Back to basics; when I was a kid I lazily practiced constructing the examples in Preston Blair’s Advanced Animation, and here I go again. I’ll spare you the overlaid comparisons, but it’s fairly obvious that rabbit just ain’t right!

My left hand is deformed, but not that deformed. Actually, this exercise turned out marginally better than expected, which encourages me to keep practicing. Hmm, too bad I wasn’t willing to work this hard in my 20s when I actually had something resembling energy.

I’m kinda dumb sometimes. Tonight I was worried I wouldn’t think of anything to post, so I procrastinated by continuing to tweak my drawing settings in Photoshop. Then I realized, this can be a blog post. It’s totally on-topic!  Duh.

At some point soon I’ll reveal the height of my nerd tendencies by detailing my continually evolving Photoshop animation template and actions. Really, only a crazy person would try to do frame-by-frame animation in Photoshop, but with the setup I cooked up, it’s actually pretty efficient. Also, I am a crazy person.

Here’s another basic exercise; copying a character from a model sheet, then lining up your drawing with the original to see what’s off. The brown duck was drawn by the great Bob Clampett; the blue/red sketches are mine.

I think I’ve always struggled to “draw on model,” because when I did this I had flashbacks to my childhood, getting supremely frustrated when I’d copy characters that were almost right, but not quite.

Sketched some statues at the Met. Here’s one.