searching for an expression

Why are the opposing eye brows the first thing that comes to mind? is it to avoid symmetry or because we're so used to seeing it?


Anyway, I'm trying to capture expressions and walks I see in the school halls

Slab walk part 1

John has asked me to animate a 10 beat double bounce walk with his character slab. A double bounce is something only cartoon characters can do, since it's impossible to bend down as you are pushing yourself up without interrupting the initial motion.

OH! I forgot to add, before I started drawing my keys I broke them all down clearly on one sheet and numbered them, so that I wouldn't be lost while animating.

I drew Keys for a walk with a constant body

And one with a leaning body

John thought the lean was good, so I carried on from there.

I drew all the inbetweens, and it looked good to me. but John thought the arms were weird, He said the hands are small and his pose should be more cocky, suitable for a little bully. His fists should also move down as he walks.

So now I'm searching for that pose

Hecklin' Hare

After seeing John's tutorial I immediately started my own copy. I dedicated 3 hours to this drawing.

This was one of my first attempts. I analyzed the picture more before I went any further
I found it a bit hard to explain it just by words, so I drew out parts of bugs as I was pointing out their details. As I kept going, the image built itself, I had no intention of using this one as my copy, It was drawn to note the following things:
Head: from the mid line devision, screen left part of the face (with stretched eye) fills 20% of the head, screen right fills 80%. The squashed eye fills 50% of screen right, about 30% on the right is left for head space, and reaction for the cheek squash, the other 20% is between the squashed eye and the mid line.
The socket for the right ear is following the same plane of the right eye, and squashing down a bit, as a reaction to the brow. The left ear does the opposite as a reaction the the raised brow, it's higher and closer the the mid line. The angle for the ear is straight, the curve of it defines the form. Bugs' shortest hair touches the middle of the left ear.
Bug's lower lip aligns with the bottom of his snout on screen left, and curves up until the cheek is formed on screen right.
The neck connects at the bottom of the head, it is thickest at the connection point, and narrowest above the connection with the torso, it widens again when it connects. The top of Bugs' neck is squashed due to the tilt of his head.
Bug's belly is curved, and his back is a bit more straight and flat compared to it, His arm overlaps his spine, the shoulder is the widest part of the arm.

After I understood these points I re-drew bugs and kept comparing it with the original, to get as close as I could.

Slab sans Ernie

John's character Slab, One of George Liquor's cousins

I drew the initial blue construction very lightly

I scanned it in and compared with the original

In the process of completion, I kept comparing my drawing with the original, to see where corrections need to be made.

The final lines are very close. The differences: his screen right eyebrow is a bit high, and the back of his head is a bit too wide and rounded, his shoes a bit big.

Another go

The body posture and head tilt work a bit better in this one, the features also sit better on the head.

Tweety with an expression

Trying to give him a Gleason expression, I've drawn it over and over, haven't nailed it yet.
His proportions are off too, head and feet too small, body and limbs too long. His head needs to be titled as well. I'm going to re-do this.

Tweety's profile

Here are a few things I noticed while drawing Tweety's profile




Tweety's head is like a baby's head, its very human in the way it's constructed. Our craniums are designed to protect our brains, Tweety's cranium is curved in a very similar way.
The Cerebellum is the round point at the bottom back point of the brain, the farthest back point is curved to contain it. The highest point is at the top back part, curving down to the forehead, which contains the frontal lobes. The part of the forehead closer the the scalp is called Frontal Eminence, and the part of the forehead closer to the eyebrows is called Gabella, the middle part between those two looks a bit sunk-in on human profiles, it may be decorated with worry lines, depending on how optimistic you are.
In cartoons we curve that to look more appealing, Tweety's farthest (and curved) point would look flat or sunk-in on human profiles. His cheek follows a curve from the back of the head and the eye, it covers the eye a bit.
His feet can be thought of as flattened corn kernels, the flatter part being the heel, and the rounder part being the toes, separated by a center line. his toes reach his heel.

His torso can be seen as a fat bean, The fatter part being the tush. The curve is much like real babies, only exaggerated and cutie-fied.


His wings are like tiny chicken wings, no palms unless the scene calls for it. I find that a lot of curved shape can be sketched with a "figure 8" approach, it creates a pleasing silhouette which you can later "flesh out" by deciding where to overlap your finishing lines.

Ballet Tweety

Clampett's Tweety.
This wonderful model sheet was posted by Kevin Langley

My first attempt

Surprisingly it was pretty close, I didn't need to change anything major that would call for re-drawing, only a few corrections. such as the the size of the feet, eyes, arms and angle of the hair.

Now I wanted a graceful Ballet pose, the first one I just drew straight out of my head, it lacked clarity.

I turned to photo reference and drew the rough below

I thought it had the clarity and grace I wanted, so I built up the construction upon it.

On the left side are some of my observations on Tweety's head.
Other than that his farthest hair is the longest, but I find that many animators take liberties with that when it helps to accentuate motion and prevent stiffness.

I used to do 5 roughs minimum before I reached the pose I wanted, I only did one this time. The lessons are sinkin' in!

Re-Drawing the pose

This rough was intended to be a slightly altered rotation of the previous pose, aiming for a clearer silhouette
Several things bothered my eye, The head was ok, but the body wasn't. I made notes and re-drew, but I came to realize it wasn't the little things as much as the expression of the pose. This the body is hunched over, like a pleading pose, While the previous as more like repressed anger exploding. I thought the body was a bit too evenly round, which flattened the drawing.

Well, back to the drawing board. I drew a thumbnail, it read well and had more of the original pose in it.

And I redrew in larger size.

Well, this one is a bit better. I liked the original expression and wanted to stay close to it, while trying to make the details less even, Though the finished body became more animated than the finished head.

New expression

I thought the previous expression was ambiguous and lacked guts, so I made another one, hope there's no confusion about it.