Saturday, October 16, 2010

Arnold Studies

Here's someone who actually has accomplished things-and is a real character on top of it.
I'm really starting to wonder how trying to draw realistically can help cartooning. The closer I study what things really look like, the more I realize how much more complex reality is than cartoons. That probably sounds obvious.
Some things just can't be captured in line alone, for one thing.
I have been trying to figure out the mechanics and structure of the whole mouth area and it's a nightmare of complexity. -at least for me. It sure has nothing to do with the way we cheat mouth shapes for cartooning.
I have the typical cartoonists' problem of drawing eyes and heads bigger than they are in reality. When I think of how many cartoon productions have tried to animate in a realistic style, my mind boggles at the pure futility of it. It's hard enough to do one drawing that's remotely realistic, let alone trying to move it in space.

I think cartooning is almost a completely different art than illustration, even though you sometimes see some overlap.

Cartoonists - at least the best ones- rely more on imagination than complex drawing skills. The kind of skills that great illustrators have must derive from some totally different otherworldly sense than what cartoonists create with.