Inking Tips: UNDERSTAND the drawing before you ink it

Here's a swell pencil drawing of Ernie by Jim Smith. Jim is very good at suggesting form even with rough sketches. If the drawings aren't carefully cleaned up or inked, they can easily flatten out and lose their impact. So it's important to analyze a drawing before you start inking. The first thing is to note how the biggest forms are constructed and how they relate to each other in dimension and position.
It's also a very good practice to connect the cranium to the body with the neck - even when you don't see the neck because it is behind the chin.
A lot of artists have problems understanding the relation between the cheeks and the smile lines. the line at the top of a cheek and the line underneath that describes the smile are 2 borders of a piece of meat that you use to make expressions. They should look like they make a form that points to the nostril.
More to come...

Work from the constructed poses

 Here are 3 poses from a layout scene, drawn in pencil

 scanned very strangely but ignore that

Before inking, (or animating or anything else) it helps to understand the larger forms that are controlling the action.

I make a layer in Toonboom where I race the big forms over the layouts

 This way inkers, animators, inbetweeners can see what is happening without getting lost in the details

 when you turn off the layout layer you can see the construction and animating these simple shapes first is easier than trying to keep track of a million details from frame to frame

You can use the onion skin to see how the shapes relate to each other from pose to pose

Once this is done, you can start to add details and it is a lot easier process.

INKING: Ink the forms, not just the lines

 I'm working with a bunch of inkers and finding that I have to explain the same concepts multiple times to each artist individually. So I figure if I just put the tips up here where everyone can see them, maybe it will save me time explaining so much.

This pencil layout is lively and almost constructed. It's slightly disconnected so let's enhance it through the miracle of construction.

 Some of my inkers can draw cleaner smoother lines than me and that's great. However there is more to a good clean up than just smooth lines. The lines need to describe the forms underneath and all the details need to be in agreement with the forms they belong to.

The line of action is always the major form or force that guides the rest of the drawing. Analyze the pose you are tracing and make guides to help your understanding and placement of the forms upon the line of action.

 When connecting one part of the body to another you should aim the connecting parts to the centers of the foams they are attached to. A neck connects the back of the skull through the centre of your torso.

 Draw your biggest forms first and connect them to each other. Then you can do the next biggest forms that are part of the bigger ones. Eyes are part of the head so they should look like they are in the same position in space that the head is.

That doesn't mean they are perfectly symmetric though. They still should feel organic and alive.

Next I'll show you buggers how to connect limbs to bodies and hands and feet, ok?

Good.

Inking: Eyes and Eyebrows Construction

Figure out the form and position in space of the cranium first - you want the eyes to conform to the position of the skull.

-also make the pupils look like they are sitting on the form of the eyes, not going in a different direction

****DON'T POKE THE EYEBROWS AND WRINKLES TOO FAR OUTSIDE THE HEAD OUTLINE**** - you don't want to make the head silhouette too complicated

More Tips

http://canskickstarter.blogspot.com/#!/2012/09/inking-tips-weight-wrapping-details.html

Nice Pencil Work From Assorted Animation Studios

Here are some good animation pencils in various stages of clean up and in assorted styles.
What makes them good is not the quality of each individual line itself, but rather the ability of all the lines to contain the forms within them. All these pencils reveal that the artists understand that the characters are made of forms that all make sense and fit into a plan that adds up to instant recognition of a character and a statement of attitude or emotion.
Too many modern cartoonists think that having a perfectly clean line is the end goal of a good drawing - even if the forms within the clean lines are vague, unbalanced or wobbly.
I like pencil lines that have feeling and understanding like these.
In all these drawings, the first thing we see is the characters themselves, not the line quality.
The lines are subservient to the characters.

In this Jiminy Cricket drawing you can see the rough flowing shapes underneath and the line of action and direction of each of the forms. The clean lines on top follow along those underlying principles and don't fight them.

Even in this very clean and tight Jetsons drawing, you can feel the forms underneath.



These Bickenbach drawings show that the characters, while somewhat stylized, still follow some logic. The shapes are pulled along the line of action and overall pose. Then the lines are stretched around the line of action and forms.


All these skills and concepts go back to the early rounded animation forms.
Even this later complex Chuck Jones style uses all the same principles. The lines on Witch Hazel all describe distinct clear shapes which in turn fit into the larger forms. They all fit together and make an instantly readable character and pose and expression.







Scribbly Pencils
These drawings show me that the artist has trouble understanding and defining forms. This is too vague and scribbly to be of much use to the next artist down the line.
I've seen some modern character designers who draw like this, with lots of squiggly 's' curves that don't add up to any clear forms or overall plan. There are even "how to" books that attempt to explain that drawing sloppy is a good way to become a designer. Why anyone would need a book to teach you how to be sloppy is beyond me but these books definitely exist. I'll give you a tip for free: Step on your fingers for a few minutes before you do your next drawings and you will get some nice vague scribbles when you try to draw something.

Modern Cold PencilsThis style of clean up seems totally divorced from classic cartoon drawing principles. I have to stare at the images for awhile and make them come together in my head to form a vague character image. They don't appear alive or committed to a statement like all the drawings above.
They just seem like random jumbles of lines with no distinct plan underneath. The eye wanders around the puzzle of lines. It doesn't help that the lines are all one skinny even width. There is no construction, no hierarchy and all the angles veer off into contradictory directions. It looks like connect the dots.