#dynamic drawings

1. Squash and stretch

If you’re interested in animation at all, this one is the one most people can name. It’s the illusion of compression and pulling of mass within an organic object. 

In still images, you can use squash and stretch to your advantage, to add a little more vitality to an expression or gesture. For example, look at Pinocchio here. 

His smile in the middle there is given a little more oomph by the compression of his face, while his look of surprise on the left there is emphasized by the elongation of his face. In your own face, you an see squash and stretch at work when you make an exaggerated angry face and all of your features squish toward the middle of your face, or when you open your mouth wide and everything pulls a little. 

2. Antici... pation

Essentially this is preparation for a movement. For example, if you’re drawing a punch, the movement is the punch itself. But there’s an anticipatory movement of the arm drawing back and body twisting, to prepare for the primary movement of the punch itself. We can see this in the first panel of this baseball player getting ready to throw the ball.

This one is a little more nuanced to use in 2D illustration, but can definitely be used to great effect. It can give a sense of potential energy within an image, of being on edge for something to happen. 

In a single image, you can also draw both the anticipatory action and primary action together, and this can also create the illusion of time, and thus, motion, happening.

3. Staging

This one can be a very subtle means of conveying animation and life in a 2D image. If you’ve ever worked theater, you know that during a scene, where you place your characters is very important. Where you place them is going to help direct the audience’s eye toward where drama is happening, or away from places you don’t want them seeing. Viewing at certain angles is going to not only look better, but allow the audience to better read the expressions on the actors. This can be done in simple things like how you position characters when they’re talking to each other, by turning them outward, slightly, rather than having them speak head-on. It’s not technically realistic, but your audience isn’t really going to pay attention, and it’s going to look better. #aesthetic.

You can implement this in a single character by themselves, and their silhouette.

And you can do this in the composition itself, to lead the viewer’s eye toward where you want the action to be focused.

4. Straight Ahead Action vs. Pose to Pose

This one, admittedly, is a little harder to apply to 2D illustration. But it can be, if you tweak it a bit. In animation, this is referring to two different approaches to drawing a scene. Straight ahead means you go from frame 1 to frame 10, in that order. Pose to pose means you draw out the key frames, like frame 1, 3, and 7, and then draw the interval frame. 

In 2D illustration, I would hearken this to drawing with guidelines, and drawing straight ahead. Drawing with guidelines, drawing the important parts first then filling in the rest, will give you consistency and help you stay on-topic for what you’re trying to do. Drawing straight ahead, such as drawing the head, then the neck, then torso, etc., is going to give the drawing a little more exaggeration and life, but it’s very easy to go off-model or make mistakes.

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action (and mirroring)

This principle relates to giving and object the sense of obeying the laws of motion. Follow-through relates to looser parts of a character or object’s mass, that continue to move though the person or object has stopped. For example, hair, loose clothing, loose skin, will stop a little bit later than the rest of the body. A basset hound might run into the wall, and then a second later, its ears slap the wall. Follow-through is one of the BEST principles for giving a 2D image the illusion of movement. The loose elements of a character can show exactly where they just were. Even if the character isn’t moving, drawing their hair or a scarf moving around is going to very easily fool the audience into thinking the character is moving.

Overlapping action is the idea that different parts of the body have different timing. If your head is bouncing, that’ll probably have a different timing than the walk cycle. This would be starting another movement, before the first movement has terminated, continuing after it has. So, say you show a character jumping, the legs might stop, but the arms and torso continue moving for another couple of frames. So, in 2D illustration, if I’m drawing a character stopping their twirl, I can show the hair still moving and starting to slow down. Or, say I were drawing a character landing, crouching and ready to attack, I can show the hair coming down, their body station, and then their hand grabbing a dagger, ready to attack--which helps build anticipation.

And related to these two is the concept of avoiding mirroring. Symmetry in movement. For example, take a look at Pacha here:

His hands are doing related actions, but not mirrored. This helps create a sense of organic life. Even if the limbs are doing the same thing, you can show minute differences, such as if you have a flying character, you can show the wings fluttering slightly differently. In expressions, you can avoid mirroring by having an expression slightly tilted or squished to one side. 

(In a subversion though, mirroring can often show power in a character. Solidity, sturdiness. Inorganic-ness.)

6. Slow In and Slow Out

Again, this one’s kinda more for animation and less for 2D illustration. But can be tremendously useful in sequential art, like comics and panelling. The premise though, in animation, is devoting more time to the beginning and termination of an action, rather than the middle. There are more frames at the beginning and end of a punch, than during the middle. We can take this as emphasizing the beginning and ends of an action, rather than using the middle. Show a punch either at the beginning, or the end--rather than in the middle of the swing.

7. Arcs

Funfact: organic motion tends to move in arcs--not in straight lines! The bounce of a walk cycle follows an arc. The swing of your hand follows an arc. 

Even implementing arcs in your gestures and guidelines can help create the illusion of movement!

8. Secondary Action

Honestly I’d probably lump this one in with overlapping action, but try to have a secondary movement, when drawing a character. For example, having a character swinging their arms when they walk, swinging their hair, swinging a yoyo, things like that. So long as it is emphasizing the primary movement, and not drawing attention away from it. 

9. Timing

Related to staging, in 2D art, how you compose an image can create a sense of time. In Western media, we read left to right. Knowing this, we can place things in certain ways in the image, so that the reader’s eyes follow a natural line that gives a sense of motion. Placing the person about to throw a baseball on the left, and then the batter on the right, then a panel following with the pitcher throwing the ball, creates the illusion of stalling. Of the camera lingering, before the pitcher throws the ball. Whereas you place the batter on the left, and the pitcher on the right, followed by a panel of the pitcher throwing the ball, this will create a different feeling of time. The first is Pitcher........ batter, throw, whereas the second is Batter.......... pitcher, throw. 

You see what I mean?

10. Exaggeration

This one has a lot of subjectivity to it. Exaggeration can really help give a scene a lot of energy, Push a character from slightly falling over to heavily falling over creates a lot of dynamicism, but at the same time, can sometimes take away from a more serious tone wanted for the scene. And, of course, this can depend on the level of realism one employs in the first place. But even when drawing more realistically, don’t be afraid to push things, just a little. Sometimes knowing when and how to do that can really make things pop and grab the reader’s attention.

Personally, I try to go by Van Gogh’s philosophy: Exaggerate the essential, leave the obvious vague.

11. Solid Drawing

This is your basic know how to draw shape and form. In order to know how to animate, to bring life to an illustration, you have to be a good draughtsperson. Someone who understands the principles of drawing, of art, and how to translate 3D forms into 2D shapes. Which means doing realism studies. Sorry, no gettin’ out of that one.

12. Appeal

This is just knowing how to employee Golden Means, how to compose things in a way that is pleasing to the eye and draws the reader in. Giving characters charisma, as it were. Likability, even if they are not sympathetic. This helps engage the viewers, and get them to care about what is in the image, rather than having them skim over the image and move on. This one takes a little time to really get, but will become second nature as you go through art.