30 minute class - critique and feedback all welcome!

Hello line of Action'ers!

Have been using the site for just over a year now and figured I'd share some sketches to get some feedback. I work in the animation industry so started up sketching after a long layoff with the aim to improve weight distribution, movement and overall drawing abilities.

I've been watching some Stan Prokopenko videos lately too, so am trying to introduce the concept of rhythm into my work to make things seem a little more fluid/alive.

Any feedback and critique would be awesome!

https://imgur.com/a/7EleUCL

I've been taking drawing seriously for only about 10 months, so take my feedback with a grain of salt!

Overall really good! I'd say for the 30 second ones, make sure to always have a clear landmark on the head to establish its orientation, like the ears you have in some of them or a line for the front of the face. For the 1 minute ones, you do already do a decent job showing overlap of the different volumes, but I think you could get a bit more if you worked on it. Particularly, the top left one is a bit flat (I also have a harder time with sitting poses). Your 5's and 10 are honestly beyond my critique. They have a great sense of volume and shape. Maybe try adding a bit more anatomical detail like muscles?

Thanks Pragmantic - it was a helpful grain of salt!

Good point with the head landmark, I'll start incorporating an ear shape and maybe a nose to indicate direction. Flatness is an issue I've had previously too, and I think you're right that more overlap will help there!

I've just purchased Michael Hampton's brilliant book on figure drawing, so will start digesting his muscle diagrams and introduce them slowly!

Thanks again!

• Phillustration edited this post on September 30, 2024 11:54am.

Heya!

I'm a (layed off) animator too! I'm in a similar position where I'm trying to up my anatomy game so hopefully my insights will be helpful to you!

I've done some notes and draw overs on your drawings! But TLDR ! It's more important to understand form in 3d space and perspective than it is to know anatomy! Not that knowing anatomy isn't important...but it's a lot easier to start learning and disecting anatomy in figure drawings when you don't have to think too hard on form!

Here's the link to the imgur (since LoA isn't posting my images for some reason...)

Hopefully this was helpful and fair ^_^ lmk if you need some clarification or if I'm explained something kind of weird! Also as mentioned in one of my notes, these are thigns that work for me personally but the general advice of....knowing form lol is universal! So if you take anything awy from my notes its just that.

• Zaccrim edited this post on October 7, 2024 8:41am.
• Zaccrim edited this post on October 7, 2024 8:53am.

Wow, thanks so much for taking the time to put that feedback together, Zaccrim! Super appreciated!

There's some really helpful stuff in there that I'll put into my practice this week, and will post a follow up :)

Like you mentioned, I often struggle with time management so the simplified guides will definitely help. I also suck at distance management (the amount of hands and feet that have been lost to page edges is shocking...) so that'll help me judge my range also.

The goal for the next couple of weeks is to think about volumes with 3D spaces, and I think I'll incorporate more volume lines to help understand flow and perspective.

Also I have to say, your 30 second and 1 minute gestures are great! So much expression is captured in a few details!

Thanks again :)

I'm glad it was helpful!

Yeah man I hear u, most of my hands, feet, and tbh - heads, are all real loose and barely there. But theyre not the main stars of the show anyway so its okay Hhahahaaha - to be honest the arms are pretty important to the flow, so even if ure missing the legs, the hands, the feet, the most things, if u have the clav, the arms, and the hips ure like mostly there.

Also I've always struggled with 3d form so I try to do exercises to help me with it LOL. I highly recommend and suggest filling a whole page with simple shapes. I usually start on a perspective line and then when I get bored of that I go to making unique boxes and shapes and rotating them, connecting them in different ways etc. !

Here's what one of those practice pages usually looks like (ignore the cloth exercises lol) But this has really helped me be able to create 3d forms in my gestures quickly! Especially when u start stacking and laying down objects on top of each other!

That's a good shout too!

I've always looked at the 'Basic Shapes and Still Life' option of Line of Action and thought "Hahaahha no way! I'm drawing cool stuff..." - but clearly there's benefits of going back to basics now and then.

Hope you manage to get yourself back into the animation industry soon, it seems to be in a somewhat uncertain state in a lot of studios I know...