Moho Forum

So a few folks on this forum have talked a bit about developing styles and so forth in their work with AS. Personally, I'm still working on developing a unique signiture style of my own and so as an exercise I've gone ahead and copied the style of someone else. And who better than Osamu Tezuka himself? So as a tribute I've posted my copy of Astroboy's head here:



One thing of interest. In trying to draw Astroboy in AS what I found was that I'd spend time carefully creating a shape only to find it gets completely altered when you add lines and weld points to the shape. Sometimes, when I weld a point it then becomes hard or impossible to get the underlying shape to be exactly as I need it.

Does anyone have any advice or best practices regarding this issue?

Cheers,

~~ NN ~~

What you don't realize is that you're just copying secondary stuff. The artistic GREATS did life drawing, studied anatomy, and slowly but surely they developed, from drawing REALITY, a style of their own. To copy a cartoonist's STYLE is heresy.

Mikdog wrote:To copy a cartoonist's STYLE is heresy

Well, I think that is a bit heavy. I think if you are trying to pass off someone else's style as your own, that is heresy. If you are trying to learn, and using the discoveries that others have made, I see nothing wrong in that.

Sorry Mikdog ~~

But I'll have to disagree with you on several counts.

(1) I realize exactly what I'm doing when I copy "secondary stuff". I'm training my eye in exactly the way the Masters have done in making life studies. (Incidently you might be interested to know that I've formally studied figure drawing in the classroom and continue to sketch from life and the "real world" ~~ and also photographs ~~ as I can find the time).

(2) Someone else in this forum pointed out that in professional studios where you often have more than one artist on a team producing drawings, an important skill is to be able to work in several styles. And so, in part, this exercise is an effort to develop my ability to move among styles.

(3) IMHO, copying another artist's work in and of itself is not a sin. As Jahnocli so aptly points out, copying another's work without acknowledgement and trying to pass it off as your own is more of a problem.

I think that my using Tezuka's great work as a learning exercise falls perfectly well within the realm of "fair use" and, in fact, have seen it recommended in several "how to draw" books to absolutely copy some pics to get a feel for making lines seeing features to add to your drawings.

And, in fact, the exercise feeds back onto the sorts of "life studies" you referred to. Seeing the features that others add to cartoons, lets the animator look for those feature in life models and decide how to highlight them and translate them onto the page in their own work.

My final point would be this ~~ if, toward the development of style, an aspiring artist chooses to copy works of others in order to make a study of that work, it's important to look to not just one but many sources of inspiration. The more you can do the better off you will be, and the better informed you will be to create your own unique style. We are just standing on the shoulders of giants after all, eh?

I have to agree with you Dr. Nick. Your thoughts are in sound with your signature.
Also if you take the best from every great artist (or what ever you like from them or what ever you can do better) you will have a lot of experience what will help you to find your own style.

Regarding to drawing tips with AS I have to say:

1) One point can hold several lines but they only have same curvature by pairs. When you weld a new line to an existing point it will weld to the first orphan line welded in the target point (the one that is a final line and have a curvature of 0 - flat-). so adding lines must be in the correct order.
2) Before weld a point in the middle of an existing line use the split curve script (Script-->Draw-->Split curve) then you can weld / add a line without affecting the existing one. The Split curve script will modify the curvature values properly to maintain the rest of curves as they are. If you do it manually you add an standard curvature to the new point and it will probably destroy the whole curve profile
3) You can use this trick to have other curvatures than 0 in peak corners. I use this trick several times.

Hope it helps you.

Best.
-G

Wow ~~ thanks Genete ~~ this is spot on! You really know this tool!

And thanks for the link to your previous post...

Cheers,