogs are awesome by the way.

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  13. More Kevin Chen, http://analyticalfiguresp08.blogspot.com/

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  14. This blog is great. The post too :D 10x alot. True, not many books tell you everything. And I have a few. Perhaps because are writen by specialists for middle drawing skills. Well, not every teacher has the gift of teaching either and those details are just not told, SUPPOSING that the student alredy knows them. For ex., I soth a thing on the thy, but I couldn't put my finger on. It was a bunch of details: lots of beads, muscle shapes, smaller leg (proportion and a false perspective) etc. Practicly a way of thinking about it. One coult say: beads. That was obvios, but not all.
    10x again. I am a self-tutoring in drawing comics. And you help alot.

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