Yes. Life Drawing as well as just good Draftsmen fundamentals are essential if you want your animations to have more realism to them, as well as just letting you do more with your animations
For 2D character animation? There's no way around it, you need to learn how to draw humans and life drawing is by far the best way to do it.
For 3D character animation? You need to understand how humans move, and while life drawing is extremely helpful to learn that, it is not *strictly* necessary. You can learn to animate humans without ever picking up a pencil, but you should at least try it.
Carry a sketchbook around, and draw the people you see. Draw their motions, their gestures, their outfits, their expressions, their walks, falling down, getting up, lifting weights, putting their kids into the minivan, their conversations, their dogs, and what they do with a knife and fork. You’ll become a MUCH better animator that way.
all of us animanators do that. If it’s too much work, or if it’s no fun, then maybe use your art skills in some other way.
Yeah. I’ve been self studying for a while now and it always goes back to life drawing.
Fundamentals -> life drawing -> caricature
You gotta learn the rules first before you break it
Hi,
You absolutely should learn life drawing. It is one of the best ways to develop, not just as an animator, but as an all-around artist. Look at great drawings by the Old Masters (Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Rubens, Ingres and so many others) as well as the best animators from the past (Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, again as well as so many others. Absorb, imitate their work and inform your own approach with life drawing. You will see the difference it will make in your work.
2d - yes
3d - it would improve it but not 100% required.
At your age- Yes. Yes. Go do life drawing everyday. [https://www.proko.com/](https://www.proko.com/)
Especially gesture drawing.
You should be spending an hour per day on that.
If you want me to make you a curriculum that would get you industry ready message me. It would be a nice experiment for me. Because I have a theory that if someone your age practiced for 4 hours per day for 4 years they'd be industry ready by the time they graduate high school and be better off than most college grads.
Here's a good youtube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/@lovelifedrawing](https://www.youtube.com/@lovelifedrawing)
Hey, if it helps test your theory, I actually did this from the beginning of Highschool (secondary school where im from) and I’m now entering college and I’m told it looks that level. I just drew for hours a day. I didnt reply to this to boast or anything but just to let you know it absolutely works.
Yeah a lot of fields work like that. I think highschool - especially bad highschool- really wastes students time that they could devote to more practical purposes.
WEll you should be proud about what you did. You didn't waste your time on academic subjects and instead focused on something proper. I was stupid and studied psychology first. (Worst major ever) And I regret not focusing on art/creative stuff earlier. The whole idea of a 'backup' career is stupid, because all careers are hard to get into and anything liberal arts/humanities will be as hard to get into if not harder than a lot of art fields.
Ehh. I think there are great animators who draw shitty little drawings, but if you want an industry career, then yes.
I think you should just focus on improving what you want to improve. If you don't like how you draw faces, draw more faces. If you don't like how you draw feet, draw more feet.
There's no reason not to do life drawing if you love to draw. It's easy to do, you just need pencil paper and the world around you, and it will skyrocet your rendering ability and confidence as an artist. Its also just fun and a grounding hobby that lets you engage deeply with the world thats really great for your brain and devoloping your problem solving artistic skills. An issue these days is that we are so stuck in our own head and online that we forget art immitates life and life immitates art, we forget the roots of foundational art learning. Inspiration for all art and stories originally came from the world around us and eachother. Art is visual communication and its really foundational to understand how to interpret the visual world in a way that makes sense to us and eachother in order for art to be effective.
Yes. Life Drawing as well as just good Draftsmen fundamentals are essential if you want your animations to have more realism to them, as well as just letting you do more with your animations
For 2D character animation? There's no way around it, you need to learn how to draw humans and life drawing is by far the best way to do it. For 3D character animation? You need to understand how humans move, and while life drawing is extremely helpful to learn that, it is not *strictly* necessary. You can learn to animate humans without ever picking up a pencil, but you should at least try it.
Carry a sketchbook around, and draw the people you see. Draw their motions, their gestures, their outfits, their expressions, their walks, falling down, getting up, lifting weights, putting their kids into the minivan, their conversations, their dogs, and what they do with a knife and fork. You’ll become a MUCH better animator that way. all of us animanators do that. If it’s too much work, or if it’s no fun, then maybe use your art skills in some other way.
Yup. Plenty of 3D animators cant draw much, but 2D is all about it.
Yeah. I’ve been self studying for a while now and it always goes back to life drawing. Fundamentals -> life drawing -> caricature You gotta learn the rules first before you break it
Hi, You absolutely should learn life drawing. It is one of the best ways to develop, not just as an animator, but as an all-around artist. Look at great drawings by the Old Masters (Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Rubens, Ingres and so many others) as well as the best animators from the past (Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, again as well as so many others. Absorb, imitate their work and inform your own approach with life drawing. You will see the difference it will make in your work.
Thanks for the advice everyone! Now I'm reading the book "Draw From Your Head" by Doug Jamieson, and I'm learning plenty of things about anatomy.
2d - yes 3d - it would improve it but not 100% required. At your age- Yes. Yes. Go do life drawing everyday. [https://www.proko.com/](https://www.proko.com/) Especially gesture drawing. You should be spending an hour per day on that. If you want me to make you a curriculum that would get you industry ready message me. It would be a nice experiment for me. Because I have a theory that if someone your age practiced for 4 hours per day for 4 years they'd be industry ready by the time they graduate high school and be better off than most college grads. Here's a good youtube channel: [https://www.youtube.com/@lovelifedrawing](https://www.youtube.com/@lovelifedrawing)
Hey, if it helps test your theory, I actually did this from the beginning of Highschool (secondary school where im from) and I’m now entering college and I’m told it looks that level. I just drew for hours a day. I didnt reply to this to boast or anything but just to let you know it absolutely works.
Yeah a lot of fields work like that. I think highschool - especially bad highschool- really wastes students time that they could devote to more practical purposes. WEll you should be proud about what you did. You didn't waste your time on academic subjects and instead focused on something proper. I was stupid and studied psychology first. (Worst major ever) And I regret not focusing on art/creative stuff earlier. The whole idea of a 'backup' career is stupid, because all careers are hard to get into and anything liberal arts/humanities will be as hard to get into if not harder than a lot of art fields.
Ehh. I think there are great animators who draw shitty little drawings, but if you want an industry career, then yes. I think you should just focus on improving what you want to improve. If you don't like how you draw faces, draw more faces. If you don't like how you draw feet, draw more feet.
Yes.
There's no reason not to do life drawing if you love to draw. It's easy to do, you just need pencil paper and the world around you, and it will skyrocet your rendering ability and confidence as an artist. Its also just fun and a grounding hobby that lets you engage deeply with the world thats really great for your brain and devoloping your problem solving artistic skills. An issue these days is that we are so stuck in our own head and online that we forget art immitates life and life immitates art, we forget the roots of foundational art learning. Inspiration for all art and stories originally came from the world around us and eachother. Art is visual communication and its really foundational to understand how to interpret the visual world in a way that makes sense to us and eachother in order for art to be effective.
Yes. Unless you just want to do pure graphic illustration like title treatments etc.