There is no way to pursue the world of 2D animation if you don’t draw, and you will be doing a lot of drawing. In animation, there is a bunch of repetition, so the monotony can get you a bit sleepy. The end result will wake you back up, so it all balances out. In today’s world, there are many ways to approach the drawing aspect of 2D animation. Yet, there are certain elements of drawing that are universal that you should address.
Perspective
When drawing backgrounds on a 2D plane, you need to use perspective to make your art look like it is in 3D. Your background drawing will look a lot better if you can draw them in perspective. There are different forms of perspective. You have one, two, and three point perspectives. Advanced levels of perspective have four and five points. A point is a vanishing point. It is where your perspective lines converge at the horizon line.
You can eyeball your perspective drawings to make your art look a little more funky. As long as you know the principles of perspective, you don’t have to be a stickler for making every line exact. Each artist is unique, so the only rule is to have fun. Stan Lee’s perspective background drawings have exact lines, and his art is beautiful. Then you look at Bill Plympton’s art, and the lines are a bit wacky, but the art is spectacular.
Faces
Where will your animation be without characters, and the main part of your characters are their faces. The face will show emotions, and most importantly, the face will have a lot of mouth movement when your characters talk. When you are drawing a still picture, it is cool to add a bunch of details, so your art will be nice. Animation, on the other hand, is about motion. It will be easier to draw your characters simple, so you can focus on the motion.
The parts of the face that usually move are the eyebrows, eyelids, pupils, and the mouth. Eyebrows can show sadness, anger, surprise, and calmness. The eyelids can blink, go wide open to show surprise, and squint to show suspicion or concentration. The pupils can go in all directions to express different expressions. The mouth can show sadness, happiness, and most importantly, talk.
There’s a method to the madness of animation. One of the most difficult and misunderstood parts is making your character talk. This process is simplified by using phonemes. A phoneme is a mouth shape that represents a sound. The mouth is broken down into like five to eight shapes, and you switch the shapes for each syllable from your audio. This is how you simplify the mouth movement for talking.
There is a program that you can use with your animation program called “Papagayo” that can animate the mouths of your characters. This will speed up your animation process. All you have to do is insert images of the phonemes (mouth positions) and an audio file. The program will do the rest.
Make your face shapes symmetrical. This is animation. It’s best to make your face shape a perfect circle, square, triangle, or any shape that is equal on both sides. This makes it better to pose the face in different angles just by moving the face parts. Of course you can go against this rule, but you won’t be able to use this animation hack.
The hands are another part of the body that show a lot of expression. More than some say the hands are difficult to draw, but once you know the formula, it becomes easy. In the beginning of your drawing journey, you can take pictures of your own hand in certain positions and use those pics as a reference. You can even trace those pics. There’s no shame in the game.
You can google different hand positions. Try searching hand position drawings. We are living in a modern renaissance age. Knowledge is everywhere. We need to take advantage of it. Nerds are the new gangsters. This is the time to pick a craft and master it. Back to hand drawing. After you learn the basics. You will be drawing hands by the baker’s dozen.
Shapes and Stick Figures
In drawing, shapes and stick figures are your best friend. Before you draw a person, draw a stick figure in the position you want that person to be in. These simple stick figures will take a lot of guesswork away, and you will be able to attack your project with confidence. When you have multiple characters interacting in a scene, stick figure drawing is crucial so you can get the vision and proportions correct.
Shapes are for everything. 2D shapes, 3D shapes, it doesn’t matter. You can draw everything if you break it down to squares, circles, and triangles. Step your game up with 3D shapes like balls, Cubes, cones, and cylinders. Using shapes will simplify the drawing process. Look around, and break everything down to shapes in your mind. Once you get the lines down, you can modify them to make what you are drawing look natural.
Software
Digital drawing is the nouveau way of illustrating your art. Luckily, there are plenty of free software and apps that can assist you on the path. What will cost money is the hardware needed to ink your masterpiece. With some software, you can draw with the mouse or trackpad. That’s what I do with my animations. We can get into that later.
The iPad with the I Pencil are great tools. Samsung has some great options. A lot of Windows PCs come with digital pens. You can get a dedicated drawing tablet like a Wacom to connect to your computer. There are a bunch of less expensive budget brand drawing tablets that are just as capable as the more known brands. You have to do your research. Google is your best friend.
The list of drawing apps are endless. The iPad has Procreate. A great app for Android and the iPad is Flip a Clip. This is a drawing and 2D frame by frame animation app. Sketchbook is an awesome app that is available on all platforms. Krita is another drawing app that can be used on all your devices. Of course you have the traditional Photoshop. A free alternative to Photoshop is Gimp. Try these apps, and do some research, and I’m pretty sure you will find an app that is perfect for you.
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