Original subtitles

In this lesson, we're going to take a look at looseness and dynamism in character drawing, and this theory really

forms part of shape, so you want to think about this in terms of the shape category.

All right so you may have found that when you're drawing something, it may tend to look very stiff and kind

of may lack dynamism, just in its feel.

Right.

And so there are two categories that I want to talk about, and want to teach you, the one

would be looseness and the other is dynamism.

OK.

And they're both,

they're both applied in different ways.

So let's talk about looseness first.

All right.

So looseness is very physical.

So let's just write some notes here. Looseness and I'll put dynamism on the other side.

Looseness is about physicality.

And what I mean about that is literally your arm. Physicality. And dynamism is about movement and flow

and shapes.

So that's the basic theory of it.

Let's stick to the looseness side.

So, when you're drawing physical lines, like when you're physically drawing lines, when you draw lines slowly,

so for example I'll draw a line slowly here,

OK, versus when I draw a line quickly.

There is a fundamental difference between the two lines.

Now apart from straightness, right,

that's the obvious difference,

the one line has directionality, and the other one sort of doesn't.

So if you kind of look at the ends of this line over here, it just ends first of all, and second of

all, because of it's sort of wonky path, because I've drawn it slowly.

It doesn't really appear like it's going anywhere, it seems very static.

Right.

So this would be bad, right.

We want loose lines.

So, in terms of looseness, what we have is a taper on each end.

All right.

And then a kind of a more arced appearance of line, whether it's more or less straight, it doesn't

matter.

It's just very smooth.

And what this means is that loose lines, and that therefore lines drawn quickly;

they have a sense of directionality, so the lines seems to be moving this way, and that way. Even more

so when you start having curved lines drawn loosely, right, versus curved lines drawn slowly. While

you have now achieved a sense of directionality in the slower line because of the curve, right.

You still lose the directionality at the end

tapers, and then also, these little bumps and nooks and crannies along the way, kind of disrupt

the viewer's understanding of the flow of the line.

Right. Versus obviously, these kind of beautiful tapers that you have on faster drawn lines and just

a really smooth flow and uninterrupted sort of communication.

OK.

So looseness is about drawing loosely physically. Now you may have heard advice by people saying, you

know, "draw with your arm, don't draw your wrist".

And this is good advice, right.

So definitely try and draw with your arm more for the bigger shapes, but of course smaller shapes you're going to

need to use your wrist.

But the idea is that you don't kind of pander to the lines in a way where you're kind of like you know

hyper sketching like this, which is called chicken scratch lines.

You know, you don't want to draw like that.

And nor do you want to draw really slowly like this, because you're losing dynamism.

Right.

Well sorry, you're losing looseness in the lines, you want to really just be as quick as

you can.

I'm using shift key there, but it doesn't really matter.

And yes whilst you're having these overlaps, the shape feels more dynamic overall, right, and more appealing

and also more professional looking.

And that is one of the ways that people get a professional look in their work.

It's by having very loose strokes.

Now incidentally, this also applies to painting, although depending on how you're painting, it's not necessarily

the tapering part, but just being loose, physically loose.

OK.

So when we talk about looseness, we're talking about physical looseness in your arm, and one of the key tenants

of that really is drawing fast, OK.

So just going to write it down here, draw fast or faster.

Right if you're not that fast, to faster and be loose. It can be hard to understand but

it's basically to be physically loose.

OK, so be loose.

Draw faster. OK, that is basically the theory of looseness, It's not hard to do, but you're going

to need to practice, this so there will be practice exercises

for looseness. OK. Dynamism on the other hand is a completely different topic, it's not got to do with physicality.

It's got to do with theory and understanding the difference between something that is static and something

that is moving.

Right.

And just take that away.

OK.

So when we're talking about Dynamism, right, I'll give you an example, let's draw a triangle, let's

just pretend this is a perfectly symmetrical triangle, right, If I had to ask you what the directionality

is in this triangle, you would probably say "Well it seems to be pointing out in all of these different

directions".

Right.

Which you know, technically speaking, if that is indeed the case,

it's not moving anywhere.

It's kind of just staying here. There is it's center of motion if you will, or it's you know, it's just,

it's not really moving, it's static.

However, if we took the triangle and we gave it a definitive direction.

Right.

And notice how I've curved these sides.

Right.

But more than that, we've given this triangle, a definitive direction, it's definitely moving in that way.

That shape has gone from being static, right, to a shape that has flow or movement.

Some people will use the word energy, or you know, it's got a kinetic, energy.

Right. Now you might be thinking "Well this is insane.

How does this even apply to character drawing?"

So bear with me here.

When you think about a character, a well-drawn character, in say a three quarter angle, so they're not

facing the camera front or side, they kind of slightly rotated. The shapes that make up that character

are largely asymmetrical.

In fact, most of the time, they're all going to be a symmetrical. And asymmetrical basically means that

though while we understand, say human beings, being symmetrical from left to right for example, that when

they're put into perspective and rotated there is no symmetry in the shape.

So understanding particularly that we want to have all of our shapes, our basic shapes, to read in this

way, that they have directional flow, is extremely important.

So let me give you a brief example.

Let's use a cube.

Let's say we decide, and we'll do this more in the anatomy section,

So you'll see me doing it there.

Let's say we decide "OK, we want to have some basic building blocks for the form of a human".

So we said "OK, we're going to make the chest

a block like this"

Right.

So we're going to make it a square.

So if you can imagine with me, you know, we might draw the head, and that's a bit weird proportionately,

but anyway.

And then we might draw some joints for the arms and have some spheres for the arms and stuff.

But anyway, bear with me, we're going to, this is like the Hulk here.

Anyway we're going to have the square. So we decided "OK we're going to use the cube as our base

for the chest.

That's all good and well because we're getting the forms down we can see that there are three sides

to this cube and that's great.

But the problem, is that this form now.

Right.

It lacks directionality in its shapes.

When you look at its shapes, which would be it's different sides,

There's no directionality.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I don't want you guys to build the forms.

in a way where you're kind of trying to turn each side into a directional shape.

That would be weird, no. What you want to rather do is take that form, and kind of, start bending the

form overall.

OK.

So like you're curving the sides and you're kind of adding bend to its sides.

OK, here we going to see the bottom of it instead of the top.

But nevertheless, the same thing applies.

And you're getting a kind of a directionality, a directional movement through the form because you're

bending the sides and you're adding movement to it.

Right.

And this is what dynamism means, and what dynamic shapes mean, that you're ingesting life into

the shapes.

Now you might say yourself "Well where does this apply?

Does this apply only to living things?" Generally speaking in the natural world, I would say definitely.

And when I say living things, I don't just mean things that can move.

That applies to trees, plants, anything that's alive really, and has some kind of directional flow.

You know, it's things like mountains and things, you do want them to have directional flow in them,

because they were formed in some way via energy.

Right.

I know that's kind of a bit weird and esoteric and a bit out there.

But nevertheless, the idea is that to a viewer, when they're seeing static shapes, it seems dull and without

life, but when they're seeing dynamic shapes.

Right.

It seems to be alive.

It seems to be moving, like there's life there, like there's motion.

OK.

So let's just write here.

"Dynamic shapes and static shapes".

So, the idea is that, you want to make sure in your art, 99 percent of the time, you're working with dynamic

shapes all the time.

Obviously this will differ if you're doing a direct front view of a car for example. You'll still

want dynamic shapes but obviously they're going to be mirrored left to right, you know.

Same thing with a side view. Granted the side view generally has no parallels.

I mean, No mirroring it. But hopefully you understand this concept of dynamism and we're going to

be talking about this a lot as we move through and you'll see how dynamism defines how we're going to

draw all of our forms.

Right.

We're going to make sure everything is dynamic all the time. But obviously this is a character design course

so we're going to really be focusing and doubling down on how dynamism applies to character design.

And if you think of the typical human being, apart from when we're sleeping, well even when we're sleeping,

but typically we're always moving.

We're always balancing and counter-balancing, we're always experiencing the force of gravity, and fighting

against the force of gravity.

And that then allows inside of us, we have this idea (what am I saying) What that means is that we have

energy and directional flow moving in us all the time, balancing and counter balancing, and so we need to as

artists, draw dynamic shapes all the time.

Right.

So once you get to think about dynamic shapes and understand what makes the shape dynamic, that it has

a directional flow to it.

Right.

So for example just a square, just reiterating here, this has no directional flow.

But if we kind of bend the square in a weird way, suddenly it gains directional flow, and is more interesting

to look at.

OK.

That's it for looseness and dynamism.

Let's move on.