I've been working on Barry's latest brief this week. I think we've all realised how important it is to keep on top of the traditional work 'cos when it piles up it can seem a bit overwhelming. So the latest brief is a run cycle. Any character can be used, i.e. realistic or cartoon, but preferably one that we make up ourselves. There are only eight drawings required for this cycle so I was expecting to get it done easily enough. As it turned out it took a long time, mainly trying to keep a consistent scale to the character, as we had been already given the key poses.

 

As in the previous briefs for Barry, I drew in red crayon first with the intention of going over it in blue pencil, and finally finishing the lines in black. The first line test showed that my first four drawings were too faint, which resulted in a kind of blurry appearance. I also noticed something strange going on with the head.

 

 

I ran a second test using drawings five up to eight and repeated - to make up the cycle -  just to check the overall movement. It now became obvious that the head was wrong which meant I had to study the drawings and correct this.

 

 

It turned out that I had three different head key poses where there should only be two opposite ones and two in-betweens in every cycle of four. I had noticed that drawings five up to eight were copies of one to four, with the limbs on altering sides of the torso. With the head corrected I've gone over the lines with a blue crayon and am happy with the result. I want to add clothes next - maybe I'll make this character a woman so I can add extra movement through a dress and long hair.