Wednesday, February 17, 2010

3 animals and 5 dots

Posting old stuff while away from civilised computers. By the way, I'll probably post some crappy photography of my snow-buried 'hood in the next couple of days YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

The three animal characters. I coloured this supposedly final version before beginning to wonder why the hell I'd chosen THE most boring options for every single character out of all three keys - argh! So they'll be getting a do-over.
The lineart is final, though... Probably.

Another "5 dots pose". This approach really has given me some much needed digital sketching fuel. Although, weirdly, both of my 5 dots poses so far have turned into some kind of self-portraits... Huh.

2 comments:

graffitihead said...

Hupsu kysymys... What are 5 dot poses?

(What. No, we don't get taught that - we just get stupid painting-with-a-piece-of-cardboard junk because our teacher is weird.)

kelipipo said...

Oops, I forgot I didn't even mention those before! I hope I can pinpoint this.

You draw 5 random dots on your paper (or digital canvas - which I prefer, because then you can sculpt a silhouette by erasing from a black shape, which is not easy at all the old manual way)... Like close-your-eyes random. When we first did this exercise, a classmate provided the dottellation.

A head, two hands and two feet, makes five dots. Just make a pose by placing those body parts on one dot each! Any dot - they don't need to go in order. This may result in inhuman body shapes but RARELY in a dull static pose. And anyway nobody says your character needs to be human just because mine always end up as old run-o'the-mill humans.

Also: in this sketch I made the character proportions more realistic afterwards, so the dot thing basically served as... uhmmm... "suuntaviivana", very important guidelines for the pose, NOT as the final pose.

It's fun and much simpler than I make it sound :D
Familiarity with body structure can help a lot, although it all depends on what you're going for: realistic or just nutty.

I want to try the five dots thing with something like a three-headed, two-legged character next!