Thursday, May 8, 2008

TinkerHell


Tinkerbell is one of the new characters we are trying to breakdown to teach the guest at the Animation Academy. She is without doubt a major pain in the ass to draw.. no chin, no cheeks, big almond eyes & that faint little nose. Marc Davis , how did ya do it with such ease? Anyway here is my first attempt using the Chovanec method ( aka guideline Mike)

....its a work in progrss... imagine all the kids we will get crying trying to draw her in class....I with ya kids... waaaa I cant do it! :)~

2 comments:

Celeste Cronrath said...

She is going to be a challenge, you guys are brave to attempt it. Hope you don't make too many kids cry *lol*

Gregory M. Chin said...

Les,
Wow, I can sympathize with your problem of trying to teach youngsters or adults, how to draw "Tinkerbell". The best thing you can do is actually put up a projection of the "Tinkerbell" modelsheets, so the guests can see either the proportions of her head, or her whole body. Especially since her body curves have been "pushed" into extreme shapes. On a Disney character which has non-standard proportions such as "Gadget", "Tinkerbell", "Meg", or even "Mickey Mouse" himself, the Secret is: to get the guests to draw ruff shapes first, and leave those ruff shapes on the paper. If they attempt to draw the only the final lines, it's going to be choas. Tell them it's okay to put another piece of paper over the ruff shapes later on, and clean it up. The only method, is if you give them a ruff shape printout, and have them use it as a guide, to draw over, while sitting in the theater. In fact, if the lapboards have a selection of different character ruff shape guides, on a flip-chart, it would allow more variety. It's okay to use the overlay method. Tell them, That's how it's done, penciling over lightboards and inbetweening. This 2-step "ruff animator" and "Final-Line/Character Clean-Up artist" method will allow the guest/artist to concentrate on the finer linear details of the character's design, which is probably what they are interested in drawing. They want to be the "Final-Line Artist", but without good proportions and good construction, they won't get any satisfaction. The preliminary shape proportions are everything. But I wouldn't count on all of the younger or adult guest/artists to master it, within a 17-minute presentation. If this 2-step method is utilized, it will generate better results, and less frustration for the guests. It's okay for the guests to draw Tinkerbell's "buzz-saw" hairshapes irregularly (not all the same equal size either). tell them, she doesn't have to have the same hair shapes, each time. As long as the hair mass is correct, and the pointed hair-tip shapes looks like "buzzsaw shapes", arranged in a radial, overlapping pattern, it will look good. A study of Japanese anime characters will verify this method.