Drawing Everyday for a Year (or two)

Tonight I've put my pen down because I just wasn't feeling it.

First, after some hand warmers, I was feeling brave so I tried to trace a dense city skyline of my hometown but after 15 minutes I felt like ripping my hair out. I then went to work on a piece I had started the other day featuring characters that I've drawn a hundred billion times by now, but it was if my hand was actively rebelling against me - screaming "please just go to bed" as it tends to do at times.

This kind of stuff used to really bother me, and don't get me wrong, it's still frustrating, but I've come to accept the fact that sometimes the drawing machine just does not work and that's okay. I've had to accept this, as I've been forcing encouraging myself to draw every single day since 2018. Okay, I'll be honest, I missed a few days out last year, but so far I've managed to draw at least one thing per day throughout 2019 - and with only a week or so left, I'll hopefully not mess it up at the last minute.

I would highly encourage that everyone with an interest in art and animation pick up this habit - especially those in animation as you're gonna want to get used to drawing constantly. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece every evening, just a little doodle or two will suffice. I find this helpful for a few reasons: it keeps your "drawing muscles" active, it prevents you from taking long breaks away from art and coming back all rusty, and most importantly, it helps you improve. I can safely say that doing this has boosted my skills dramatically without me even noticing. If you can turn drawing from a chore to second nature, it will do wonders for your capabilities.

I'm talking about this because I was honestly surprised to hear that hardly anyone else I know does this - especially those who are wayyy better at art than I am! i'm also very bored and felt like typing up my thoughts

This is probably common knowledge/something you've heard a million times, but take it from me - I usually ignore all advice until it works out for me. (There was a point being made there I think)

NOW GO DRAW SOMETHING DUMMY

How to make birbs speaketh

Lip sync can be tricky for some, all those mouth shapes and how to time them...
But what about if you gotta make birds talk? They got beaks, not mouths! Impossible right? WRONG.

Of course, this depends on how cartoony your animation is.
If you're attempting to make a photo realistic crow sing a Capella then I haven't got much advice for you. However, if you are drawing on the more stylistic side of things, allow me to other some advice as I have been distorting beaks in weird shapes for the last few days with my upcoming documentary project.

First of all, you should have at least a decent enough idea as to what mouth shapes are like. Here's some examples that I've done bellow, we'll be using this art style as reference. If you struggle with mouth shapes - grab a mirror! Pull faces in it, make the sounds... you'll look dumb, but that's part of the job!

These are just my way of drawing them, you might wanna do them differently.
Here's a few bullet notes:
> ay/I/ah and eee both require the mouth wide open, so what makes them different? Well, try saying "cheese" in as exaggerated a manner as you can. Your mouth stretches, right? Almost into a smile, that's the "eee" sound. With "ah" your mouth hangs lower and is more vertical.
>When animating a "buh" or "muh" sound, start with the "em" mouth and then open it with the one beside it in the example pic. Again, say these sounds in an exaggerated fashion; your mouth has to open to let the sound escape. You could always use the same mouth shape as "ah" but I prefer making it a little softer/smaller. It just seems to fit better.
>"Oh" and "u" sounds are technically made with different shapes but I find the difference minimal. That said, if you want to differentiate the two, have the "oh" mouth be fatter and "u" be thinner.
>Always pay close attention to how prominent your teeth and tongue are with each sound in order to know what to prioritise drawing.

Okay, now with that out of the way, here's how we translate those shapes into bird beaks.
For reference, here's the beak I had to animate in its resting position:

As I mentioned earlier, the idea of having to make a beak move like a human mouth might sound daunting, but it's actually pretty straight forward. Take a look:

You'll notice that these are basically just the normal mouth shapes but with a bill on top. However, there are some interesting exceptions, so let's analyse further:

"Oo" "u"

I think this is the one that scares people the most, which is understandable since this is an impossible beak shape. However, all you need to do is make a long tube with a mouth hole at the end (again, this is if you're animating in a cartoony style). There is also a less exaggerated version:

You can use either, though I prefer the first because it's funnier.

For further reference, look at Aardman's Chicken Run - the memories of that film are what helped me visualise these shapes better.

"cuh" "el"

"BUT BIRDS DON'T HAVE TEETH" I hear you cry "HOW ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO SAY CAT!?!?" Calm down, son, the answer is simple: (drum roll please)

....

Just don't draw them!

All you need do is draw the lower part of the beak in the somewhat crooked shape your mouth makes when you emphasise a hard "kuh", that alone gets the impression of the sound across perfectly.

Some birds also lack tongues, but the same principle applies. However, since tongues are more noticeable in human speech than the teeth, I'd recommend making the bottom half of the beak smaller, perhaps even curling upwards to the top even more.

Some more general pointers:

>With cartoony animation, especially in lip sync, you don't need to worry if the mouth increases and decreases in size in huge amounts. In fact, I think the bouncier the mouth, the better. You'll find this comes in handy with beaks, which is another reason why I prefer that tube version of the "Oo" sound.

>Use the nose(?) of the beak as an anchor point to make sure it doesn't wobble about on the bird's face.

>You can always give your birds teeth and tongues if it makes it easier (again, see Chicken Run), but first make sure that your character designs are appealing with those. Ever seen a bird with teeth? Its creepy. Make sure to avoid the uncanny valley.

And that's pretty much all I have at the moment.

I hope this helps anybody out.

Thanks for reading!

Where is all the 2D, Mouse?

After Home on the Range came out, Disney proclaimed that traditional animation was dead because the film performed poorly (we'll just conveniently ignore who bad the film was in general). When they tried again with The Princess and the Frog, they blamed the title (disregard the fact that AVATAR was out at the same time), hence why the following princess movies in the Disney canon use adjectives as named like Tangled or Frozen - its hip, yo. There was also 2011's Winnie the Pooh, but as charming as I found that movie to be, nobody who isn't babysitting would pay a ticket to see, regardless of what they used to animate it. So what's the excuse this time?

The vast majority of people I encounter about this subject, both online and in person, claim to be tired of *mainstream* CG films. I emphasise mainstream here because the big studios (Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Illumination etc) do very little interesting with their approach to 3D animation. The only exception is, somehow, Sony of all things. With the Tartakovsky-lead Hotel Transformation series and, of course, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse providing the only popular examples of what the medium is capable of. Pixar were innovators at one point, but audiences no longer care about how much hair is on Sully's back or how many ants you can fit on screen. So with audiences bored of the same, bland aesthetics, why haven't we seen a return to what many consider a more visually appealing medium? (I know you have the answer on the tip of your tongue, just bare with me).

To go back to Disney, look at all these live action remakes of their back catalogue.

Who wants these? They're ugly, drab, miserable and destined to be inferior to the originals. It's like Disney knows that there's mad nostalgia for The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast and so on, but instead of realising that its the artistry of those movies that make them beloved, they instead give us Will Smith painted blue and a photo realistic version of Simba because we're adults now and everything must be taken seriously! Cartoons!? No thanks, grandma! I can tie my own shoelaces!

People want a new traditionally animated movie from the studio. Does this magically make a film good? Hell no. Again, see: Home on the Range. But Disney have had a fairly successful track record as of late; the last 10 years have been incredibly successful for them both commercially and critically (if only the same could be said for Pixar...) so I hardly see it as a risk to give people what they want. What? Are they afraid that they'll lose money? They own America.

That said, let's address the elephant in the room...

These movies, both the bland CG stuff and the live action remakes, make TONS of money. Like, billions each time, even though the seemingly unanimous reaction towards every sequential trailer for these things is: "why?". In a lot of cases, 3D is more expensive to produce than 2D. Note that I said "a lot" and not "all" so please don't crucify me on that statement. With that in mind, why go for the more expensive option? If mainstream animated feature films start to adopt more creative visual styles a la Spider-Verse than I'd welcome it with open arms, but the Western world of animated features hasn't seen a great, quality and diverse line-up since 2009. That year we got Up, Fantastic Mr Fox, Princess and the Frog, The Secret of Kells, Mary and Max, Coraline, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs... just an overall amazing year. What did 2018 bring? Isle of Dogs was great, but that's honestly it.

I think I went off on several tangents there, but point being: Disney, start making your kids movies to appeal more to me. Thanks.

_; W E L C O M E ;_

Soon I'll be giving you opinions the likes of which this species has never seen.

Mostly about animation.

Maybe other things too.

Here's some examples of my work so far.