lookstraightahead:

This is another of those odd text pieces I wrote a while ago. Either it will make you think, or it will grievously offend you… :V At any rate, here it is!

Some Thoughts On Style

Many young artists will find themselves wondering “What style should I draw in?”

I think this is a dangerous trap that no one should ever fall into.

Why? Because we should all try to develop our OWN styles. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with learning techniques from your favourite artists, but I think you’re doing yourself a disservice if you try to emulate them too closely. Joe Kubert once said (and again, I’m paraphrasing) that “style” is just another word for the way we see and interpret the real world. Your “style” will, over time, emerge from drawing the world around you, not from copying the work of others.

“BUT IT’S MY STYLE”

Oh, yes, I went there.

There are hundreds of thousands of different ways to draw a hand. But you can never truly draw a hand – even a rubbery cartoon hand – if you don’t understand how a REAL hand works.

Never use “But it’s my style” as an excuse. If someone points out that your drawing of a hand looks broken, that’s not a stylistic choice. That’s a legitimate mistake. Be grateful that someone took the time to point it out, and aim towards drawing a better hand next time. Don’t worry – you won’t have to compromise your style to do so.

“BUT SO-AND-SO DRAWS REALLY WEIRD AND NOBODY COMPLAINS”

Let’s take a look at Adventure Time. Why Adventure Time? Because I happen to think that its wacky noodle-limbs style is extremely appealing. Is it realistic? Not at all. But if you analyze it a little more closely, you’ll see that Pendleton Ward et. al. still follow some basic rules.

1. Proportions

The characters in Adventure Time always have the same proportions in every shot (except for when Jake is using his stretchy powers, of course). They don’t suddenly grow to 50 feet (again, unless Jake is using his stretchy powers) or have one hand larger than the other – because that would be jarring and yank us out of the story. If they DO, there better be a good reason for it! They’re always following the model sheets – even when they’re pulling really strange faces, they’re always recognizably the same characters. They don’t suddenly become Finn’s cousin twice removed.

1. Balance

Even through all the zaniness of the show’s style, there’s still an element of natural weight to the whole thing. The characters move in mostly natural ways, when standing they don’t look as if they’re going to tip over, and so on.

1. Perspective

The laws of perspective are still very much adhered to – objects still diminish in size with distance, there are still horizon lines and vanishing points, and so on. Everything still looks very solid and believable, as though it were constructed of 3D shapes – even though it’s two dimensional animation drawings.

So while the Adventure Time style looks deceptively simple, it’s not. All the animators and layout artists and character designers involved still had to learn the basic rules of anatomy, proportion, and perspective before they could break them.

“I WANNA DRAW MANGA!”

Great! You still have to learn the rules.

I’ve got no beef with manga or young artists who are influenced by the manga style, but I do think that it tends to produce very flat results. Go back and read what I just wrote about Adventure Time. You’ve still got to learn the rules before you can break them. I cannot stress enough the importance of drawing from life, and learning to think of objects in three dimensions. Every character and object can be broken down into basic shapes. Two books that will help you with this a great deal are Preston Blair’s Cartoon Animation and Glenn Vilppu’s Drawing Manual.

(As an aside, one of my favourite manga artists, Naoki Urasawa, actually draws quite realistically – while still using many hallmarks of the “manga” style such as motion lines. He’s also got some of the best character design I’ve ever seen. Study his work, it’s worth learning from.)

I’d also advise you not to draw your comic so it reads from right to left. It’s true that most translated manga reads from right to left, but this is because it was originally drawn for an audience that DOES read from right to left. Flipping it so it reads from left to right is often more trouble than it’s worth, and can destroy the integrity of the original work. If your comic is in English, there really isn’t any reason to draw it this way, as English speakers read from left to right.

Drawing your comic so it reads from right to left won’t make your work more authentic – just as buying a Wacom tablet, Photoshop, or Copic markers won’t instantly make you a better artist… (but that’s a topic for another post)

In short: Manga is great, but it’s much better to learn from other sources as well – you can still incorporate manga elements into your OWN unique style.

SIMPLE STYLES

It can be tempting to draw in a simpler style because you think it’s easier and takes less time. My own style is very labour-intensive, and I confess I’ve thought of doing this myself.

But you know what? I could never do that, because it would be a betrayal of everything I’ve worked for. It wouldn’t be “me” any more. Worse, everyone would be able to tell that I was just faking it – because a simpler style isn’t what I’m used to, and so I’d never be able to do it as well as those who have worked hard to develop their skills working in that style.

COMPLICATED STYLES

On the other side of the coin, you can get caught up in wanting to draw more “realistically” because, for whatever reason, you think you should.

Number one rule? DO WHAT YOU ARE MOST COMFORTABLE WITH. What is most true to yourself. Rob Guillory wrote a fantastic post about this a while back. Read it. Study it. Think about it. Hard.

If you’ve been drawing in a simple style all your life, that’s what you should stick with. If you can’t help adding wall-to-wall details to everything and you’ve been doing that all your life, then you should keep doing that. Don’t change your style based on what you think is easier or what you think other people “want” to see. What we WANT to see is the pure, unadulterated YOU!

Went to Pick Me Up today @ Somerset House in London. Was raaaaaaaaad.