Ques – why is sketching important in animation

It is said that ‘A sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork of a picture.’

Whether it is a live sketch or a basic design, it is essentially the foundation of the
whole picture. Just as painting would be lifeless without any colour, similarly, the
world of animation will have a loose foundation without sketching.
Animation is the display of a sequence of images of 2 -D or 3-D artwork that create
an illusion of movement. The most common method of presen ting animation is as a
motion picture or video program, although there are other methods.
Current tools for creating animation are extremely complex. This makes it difficult for
designers to create animations Simple animation systems exist but severely res trict
the types of motion that can be represented. Animation is a popular medium for
entertainment, education, and communication.
Sketching is an interesting, yet a powerful element of the entire designing process.
Sketching is like a road-map for your journey towards a good design or basic frame
on which your great design has to stand. Any creative process requires a lot of
thinking and re-takes. Though we have discarded pen and paper for digital
technology, the former is still the first step towards start ing any creative process.
Sketching as a function has slowly shifted to becoming a polishing tool. It gives the
animator enough space for re-doing, altering and creating a rough product on paper.
The final touches can be then worked on with the help of our latest technology.
The sole purpose of the sketch is to guide our creative thinking towards our goal and
don’t let it slip around in different (unwanted) directions. Sketch after sketch, the
animator improves and reaches the final and the best layout for its design. This is an
essential step in the design process. Although, you can create concepts on the
computer as well, but sketching on paper is more effective and less complicated and
manually it is faster too. Sketching lets one get all the obvious idea s out of the way
and helps deliver more innovative concepts. There is no quicker method for exploring
multiple visual solutions than manual sketching. Hand -drawn sketches play an
important role in the field of digital arts. The larger a project is, and the more concepts
a client will need to see, and so sketching will eventually end up even in the
commercial process of animation What one imagines is also put up on a paper.
An animator is required to have a keen eye for colour sense, size, proportion,
perspective and visuals and regular sketching practice is the key to acquiring these
skills. Whether one can sketch well or not need not matter. However, any designing
process whether fashion, architecture, graphics, interiors or moving on to 2D - 3D
animation, the pencil and paper are still the most powerful tools today. Hence I
conclude by saying that sketching plays an important and powerful medium in
animation

Sketching - Sketching ideas are the first steps in the design process and
something every designer should do. Sketching is not just limited to designers, it
occurs in many careers that require something to get built. The beauty of sketching
is that you are not required to be an artist to produce them. Sketching is only to help
explore and explain design concepts.
Sketches can be easily created using pen and paper or a whiteboard. Using
something permanent like a pen or marker is best. The idea is to keep your
sketches fast, rough and dirty. This helps you worry less on design aesthetics and
focus more on rapid formulation of ideas.
SKETCHING BENEFITS
 Saves time in the workflow process.
 Great for brainstorming ideas and collaborating with team members.
 Refines the wire framing process
 Helps evaluate the feasibility of features and eliminate layout and functionality issues.
 Anyone can sketch ideas.

SKETCHING TOOLS
 Pen
 Paper
 Sharpie marker
 Highlighter
 Post-it notes
 Graph paper
 Whiteboard

The 5 rules of drawing and why they help

1. SKETCH LIGHTLY
2. LOOK AT THE SHAPE
3. LOOK AT THE SIZE
4. LOOK FOR LIGHT AND SHADE
5. TAKE YOUR TIME

1 Sketch lightly
Use the pencil on point or on side always touching and leaving the paper
surface, (Aeroplane effect) Use lots of sketch lines, avoid heavy
continuous outlines, (Damages the paper and cannot remove)

2 Look at the shape

Send time getting to know your subject (observe well)
Look from the subject to the paper every two or three seconds, find a start point
and work outwards from there. Remember to sketch lots of short curves and
lines

3 Look at the size

Sketch an outline of your subject very lightly and keep reviewing the size, look
for marker points within the limits of the page and other information / objects
surrounding your subject to act as a guide
 Work from focused point outwards building the shape of your subject and avoid
adding detail until you are ready

4 Look for light and shade

Build up tome using hatching very lightly at first, (even in the darker areas)
gradually laying down darker tones

Look for the light areas and try and emphasise the lightest point for example the
light in an eye often pure white reflective light.

5 Take your time

Building up confidence to draw well takes time and a lot of observation against
our subject and what we are putting down on paper or canvas. If we rush
through impatience then we will only be disappointed and loose interest

10 jobs for artists

Animator

What you’d do: Animators develop characters, objects, and environments for various
applications, including video game development, motion graphics for TV and film,
and more.

Art teacher

What you’d do: Encourage future doodlers! Remember art class, where you could
finally let your imagination loose? If you’re an art teacher, you get to create that
opportunity for kids every day.

Fashion designer

What you’d do: There’s lots of clothing—outerwear, underwear, streetwear,

everywhere!—and all of it needs to be designed. Same goes for shoes and
accessories. Fashion designers create wearables with performance, comfort, and
style in mind.
Graphic designer

What you’d do: Graphic designers create and edit visuals, typically in graphic design
software like Adobe InDesign. You’d most likely work directly for a brand or for a
variety of clients at an agency.

Illustrator and technical illustrator

What you’d do: Illustrators get their doodle on every day, creating everything from
sketches and storyboards to glyphs and logos. Technical illustrators (also known as
scientific illustrators) use descriptions of products to create visual counterparts. They
draft charts, schematics, and diagrams that will often appear in technical
publications, textbooks, or user manuals.

Industrial designer

What you’d do: From cars to home appliances to manufactured goods, industrial
designers are the people behind the designs. Your job is to weigh a bunch of factors
like function, aesthetics, and production cost, and propose designs to project
managers.

Makeup artist

What you’d do: Interested in art and cosmetics? This job’s all about making people
look great, whether it’s on the set of a movie or at a brand. Let’s call it face doodling.

Motion graphics designer

What you’d do: Do you like big, explode stuff and slick 3-D models? Not to be
confused with animators, motion graphics designers create and edit imagery in a live
action shot, which might also contain animation and special effects.

Painter

What you’d do: Painters come in many shades, including interior and exterior
painters, and in industrial and automotive capacities.
The elements of drawing
Line is the most basic element of the drawing. And in its most
basic definition, it's what separates one area of the drawing plane
from the other. A single line will segment your piece of paper into
Line.
"that area" and "this area". The more lines that are added, the more
complex and numerous the separations become: light from dark, foreground from
background, positive space from negative space. Line can be uniform and all one
width, or to be more interesting, and to convey more information with a single line, a
single line can be of varying widths.

Shape occurs when the first line is drawn. The most basic
definition of shape is the white area on the paper. Shape is the
information that is presented between two or more lines, or is the
thing that is enclosed by line. Shape helps define the object that is
depicted as much as the collection of lines that make up the object in
the drawing. Incorrect use of shape will cause the drawing to "not
look like what it's supposed to be." Shape.

Proportion and Perspective. Proportion is the size of one picture

element in relation to the size of another. In other words Proportion is
what dictates that, in humans, legs are longer than arms, the middle
finger is longer than the pointer finger, and the nose is the same length
as the width of the eye. If proportion is incorrect in a drawing it
"doesn't look right”. Perspective is the illusion that further away
things appear smaller. To make something appear to be farther away Click to see
from the viewer than the picture plane, draw it smaller than the object examples of
that is closer to the picture plane. I've put proportion and perspective each element
together as one drawing element because they both use each other to of drawing.
work. If one is incorrect, chances are the other is also incorrect.

Light and Shadow create depth and atmosphere in a drawing. In

order to make a drawing look "realistic" you need shadow because in
the real world everything has a shadow. If you draw something with
only one width line and don't render shadow, your drawing is going
to look flat, two dimensional, and unrealistic. Adding shadow
automatically adds a small bit of perspective to the drawing because Light and
the shadow indicates that something is in front of and/or behind the shadow.
object that would cause it to cast a shadow.

The whole drawing. Before you even start the drawing you will
begin to automatically mentally place your picture elements on the
paper. You take into account the whole drawing surface and relate
your picture elements to the shape of your drawing surface. For
example, if you're wanting to draw a whole human body from head to
foot you would mentally place the head to one side (or top or bottom)
of the drawing surface so that would give you enough room to be able The whole
to draw the whole body and not run off the paper. The shape of your drawing.
drawing plane will help determine the composition of your drawing.
You would not effectively be able to draw a towering skyscraper on a square piece of
paper without cutting the top or bottom off. In the example on the right, seeing the
whole drawing means when you start, you know where to place the eyes so the face
will be in the centre. Also, knowing that the tie will run off the page is being aware of
the whole drawing