Original subtitles

Welcome to the section where we're going to be talking about how to draw your characters in action and

really give him some gesture.

So what is gesture.

Well gesture is just basically the energy the action the movement and the balance of your character

pose.

Now there's gesture and everything.

So just to kind of give you a very simple idea of what gesture is and we'll work our way up from there.

Let's have a look at some shapes.

So if we draw some dynamic shapes so if we just draw some shapes with some curves to them so draw kind

of a dynamic rectangle and then we'll draw a kind of a diamond dynamic triangle and then at the end

let's just kind of do stretched out oval.

Well you can see that the gesture of this would kind of be it's a line of action it's a line of action

gesture.

Pretty much the same thing.

We build our gestures off of our line of action and line of action is just basically the simplest form

of gestures.

You can see that that's a gesture right there just that line of action but in bodies there's all kinds

of gestures.

So sometimes you just have our line of action in our bodies.

So for example we could kind of just go like this.

That would be our line of action you could have a head here

have your body

right.

And that's kind of our line of action and our main gesture

and so gesture has nothing really to do with the muscles or the correct anatomy or the correct proportions

really anything like that gesture is all about just kind of that main action.

So that's why this sketch I've done here.

It doesn't look like a perfect drawing of a person but it gives you an idea of what the motion of that

person is it kind of tells you that the person is kind of the probably jumping up in the air or something

like that.

That's the gesture.

So gestures can be incredibly simple so gestures can just be a line of action.

So it could just be a line like that or could be like an S curve or it can be kind of like this for

a little sketch that I did here can be as complicated as that.

So another example of this would be let's say we did kind of a line like this and then we did kind of

a line like that right.

Well what we can do is we can use these two lines as kind of our gesture and kind of turn this upper

area into a torso and lean backwards back like that.

That's kind of the belly

draw like that

right.

And so just like that I just do a very exaggerated gesture which kind of brings me to my next point

is that gestures typically are exaggerated.

So if you look at some photographs the gesture might not be that exaggerated but we want to draw them

exaggerated because the gesture is what really gives life to our character designs.

If we don't give them a gesture sort of some movement or some bounce or kind of put their weight on

one foot rather than just having them standing they're still symmetrical with the Senate their arms

are in the same position on both sides.

That's really born.

So we want to introduce dynamics that we want to introduce this gesture into our drawing.

You can see here if I switch to read you go ahead and kind of mark out what the gesture of this is actually

kind of get a curve like that if you really want to break it down.

But basically this is just like an S curve like this and that's the main gesture.

And then we have these individual gestures like I have a line there that has energy.

We have a line there that has energy on the line here and that has energy.

So all these lines are curved so when you're drawing Jester drawings you don't really want any straight

lines.

All your lines should basically have a little bit of a curve to them.

We always want to exaggerate that gesture.

So just remember that when you're drawing your characters that your characters all the details on them

and everything whether it's their muscle structure or all the way to just their costume design none

of that really matters unless you have a good gesture.

So if your character's not posed in a way that has a good gesture it's not going to look good.

Now we can always look at reference and we can exaggerate that like I said.

So let's have a look at some examples.

So right here you can see we have this girl.

So let's go ahead and let's take her gesture and let's exaggerate it so I can go ahead.

I can start by let's start by kind of tilting her head back a little bit more.

It's kind of more like that.

Another thing we can do is we can kind of exaggerate the angle of her shoulders so I'm gonna go ahead

and kind of angle her shoulders up more on this side.

So I'm sure we'll be higher than the other.

Another thing I can do is I can kind of bring her hips out a little bit further so I'll bring them out

like that maybe bring this foot in more

and then I'll bring this leg over even more

and you can see that we also get some nice dynamics in there because her hips are angled that way.

Her shoulders are angled like that right.

Let's go and turn that image off.

Add a new layer behind this.

We can fill it in with white.

That way we can see it a little bit better.

All right.

So you can see that that gesture.

It's basically the same gesture here but we were able to exaggerate a little bit by adding some extra

dynamics and just kind of changing her line of action because originally her line of action is probably

something more like move this over her line of action is probably something more just kind of a straight

line.

Honestly it's just kind of like just kind of like that.

But what we actually want is something more dynamic and so we can change the gesture by just kind of

curving all this a little bit more so instead we kind of use S curve type of gesture right.

Let's have a look at another example.

So we have this guy right here on a skateboard so we can start with the head and we get his back so

his back is kind of our first big curve kind of curves like that and it could honestly probably curve

all the way around like this and then we get kind of the curve of his leg like that

curve the bottom of his foot

then we get his arm that kind of curves like this.

And his hand occurs in the opposite direction.

Yet this leg

you can see it's not crazy detailed or anything but what it's capturing is it's capturing his gesture

it's capturing all his movement right.

And it gives the image energy.

So when we exaggerate these curves so you know his arm up here might been just kind of a straight line

we curved out a little bit more.

So it's not just a straight line it has more of a curve to it.

So we want to basically introduce a curve anywhere we can to really emphasize the gesture and just tell

our viewer kind of the direction of the motion of that part of the character's body.

All right.

So just remember that basically gesture can be anything any type of simple sketch you can see that it

can be anything for just some shapes that are going together to a full body form.

But it's really just as simple as you want it to be.

You just want to start your drawings off especially your concept sketches which are simple gestures

and we'll get we'll talk more about this.

This is just an introduction to gestures because there's a lot more to it but I just want you to start

understanding what a gesture is and they can be as simple as just a stick figure as well.

So let me just give you one more example before we end this lecture.

So it can be just something as simple as a stick figure.

So let's say that we're drawing character and she's kind of like this

right.

So we can just kind of do a line like that for the front of her chest and then angled back for a pelvis.

Then do her leg.

So have a leg like that

we have her other leg

do some little ovals for the feet.

And do some arms

like that.

So there you go.

There's another simple gesture drawn.

You just kind of catching those gestures those curves of kind of the direction of the body parts and

from there you would build your forms your muscle structures and all your detail on top of that.

So when you're done drawing it you don't necessarily have to have the arm just be a straight curved

line like this.

You just kind of want to base everything off of that so that that way you have that nice flow through

each one of your forms and each one of your shapes.

All right.

That brings us to the end of this lecture.

Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.