Drawing for Animation – Creature Work

This week in the workshops the tutor came round and asked to see what we had done for our creature designs. i had been looking at velociraptor muscle and skeletal anatomy. I drew out the muscular anatomy in my sketchbook which i could then use for future reference.

https://www.pinterest.com/ihaveaheart/dino-refs/
the image that i studied and re-drew was from this website.

I then went on to discuss with my tutor that because of the mouth in the arm there may not be any need for a stomach. so i had a look at the digestive system and tried to figure out how i could incorporate that into my design.  I then came up with this.

Advanced Creature Concept

For the past couple of weeks I have been doing research on different sorts of animals to see which one would most likely move like my creature. The animal that would be most like mine would be a bird, such as an ostrich. They have the same leg and bone structure and they move quite similar as well.

Using the research from the previous weeks I was able to come up with a final design or my creature with colour. The colour is a pale skin tone which, when accompanied with the saggy skin, makes the creature look very unsettling which is what I was aiming for in this design. I changed the feet to be more based on the moorhen. I did this because I like the idea of the feet being closed to a point when lifted off the ground. I feel like it makes the creature look elegant as well as unsettling which is a strange match up. Below are the designs for my creature

Drawing for Animation – Week 7

For this second creature I didn’t stray from the idea of getting reference from Pokémon as it is a great resource for making you think differently about how animals can appear. I decided that I liked the simplistic idea of Mew, a small Pokémon that has a canny resemblance to a mouse. that then got me thinking that mythical creatures don’t all have to be big, bulky and deadly. they can be normal, natural and even harmless. so I decided to look into the mouse lemur which is the smallest primate on the planet and it has a look of harmlessness about it. However to make this a mythical creature I would have to do some tweaking so I decided to give it extra limbs and an extra tail end. This makes the animal look soft and defenceless. As for how I incorporated Mew into this I took the design for its head and the length of its tail. The fur and the arms/legs are all from the mouse lemur. 

Drawing for Animation – Week 6

For the creation of my first creature I wanted it to be something different so I went onto Google and had a look at some Greek Mythological creatures. I came across Medusa which gave me an idea to use snakes with multiple heads. I wanted to do this idea because it was unsettling and might make people squirm about. I then remembered that as a child I watched Pokémon and they had all sorts of different and weird designs that could be incorporated into my artwork. I came across one of my favourites as a child which was a Growlithe. this then made me think of a wolf and how they are quite deadly animals. then I came up with the idea to merge the wolf and the snake to create the Triox

I thought to myself that it couldn’t just be mainly wolf and a small bit of snake therefore I decided to add to the aesthetic of creepy and include scales in the animals mid section.

Drawing for Animation – Week 5

The fifth week was quite fun to me as the drawing below reminded me of all of the Pixar films. This drawing is of movement and staggered frames. This means that all the key poses are drawn and then all the in between frames are drawn as well.

After this we moved onto pose and balance with a wooden mannequin. we put the mannequin into 3 different positions, a natural stance being one of the poses, and then drew the pose.

Drawing for Animation – Week 4

In week 4 of the module we moved on from human anatomy to animal anatomy. In a way this was briefly touched upon in week 1 by drawing animals in their basic shapes. However these had to be in more detail. I went online and had a look at some drawings and real life pictures of animals and how their bones were structured.

Below are some drawings of how the skeleton varies from an Ape to a Horse. 

The drawings also show how an animal such as a dog or a cat would look if they were to be on their hind legs. I found this quite interesting as no matter what they all seem to follow the same line of action straight down the middle.

Drawing for Animation – Week 3

During this week we took a look at the human body an all the muscles that allow us to move the way we do. we looked at certain muscles groups such as the pectorals, biceps, triceps and latissimus dorsi.

 

Drawing For Animation Week 2

During this week we started working on drawing that where in perspective. we took the basic shapes that we were working on during the first week and we added dimensions to them. In order to do that we had to involve construct lines. these allow you to draw 3D images by following simple lines to something called a Vanishing Point

Below are some sketches that I managed to do using perspective. 

Drawing For Animation week 1

The introduction week to drawing for animation was a session of getting to know the tutors and getting to know our abilities in drawing. we started off by drawing some basic shapes for a while before trying to turn them into something. I realised that everything that you see is comprised of basic shapes. Then I started to follow the plan and draw animals such as cats, dragonfly’s birds etc. with only basic shapes.

We then incorporated shading into the drawing making them look 3D and give them a bit of perspective.