Posing: FRAMING one character's pose with another's

 This is a good technique to use with the others I have been tailing about.

 You can have one character's pose create a frame around the other's.

 The frame is created by the space between the 2 characters.

 This makes the 2 poses easier to read and it looks swell too.

You can also use background elements as framing devices.

The master of this (and other posing techniques) is Harvey Kurtzman.

John K Stuff: Harvey Kurtzman - Opposing Poses, LIFE

Posing: Static VS Dynamic

Here is a scene with characters in dynamic poses. They look alive.

Here are some characters in static poses.

1) evenly spaced apart

2) Standing straight up and down

This is obviously a publicity shot - and those are usually kind of bland and generic for some reason.

Here is another static evenly spaced group of characters from a comic.

Compare to a more lively couple of poses.

Fred and Barney's poses have strong lines of action and they have different degrees of action - they aren't in the same poses. Barnet's pose is stronger-he is leaning back on a diagonal line of action. Fred is on an arc that leans to the right at his head. the space between them is creating a V shape that leans to the right.

Again to drive this home...here is a static line up of characters who have no poses. They are all vertical and evenly spaced.

Here is Wilma in a pose. She isn't standing straight up and down. Her pose tells us her attitude and what's happening in the story.
Here is Ranger Smith in a static pose next to a cook in a subtly dynamic pose. Dynamic poses don't have to be extreme in every case. The pose should be appropriate to the scene, character and story.

Here is a nice frame that shows Yogi in a very subtle pose, his body very slightly leaning back and his head cocked subtly away from the man. The other character has a stronger more definite pose leaning forward; they aren't mirror images of each other.

ACTION AND REACTION:

This is a good technique for scenes when 2 characters are talking to each other. Usually, when one character is doing the talking, his pose is more dynamic that the other's.

But also, the character doing the listening is REACTING to the one talking. Boo Boo's pose is leaning back in a less extreme arc than Yogi is leaning forward. Yogi is the cause, Boo Boo is the effect. Yogi's forward pose is pushing Boo Boo backwards.

Dynamic poses are much more entertaining than static poses and when used in context, they tell the story better. The last thing you want in animation is to have characters just stand there reading dialogue.

Next: more action and reaction.

Next

conservative skills even radicals should strive for.

Eisenberg Studies

I like how Eisenberg controls all his shapes and spaces to make clear readable and appealing poses. He is an extremely clever cartoonist and I am slowly learning some of his techniques.
and here is an old Flintstone sketch I found.

Eisenberg and Hazelton* Contrasted

Harvey Eisenberg's natural style was fairly traditional - basically very rounded characters like 40s animation: Tom and Jerry. When he started having to draw comics using Ed Benedict's more stylized angular characters, he went through a transitional period where he tried to adapt.
His clean compact and controlled compositions were evident right away, but he had some trouble figuring out how to tilt the characters' angular heads at first.
Yogi's perspective doesn't make much sense in the panel above.
His cheats became more subtle as he got used to working in this style.His staging is always very controlled and easy to read.
Gene Hazelton - who had a similar background in animation had some differences in his style. He works more on a part by part design basis. Each individual piece of his picture has a pleasing design and style, but the overall staging and composition is less organized than Eisenbrg's. Drawing your pictures piece by piece, rather than from the big elements down to the smaller ones inevitably leads to a more cluttered look.

I think Gene was more concerned about how the characters looked, and he filled in the trees and background elements in all the spaces left between the characters.
Gene's specialty was stylish cuteness. He was known for his cute kids...

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/old-brew/gene-hazeltons-angel-face.html

Harvey's kids are cute too, but a bit more pudgy, less Valentine's card sweetness - and again he is more concerned with the balance of the composition, the negative spaces, framing of the characters and readability and flow of the whole picture.
Gene is also known for his cute women.
Here's Gene with a less cluttered composition. With cute fishies.Here's Harvey showing off perspective and his easy organization (hierarchy) of a lot of detail.
I loved these strips when I was a kid and thought that the artists must be animators, because the comics seemed to have elements of modernity, appeal and style that was more evident in animated cartoons than in the general comic strip style - which was traditionally more stiff.

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2010/06/bear-with-me-tuesday-comic-strip-day.html

another giveaway:

Eisenberg - these men have overall forms that are pulled along the lines of action. Their details- hair, clothes, arms, facial features all are kept tightly conformed to their dynamic overall statements.http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/05/eisenberg-subtleties-studies.html

Below are Gene Hazelton's men. They have lines of action too, but less direct. Their details are sticking out more and breaking up the overall flow and statement. - but each individual detail - the shape of the eyes, the fingers etc. have interesting angular shapes.
Each part of that phone receiver draws attention to itself, but the parts contradict each other and break up the overall shape of the phone.

Harvey thinks from big to small. Gene thinks from small to small and hopes it all adds up in the big picture.

*** Mark Christiansen thinks that the art I'm attributing to Hazelton here is actually Iwao Takamoto. He could be right, although it looks to me like Hazelton at least did the finishes and the faces.

Either way, these are all great cartoonists and the differences between Eisenberg and the other artists are still evident.

Thanks Mark!

http://www.markscartoonart.com/

Mark is a wonderful cartoonist too, so go check his blog...

Animation School 15: Review: Drawing With All The Animation Drawing Principles Only

Here're some very early comics drawn by great cartoon technician Harvey Eisenberg. He hasn't developed his own unique style yet and that makes this very educational to study if you are a learning cartoonist.
These are drawings made up entirely of 40s animation principles. Starting with very strong construction. All the characters are made of simple sphere, pear and tube shapes. I say simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy to put them together so well.

Note that every character is the same design as Tom and Jerry and only superficial details that define the characters' species are differentiated. The chicken has feather and a comb. The dog has jowls. The pig has a snout and pig ears, etc...but everything else about them is exactly the same, just like Tom and Jerry. It made sense as animators were learning all the difficulties and principles of movement that they kept the characters fairly simple to draw - and solid, so they could easily turn them around in all dimensions. Many early characters hadn't evolved individual character designs yet. But they had everything else important to animating and clarity.

Clear Staging/composition
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/01/disney-principles-staging-3-make-your.html

Line Of Action

SilhouettesOpposing Poses
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/11/composition-7-compose-your-poses.html

The one stylistic statement that is consistent in this comic is that all the perspective in the backgrounds is rounded. Round streets, round fences and houses etc. This was a standard early 30s cartoon style and you don't see it in many 40s cartoons.

This Eisenberg comic is pure Tom and Jerry style. By the 1940s, most of the advanced studios had gone past this pure, rounded spheres and pears approach and were starting to vary their character designs, background designs and some directors' styles were becoming very individual. Bill and Joe hung on to this basic early 40s style longer than anybody. Joe himself was reluctant to change as long as his cartoons were popular and winning Academy Awards. He didn't start creating individual characters with their own unique designs until forced into television. Then he hired Ed Benedict who gave the Hanna Barbera studio a style and a cast of individual characters on the cheap.

Harvey Eisenberg continued drawing the HB comic books and strips and his style gradually became more individual
and he mixed it with Ed's later.
That was goodbye to pure pears and spheres (Preston Blair) and hello to more complex shapes, curves and angles, but it was not goodbye to good solid drawing principles. Not yet.http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/05/eisenberg-subtleties-studies.html

His solid cartoon foundation that led to so many other styles later is really evident in this comic book:
http://comicrazys.com/2010/01/15/petey-pinfeathers-red-rabbit-comics-7-1948-harvey-eisenberg/

The point of this article: Learn Your Principles First,

40s animation principles step by step

and then style will come.
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/09/good-cartoonist-can-adapt-to-different.html

Hey and lots of thanks to all the students and fans who contributed to the cartoon lessons. If you folks do any of the lessons, remind me and I will give you some tips: