Before our first Animation Studio class, we were tasked to choose 3 of our favourite characters and draw their construction forms as homework.
The full brief for the homework was the following:
“Practice studying & drawing underlying forms – Take your 3 favourite animated characters and study their underlying form – Trace over and find their construction forms. For further practice, you can try re-posing these character forms in different poses.”
I decided to choose characters from animated shows that I recently watched and the other character was from a show I enjoyed from childhood. My idea when picking characters to break down were ones that I hadn’t tried drawing before, which I think made the task more interesting. I was tempted to choose other characters such as ones that have more realistic anatomy (e.g. Aerith from FF7R, 2B from Nier, etc.) but decided to choose characters with a bit more stylisation and were from animated shows since I usually look more at game related media.
For the first character, I chose Rayla from the Dragon Prince. With her character design/construction forms, it follows pretty conventional anime-esque forms, especially those found in female characters, e.g. long cylindrical legs paired with a shorter (in comparison) torso and the pointed spherical head shape. Since her character is that of an elven assassin, it makes sense for her forms to be long and slim.
The next character I chose was Harley Quinn from the recent DC animated series named after the character. After drawing the forms for Rayla, I noticed that the underlying forms for Harley were extremely similar; a lot of long rounded cylindrical shapes. In female character design, circles and round shapes are often used due to their association with being reassuring and friendly. Although, in Harley’s design that are slightly more angular than that of Rayla, likely because Harley’s character is a lot more volatile.
I chose Robin from Teen Titans as my third and final character since the show was one I was really into as a child. His underlying forms are also different from the female characters I chose. Cartoon male character design tends to use more rectangular and sharper shapes. Something that is also noticeable in male characters is that their waists are less defined and will often blend into the rectangular torso shape. Another thing I noticed, which I thought was interesting, especially when I attempted to repose him, was that the elbow and knee joints connect in a sort of triangular shape. The shape of his calves are also more pointed.
Before the homework task I did some warm up practice forms. Adding contour lines to the shapes really helped to visualise the forms in a 3D space.
