Re: Um...Pointless stuff

["David Krentz" <David.Krentz@disney.com>]

Reply to:RE>>Um...Pointless stuff                            10:33 AM   
4/9/99

  Two  books that will really  improve dinosaur drawings are not at all 
dinosaur books. Charles R Knight's Animal Drawing and Jack Hamm's Animal 
Drawing. These are very simple and cheap books, and they teach far more 
important things than drawing scales, they  teach how to break the bodies of 
animals down into basic shapes.  It is unbelievably imperative to understand 
how the simple shapes connect, move, look like in perspective etc.  My second 
year student film at CalArts I did a dinosaur animated short.  To keep the 
albertosaur consistent and animatable from any given angle  I had to first 
draw it in it's simple forms (the head was a cube with a wedge on the end of 
it, the torso was an oval, the hips a big flat square...)  The Chasmosaurus 
head would have literally been impossible it I didn't do the same.  Even the 
pros often can't get ceratopsian head perspective right!  It's hard!
    Personally, drawing scales and going over skeletons is the easy part.  
Making a believable construction underneath is MORE important than the icing 
on the cake.  It's sort of like trying to make an animal stand without it's 
skeleton.  Practicing with basic shapes will make you more comfortable with 
drawing dinosaurs  from any angle other than just the side view.  I hope I'm 
not to preachy here, and perhaps I'm assuming to much without even seeing 
anyone drawings, but when I finally got past the "line defines the shape" 
phase and entered "shape describes the form" phase my drawings really 
improved!  I had so much fun!  I fell in love with drawing dinosaurs all over 
again.
  Oh, and then theres gesture, which come before shapes......
David Krentz
Walt Disney Feature Animation

--------------------------------------
Date: 4/8/99 2:38 PM
To: David Krentz
From: T. Mike Keesey
On Thu, 8 Apr 1999 thescelosaurus@juno.com wrote:

> I don't know if there are any drawing books out there about dinosaurs
> that are really good for accuracy and don't have their drawings composed
> of the ovals and circles and triangles that you erase as you progress.
> (I'm sorry, I hate that method with a passion.  I used to press hard
> with my pencil, and that makes the guide lines permanent) 

Hey, those books are how I learned to draw! (I'm serious.) The "circle
method" rocks!

--T. Mike Keesey                                    <tkeese1@gl.umbc.edu>
WORLDS                                  <http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~tkeese1>
THE DINOSAURICON                               <http://dinosaur.umbc.edu>