Took up the 45 second X 20 poses challenge at QuickPoses.com in the category "Athletes of God".
Oh what an experience... very brief yet revealing. It was in many ways frustrating and very challenging, but at the same time it really gave me a lot of feedback on my own position towards observation and drawing, and compelled me to write about it straightaway.
Drawing certainly makes me feel like I get the fastest access to put down in a material form that feedback I get visually when trying to observe things, and in a personal level it gives me during the process...relief? A sense of autonomy and somehow "fun"is gained that otherwise in other more elaborate procedures of visual media might be lacking. I mostly speak in this case for something like 3D computer animation (the medium I mostly work on), where I constantly feel like things can go wrong that are beyond your control but still affect your work and mindset drastically (mostly technical things like rigs, tools, pipeline, render look, etc etc...)... I cannot speak of other mediums like sculpting or stop motion animation, since I don´t know much, but somehow I feel drawing really helps me to tap into things faster somehow. Like a great way to just lay down the fundamentals of what you need to build later, and also a great way to quickly try out things and experiment. In a medium like animation, to be spontaneous is very, very hard!
On a very personal standpoint, after hearing a lot of people saying that nowadays drawing is not that neccessary to animate, I think I´d still disagree. If there is other equivalent ways to lay down and synthetise your observational experience in a material form then is all great and most likely I really don´t know about it (the other one I can think of is writing, which I equally value and appreciate as well!), but otherwise I truly feel something special about this skill that should be learned and practiced constantly "especially" for animators. We don´t certainly need to be Da Vinci´s, that´s not the point, and I´m not stating its "the only way"....Is just that if we need to practice observation, which no doubt is a fundamental need for animators and artists universally, drawing just feels like the most accessible way to compile your observation from "your own core perspective", your own interpretation basically, and materialise it promptly. Is just a good tool and asset to have as a compliment to your skillset I think and I guess it cannot affect dettrimentally to your animation skills.
But this is very debatable when it comes to its "practicality" in a professional environment, with deadlines and style criteria of a project amongst other things. Here is where I see a lot of people fight over it, voice out their arguments either strongly favouring this idea of profoundly against it, or simply ignoring its value. Even to an extent of touching upon the approach towards what to take from when you "observe"... is such a huge topic! Some geniouses of this artform can grasp and observe motion and spacing and make their animation work really stand out because of what I call "appeal in motion"....something very, very hard to do I think, and way more abstract. Others, like myself I think, stick with the most accessible and summarising information of a particular motion, and strip it down to its visual essence to later reinterpret it our own way.... I guess this is where the term "gesture" comes from? I´d like to expose more thoughts about this soon and learn more.
Is a much bigger topic and sometimes can get philosophical or scientific even, but nevertheless interesting!
#ravikamble #rvganimation #athletesofgod #quickposes #quickposes.com #sketchbook #gesture #drawing
Oh what an experience... very brief yet revealing. It was in many ways frustrating and very challenging, but at the same time it really gave me a lot of feedback on my own position towards observation and drawing, and compelled me to write about it straightaway.
Drawing certainly makes me feel like I get the fastest access to put down in a material form that feedback I get visually when trying to observe things, and in a personal level it gives me during the process...relief? A sense of autonomy and somehow "fun"is gained that otherwise in other more elaborate procedures of visual media might be lacking. I mostly speak in this case for something like 3D computer animation (the medium I mostly work on), where I constantly feel like things can go wrong that are beyond your control but still affect your work and mindset drastically (mostly technical things like rigs, tools, pipeline, render look, etc etc...)... I cannot speak of other mediums like sculpting or stop motion animation, since I don´t know much, but somehow I feel drawing really helps me to tap into things faster somehow. Like a great way to just lay down the fundamentals of what you need to build later, and also a great way to quickly try out things and experiment. In a medium like animation, to be spontaneous is very, very hard!
On a very personal standpoint, after hearing a lot of people saying that nowadays drawing is not that neccessary to animate, I think I´d still disagree. If there is other equivalent ways to lay down and synthetise your observational experience in a material form then is all great and most likely I really don´t know about it (the other one I can think of is writing, which I equally value and appreciate as well!), but otherwise I truly feel something special about this skill that should be learned and practiced constantly "especially" for animators. We don´t certainly need to be Da Vinci´s, that´s not the point, and I´m not stating its "the only way"....Is just that if we need to practice observation, which no doubt is a fundamental need for animators and artists universally, drawing just feels like the most accessible way to compile your observation from "your own core perspective", your own interpretation basically, and materialise it promptly. Is just a good tool and asset to have as a compliment to your skillset I think and I guess it cannot affect dettrimentally to your animation skills.
But this is very debatable when it comes to its "practicality" in a professional environment, with deadlines and style criteria of a project amongst other things. Here is where I see a lot of people fight over it, voice out their arguments either strongly favouring this idea of profoundly against it, or simply ignoring its value. Even to an extent of touching upon the approach towards what to take from when you "observe"... is such a huge topic! Some geniouses of this artform can grasp and observe motion and spacing and make their animation work really stand out because of what I call "appeal in motion"....something very, very hard to do I think, and way more abstract. Others, like myself I think, stick with the most accessible and summarising information of a particular motion, and strip it down to its visual essence to later reinterpret it our own way.... I guess this is where the term "gesture" comes from? I´d like to expose more thoughts about this soon and learn more.
Is a much bigger topic and sometimes can get philosophical or scientific even, but nevertheless interesting!
#ravikamble #rvganimation #athletesofgod #quickposes #quickposes.com #sketchbook #gesture #drawing
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