30 second drawing



taken from posemaniacs



I've already mentioned the site posemaniacs here, but I think it's time to bring it up again, since I've been using it a lot lately. Observing people and drawing them gives us a better sense for body structure and posing, which helps with the balance, appeal, shapes/silhouettes, and so on. It is also a lot of fun, so don't postpone it any longer :-)





taken from posemaniacs



It's amazing how some people get the hole pose across in 30 seconds!! But I felt that was too fast for me so I started with the 90 second drawing tool.  In the beginning, that wasn't much and sometimes it wasn't possible to finish a pose. However, sketching 15-30 minutes every day, I managed to get to 45 seconds.

Each person has their own approach to sketching and it might change over time. I started using some of the reference lines in the body that show how chest and hips are positioned. I also use the negative space to help: seing how much white space there is between the arm an the body, for example, might make it easier to position the arm. It's also good not to get into small details, since it's speed drawing.

So here are some of my sketches from last month, just to show they don't need to be perfect, you just need to feel you're learning. Get the proportions, the angle the person is viewed from, the basic pose, etc. And as one of my mentors once said: if you're struggling, it's because you're learning. Sounds simple, but it's helpful to see things that way.

60 second sketches

Another interesting site for poses is http://pixelovely.com/tools/gesture.html were they don't show the internal body structure. You can set some parameters for the drawing session: male/female, clothed/nude and for how long you want the image on screen. You can also chose the animal drawing tool - but I'll get to animal drawing later.

I hope this was interesting and wish you happy drawing. It's actually addictive, you always want to sketch one more pose :-)

Good book for improving Maya skills

I recently started reading the book "How to cheat in Maya 2010 - Tool and techniques for the Maya Animator". It gives you a lot of "cheats" for working better with Maya. Actually, it mostly talks about tools that are available in the software, but if we don't know about their existence, we obviously can't use them ;-)

The book gives some tips about how you can improve your workspace in Maya, how splines work and how to work better with them, how to make a transparent IK/FK switch, how to use constraints, how to use animation layers, the basics about rendering and assigning materials...well, it's a long list :-)

It's really cool that the chapters are short and objective and you don't have to read them yeah in sequence. There's an exercise for each topic where you can practise what you're learning. And most of the things work for older versions of Maya -  Ah, a maioria das coisas vale para as versões de Maya anteriores também - when I started reading it, i was still using  2009 (actually, this was until this week) and, as far as I know, everything worked for that one too.

Another cool thing is it comes with a DVD with Maya files for almost every chapter, so it's a lot easier to do the exercises, since everything is already prepared ;-) There are also 5 videos about constraints and parenting.

I've been using Maya for a year and a half (I know, it's not that much) and working on animations since then and, though I already knew several things that are covered in the book, I've learned lots of interesting things (and I still have to read the other half!). It seems several of the tricks will speed up my work and others will make it even more fun :-)

tip for those who stay long hours at the computer

I love free software...recently I found out about a very healthy one:

www.workrave.org/

"Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit."

It's possible to configure when you want to reminded to go on a break. It also suggests stretching exercises. When animating (or programming) we tend to lose track of time so it's really useful. I started using it recently and it's pretty nice :-)

tip for practising sketches

It's always nice to practice sketching. It heps improve planning the animations, gives new ideas and also helps train the eyes for some details that may usually go unnoticed.

In www.posemaniacs.com there are several possibilities for practicing. You can choose to make 30 second drawings to make quicker sketches or choose negative space drawing to better understand the outline and shape of the body.