Day 15 - Animation

The book I ordered, The Animator's Survival Kit, arrived today, and I spent a large portion of my time reading it. It's already incredibly good, and I think I will learn a lot with it. One thing that the book stresses a lot (as it should) is that to be a good animator, one must first be good at drawing accurately and realistically from life. It is a piece of advice that applies not only to animating, but to drawing in general. You must learn to draw things as they are before you can begin to distort them into what you would like them to be.

There was an incredible quote in the book that ties this idea together beautifully.

Epitaph of an Unfortunate Artist:
He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits:
This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid,
so in the end he could not change the tragic habits
this forumla for drawing comic rabbits made.
-Robert Graves

I was drawn to drawing by Japanese animation and the anime style, and so a lot of my early drawing experience solely consists of learning and copying this style. It is a very simplified style, designed to be quick and easy to animate, and it is a horrible burden I have put on myself. The habits I picked up still haunt me today, and I am still unable to draw from the imagination in anything but a horribly exaggerated way, with large eyes, wild, spiky, low detail hair, and simple features. The habits were made worse through the constant sketching I did in high school, drawing face after face after face all from the imagination, basing everything off of what I felt looked good. It depresses me to see that a large majority of young artists (and even some my age) spend all their time drawing exclusively in this style. It just takes the right words from the right person to make the fact click that you can't draw ANY style (well) if you can't draw accurately from life.

Quiet Time

I tried hitting the Go books again today, but I found myself constantly distracted by the beeping of MSN windows. This has been happening often, actually. I find myself too distracted too actually concentrate on what I am reading, but have not even thought about it until today. So from now on I will set aside about an hour each day to intensive Go study. I will read the books, work through the problems, do the exercises, and CONCENTRATE. That's the most important thing. Funnily enough, The Animator's Survival Guide had a humorous but enlightening lesson about listening to music while working. It's advice was rather simple: Don't do it. I think I took a bit of this to heart, since I almost never play Go without music playing. I never really considered how much clearer my thoughts would be if I devoted my concentration solely to the game.

So the goal is set. Tomorrow and hour of Go study/playing with NO distractions whatsoever. We'll see how it goes.

No indie game of the day today. I think I will take a break from that for awhile as I try to bring some more interesting features to this blog.

Until then,
-BuddytheRat