Concepts:In chapter three, Creating Characters with Personality describes creating different views of your characters that fit together. Once you imagine your characters from the front, the back, and the side, you should also be able to combine those ideas to draw them in three-quarter view, also called a three-quarter profile. This is a view, as shown in the text, that allows the viewer to see most of the front view, and most of one side view of a subject. Examine this drawing from the Louvre, showing a complicated view of a model's front, a bit of the left side of the body, and the right side and front of the face. The pose may have hurt. A three-quarter view gives much more of a three dimensional feel than an orthographic view. In animation, it is a necessary view of any character who you expect to turn on the screen. (Unless you are animating South Park.)
In chapter five, Creating Characters with Personality describes drawing animal characters. The discussion called Choose the Nature of Your Beast can be compared to the Character Hierarchy discussion in the first chapter. Mr. Bancroft describes a spectrum of styles for drawing an animal character, running from Realistic to Anthropomorphic (shaped like a man). Consider his levels of realism:
Whichever level of reality you are trying to achieve, you will want to think about the anatomy of the base animal, the source material for your character. How do the legs move when walking, running, and sitting? How does the body move when this animal does something? You are creating a new character, so you can create some new rules for it, but how far do you go from the actual animal? Even in the Cartoon and Anthropomorphic cases, you still have to decide on a logical skeleton and muscle structure for the animal. Did you ever watch how Yogi Bear walked? (Not the way he ran. That was usually an exaggerated blur.) It was a little different from one cartoon to another, but there was an internal consistency in the character: He was always drawn as walking more like a man than like a bear, and his legs moved in logical ways, based on his shape. Watch the cartoon linked above, to see several examples of stance and consistent animation of movement. Mr. Bancroft discusses making animal characters cute. He has discussed the concepts before, in the chapter on female characters. His recommendations to get a cute character:
The course syllabus says we should look at some of the material in chapter seven at this point to consider "mythical" creatures. This chapter was written by a guest author, Rob Corley. It is about combining ideas to make creatures that do not occur in nature. Even when making a monster, a mythic creature, or a technological character, it makes sense to follow Mr. Corley's advice about anatomy. You can't know how to make a creature move consistently until you know how it is put together, where it bends, and what source to model it on. The objective for this part of the lesson is to add tails, wings, and other parts not usually included on a creature. Think about it based on what we have covered already:
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