Layouts II - Outdoor scene.

Okay...this is the only other layout I ever did. Why did I stop doing layouts? Well in design we were given the option of doing either layout or character design. I ended up going with character design because my teacher told me (in front of the whole class) that not everyone was cut out for doing layouts and it might be best if I stuck to other things. So, I figured to avoid further embarrassment, the smart thing to do was characters. I didn't look back or think on it much till the end of the year when this layout made it onto the year's demo reel. I thought, "huh...made the demo reel for layouts...that's weird." It got even more confusing when my design teacher, the same one who told me that I should give up layouts, wrote in my "flip this" yearbook: "Look at your layouts - on the demo reel + for some reason you never liked your own stuff. Sorry kiddo - there are some nice drawings on there and it was all you." :| I was confused. >_<

But here is the layout that made the demo reel:

Line work:


Coloured:

Layouts I - Warehouse.

I would NEVER call myself an accomplished artist and honestly, I feel mildly foolish talking about principles of art. I am not someone I feel should teach people how to draw. But I have been through the trenches and have a few helpful hints. Here is a bit of advice for ANY artist out there. This is something that BUGS THE HECK out of me. Line quality. LEARN TO DRAW CLEAN LINES! Lines that accentuate the drawing, make it look three dimensional. Learn about line weight and STOP FEATHERING YOUR LINES! Seriously. If you don't have good lines I get turned off. It makes me go "bleh." Its a very easy thing to make your work look a million times better.

What is "feathering"? This is. This is my work before animation and I chose to use it as an example so it doesn't seem like I am picking on anyone in particular. I will just pick on myself. It doesn't mean that roughs can't be messy but there is a way to sketch without feathering. In a sketch, the lines should be confident and strong even if there are 10000 of them. :P

How important are lines? Very. How hard are they to do correctly? VERY. People shrug off cleanup artists as faux artists and just people copying others works. Not so. There is a talent to it. We had an inbetweening assignment in animation that proved to be a lot more difficult than it looked. I was the only person in my year to get over a 90 on the assignment. In fact, the head of the program sought me out and congratulated on how good the project was.

I didn't do many layouts in school (more on why later) but here is one of the two I actually finished that were half decent:

Line work:


AND

Coloured: