Original subtitles

Welcome to the lesson on line weights.

And in this lesson we're going to learn and understand more about why we need to line weight, why we should

line weight, what line weights are, and where line weighting comes from; the concept of line weighting.

So the first thing that I want to teach you about, is something called, atmospheric perspective.

Right.

And the concept is pretty straightforward.

Basically, in the real world, air builds up between two objects, right.

So there's just like a bunch of air between the two objects, and this happens to varying degrees, obviously

when things are very close to us.

There is air there but the build up is not much.

And the further back things go things tend to build up a little bit more.

And when the air builds up, its tends to lighten the values,

that is the brightness of the darkness of the object, as it goes further back in the distance. And you

see this when you're looking out on top, when you're standing on top of a mountain you're looking

out on a city, and you see you know that the further back things go, you can kind of see that atmosphere

you can kind of see that air, and that that perception of that air buildup helps you gauge the distance

back that those objects, are because the further back they go, the lighter they get.

And conversely, the closer things come to us, the darker they get, right.

The more contrasting they get.

And you could also say the more detailed they get, because they're not being blurred out by the

air in between the objects.

All right.

So in a nutshell that is atmospheric perspective. Let's call this one "close."

This one "far". And then just to kind of push the point, the far object would be somewhat lighter.

All right. So the air kind of holds up. And that is what atmospheric perspective is.

I see I forgot the "c" here.

"Atmospheric perspective" Closer objects are darker, further away objects

are lighter, and we're going to use atmospheric perspective to inform how we come to understand line

weighting.

Right.

So line waiting isn't just something that we want to use in an inking stage.

We want to try and implement line weighting all the time.

So let's talk about line weights

Line weights or line weighting.

Right.

So far we've learned about a few techniques for achieving a 3D look, right.

And one of those techniques is drawing through, right, we want to draw through objects.

we want to imagine the other side of them. And the other technique that we've learned is overlapping

lines, right.

So even in 3D shapes or 2D shapes, when we start overlapping lines, we can achieve a sense of depth,

And what line waiting does in many respects,

Is it enhances the overlaps, and it introduces atmospheric perspective into the piece.

So line weights really are degrees of weighting of the lines, so thicker lines come forward, and thinner

lines recede.

OK, so thicker lines come forward

and thinner lines recede back into the distance.

Pretty straightforward concept.

I think, right? And so when we're drawing something in the foreground, and we have an object in the background,

what we can do, apart from the overlaps, apart from drawing through the forms to help us imagine the forms

and the structures, is that we can weight the lines where they overlap on the foreground object; make them

thicker or make them darker, to reinforce that this object is in front of the object behind it.

What we can do is we can even darken just slightly the origin of the background points line to,

hint at a bit of a little bit of a shadow that's happening there from the overlap.

OK.

So the basic rule really is that, if an objects in front, it should have slightly thicker lines than the

object behind it.

So for example, an arm crossing over chest even in a rough view like this, here is the arm crossing over the

chest. This arm would be thicker lined and have a thicker weighting to it in general then the lines that

it's covering. For example there are some shirt lines here that would be lighter etc..

Now another tip for this as well, is to keep inner details for the smaller shapes, the details things

like shirts, and buttons, and creases, and folds, and things, inner details- usually keep them at thinner

lines and keep the bigger shapes the bigger forms having thicker darker lines.

But nevertheless, the fundamentals of line weights really are that foreground objects have darker thicker

lines, and background objects have thinner, lighter lines.

Now I don't only just have this theory for, you I want to show you an example.

This is an Orc piece that I've done.

And here you can see a multitude of varying line weights in the piece.

Let me get a red pencil here.

Let's deep dive this, the line weights a little bit.

So here we can see inner details, like those little tattoo marks, the little hairs on his chin, and the muscular

lines of the sternocleidomastoids there, and many inner details have quite thin lines, and also quite

light lines.

Right.

And then the bigger object, such as his head, for example which is overlapping his neck, you can see that

there is a thicker line weighting applied just in general, as these elements overlap.

Right.

Overlap the objects behind them, thinner lines in the background elements, thicker lines in the foreground

elements. Another point as well is that foreground objects generally being darker means you can use

darker lines in the foreground objects and you can press lightly on your pencil to get thinner and a

lighter lines in the background objects.

So here you can see how, even though this line is thin over here it kind of tapers off and goes pretty

light as it comes to the edge here.

I mean that's not a general rule but things get lighter as they go to the right.

.

But I'm just acknowledging that there is kind of a more lightness here. And that's basically also really

just implying detail to the viewer. This isn't a main focal point of the piece. Just let it be light, let

it be thin.

It's a little bit loose but it's OK.

And here as we have the hand coming into the foreground, that's holding the sword over here, that the line

weight is emphasized as we move around this particular form.

Right.

And so its whole edge is kind of made thicker and made darker to help the viewer realize and understand

that this is in front and the other objects are behind to add depth.

Line waiting also adds a very nice sense of character to the piece.

It makes the piece look quite professional, makes the piece look quite slick, and so you want to always

be trying to engineer line weights, stacking the theories on top of each other, stacking form with line

overlaps.

So drawing through, making sure you've got line overlaps, and in making sure your line weights are reading:

that foreground objects have thicker lines that background objects have thinner lines and then remembering

always also to draw loosely, so that you get these nice tapers at the ends of your lines and that

lines are looking natural and they have directionality to them.

All right.

That is the end of the lesson on line weights.