Art by Brii Vonee

Dear E. 

Thanks for your email.

I don’t work at Cartoon Network any more. But I’m going to give you a very quick portfolio review in hopes that you find it helpful! Here are some things I noticed when looking at your stuff - lessons I learned from brilliant people while working on AT for two years: 

 1) AVOID SYMMETRY. Humans are organic, randomly shaped animals. Perfect symmetry rarely exists in nature and if it does, it’s conspicuous - it’s the exception rather than the rule. Find interesting ways to throw your characters off-balance. 

Don’t repeat objects in twos - (buttons or rips or whatever) - it feels prescribed - cluster things in threes or fives if necessary. 

 2) AVOID CONCAVITY - I don’t know what else to call this. But it’s those lines that go “in” rather than “out”. You are using inward sloping lines to describe many of your characters. As an exercise, try using outward, rounded, voluminous lines to draw EVERYTHING. Humans are fleshy lumps connected together by other fleshy lumps. Each mass is either in front of or behind other masses and as a designer, it’s your job to tell the animator where it is. As a designer, you are providing a technical blueprint for the location of masses. 

Only occasionally allow a concavity to connect two convexities. Look at the work of Robert Ryan Cory (spongebob), Tom Herpich (Adventure Time) or Phil Rynda (AT / Gravity Falls) - master character designers - for examples of this. If you need to, trace a couple of their drawings and you will see what I mean. 

 3) AVOID GRAPHIC DETAILS - Some shows use a graphic style; it’s very appealing and looks clever when done right. But in animation, everything needs to move in space - so if you use a graphic element - it needs to correspond with an actual 3D thing that can move. Therefore it is better to start with a voluminous style and then revert to graphic elements where appropriate. Art directors will look for this. Do not jump straight to graphic representation if you do not yet know what you are representing.

Look at the work of Tiffany Ford and Jasmin Lai for amazing examples of volume expressed graphically.

 4) STUDY JAMES MCMULLEN - To truly understand volume, and fully respect your subject, you should read very carefully High Focus Figure Drawing by James McMullen. Slow down and think about drawing “around” your subjects. It’s a truly meditative experience when you get there. Think about the weight and mass that your characters, props and effects are experiencing. Many students from SVA - Tomer Hanuka, Becky Cloonan, Rebecca Sugar, James Jean - studied under McMullen’s philosophy and you can see this common richness in their work. 

Jeffrey Smith, a top student of McMullen’s now teaches life drawing at Art Center. These are two of the best illustration schools in North America - anyone who is interested in drawing living things, should probably read his book. Also look at the work of Andy Ristaino or Danny Hynes - two other character designers’ whose work is seething with volume. 

I hope this is useful and I hope you have a wonderful career. 

Warmest,

“no that’s not dramatic and cheesy enough”

“getting warmer”

Drawing A to Drawing B: -the most obvious change is the exaggeration of the line of motion in the character.  

In Drawing B the line of motion is much more pronounced, creating more drama and movement to the whole composition

-The arms are open wider, showing more confidence and exuberance in the character, exaggerating their emotions so they can be more clearly read without having to look to the face for emotional cues.

-the legs are wider apart, adding to the aforementioned confidence but also giving the character a solid foundation, visually speaking.

-The head is tilted back and overlapped by the chest, adding a touch of dynamic perspective to the drawing.

Drawing B to Drawing C:  -Most obvious change is to zoom in on the character.  Character framing is just as important as what the character is doing.  Zooming in can help infensify emotions.  this shot is ALL about this character and what they’re feeling. -Because of the zooming in, the arms/hands would have gotten lost, so instead of making the canvas wider, the artist has elected to rotate the character slightly, bringing a dynamic angle to things and more intensity to the close shot. -While the character is more upright in this shot compared to Drawing B, in Drawing C the chest still slightly overlaps the neck, preserving the feeling of being slightly below the character (putting them in a position of power relative to the viewer), which helps maintain confidence and power in the character. -the chest is exaggerated to carry the majority of the body’s line of action so even though you cannot see the legs, our brains are able to fill in the gap and envision that line of action. -The cropping/framing of the character allows for a more interesting composition/negative shapes created by the positive (character) on the negative (background), creating more visual interest as well as a circular motion to the composition through the arms, across the face to the negative space for the eyes to rest in before dropping to the hand in the background and back through the composition again.