WHAT GOES ON IN ACTING CLASSES?

These are doodles from a live action film about acting called "Method Madness" by Peter Linder. I've heard that acting classes can get pretty brutal and Linder has confirmed my worst fears.

ANATOMY FOR CARTOONISTS

Right now I'm reading "The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression" by Gary Faigin.

I must have seen this book in stores and on friends' shelves dozens of times and for some reason it never made an impression on me. Maybe all the formal anatomy put me off, maybe the author's drawing style failed to impress. It's funny how you can be indifferent to something one day and be utterly blown away by it the next. That's what happened here. I love this book now!

Here's a sample lesson dealing with the way we smile. I'll begin with a description of the human mouth. OK, think of the mouth as a Coke can. The teeth (above) wrap around the can then, at the ends, the mouth flares out a little to the side.

Here's (above, left) a downshot of the human muzzle at rest. The Coke can effect isn't evident because the muscles around the mouth are slack and sagging and cover up the can. The mouth is flat against the face.

Now the face smiles (above, right). The smile muscles pull back the skin around the mouth and stretch it in the direction of the ear. The Coke can is now revealed.

I know what you're thinking: what happened to the muscles that used to sag and droop around the muzzle? Where did they go? The answer is that they travelled up into the cheeks!!!! Um... well... don't quote me on that.

I'm ashamed to say that I don't know how muscles expand and contract. I assume the fibers elongate and contract like the straw tube in a Chinese finger trap. Whatever the real explanation I prefer to think that the mouth muscles have little legs and run up into the cheeks where they sit and play cards till the mouth is ready to normalize again. It's my blog so I can believe whatever I want.

The chin seems to raise a little when we smile. I suppose that's because the skin and muscles in that area stretch out and become thin. That dimple on the extreme left, next to the cheek, seems to indicate that a muscle up there is pulling on the chin.

Fascinating, isn't it!? I'll post more about this as I read it.


BTW, thanks to the commenter who recommended this book a couple of weeks ago!

I JUST WATCHED "THE MIRACLE WORKER!"

I hope you can tell what's going on in these sketches. I had to leave some out because I couldn't understand them myself!

WELCOME TO "THEORYLAND!"

"Greetings viewers and welcome to "Theoryland," the thinkingest place of them all!"

"Every week we'll take you to one of several exciting lands. This week come with us to 'Fromteerland,' where young people can relive the thrilling days of yesterday when our pioneer ancestors hunted down polecats like predatory animation writers."

"Here to tell you more about it is our host, Uncle Eddie..."

"Hello folks and welcome to the show. Here at Theory Corner we always strive to top ourselves and 'Theoryland' is our latest effort. We've chosen to begin the show here in Fromteerland but I thought you might like to get an overview of the whole series. Follow me and I'll see what I can do."

"Of course the cornerstone of our show is good, solid family entertainment...art, history and science combined, something for the mind as well as the eye. Here for example is an organ derived from a male T-Rex. What organ we don't know but our staff is consulting with paleontologists about it right now and when we find out we'll do a show about it."

"Occasionally we'll have visits from Theoryland regulars like Darnold Mallard. Here you see the reaction of Darnold's doctor when he discovers a human face in Darnold's throat. Click to enlarge."

"Expect lots of hair-raising adventures in Fromteerland episodes. Those wily animation writers are always up to no good and it's up to the stars of our historical adventures to ferret them out and bring them to justice."

"Well here's my transportation now! It looks like that's all we have time for this week!"

" Bye for now and remember... KEEP THEORISING!"




Note: Except for the first two drawings all pictures are copyrighted by the Disney company.

SKETCHES

Some doodles from a video tape. I meant to draw more but I'm sooooo sleepy!

DO YOU PLAY WITH YOUR NOSE WHILE THINKING?

I do. These pictures were assembled from the margins of papers I was doodling on while thinking yesterday. These aren't good drawings but I include them here because they help make a point, namely that without cartooning we'd never be able to record a lot of the little things in life.

I don't know about you but my life doesn't contain many super events. When I'm not working most of my day consists of waiting while old ladies argue with the cashier, trying to eat while driving, complaining about the state of the world, oogling girls, trying to find a pen that works, etc. Illustrators like super hero artists aren't interested in stuff like this. If cartoonists didn't draw it then it would go completely unrecorded by artists.

I just saw a DVD of "Cars" and was struck by how little "small event" acting the film contained. The cars displayed fear of the dark, shyness and awkwardness when the story required it but these were clearly subordinated to the story and were never allowed to dominate whole sequences. For contrast think of how W.C. Fields devoted entire sequences of his movies to micro events like trying to shave when someone was blocking his view of the mirror. 

THEORY CORNER - SCIENCE SECTION

The reason is that the normal human attention span for just about anything is probably only two or three minutes. When the limit is reached people collapse then have to summon the strength to begin a new round of attention. The guy in the drawings wasn't bored, he was actually intensely interested in what was going on around him. He simply reached the end of his attention span.

So far as I know this important phenomenon was discovered by John Krisfalusi. One day I met John for lunch and I found him animating flipbooks on the restaurant table. Most of the books were funny, I wish you could have seen them, but one one book in particular stood out. It showed a guy getting a glassey-eyed stare, collapsing then straightening up again. I asked John what it was and he said he was just animating what the people at the other tables were doing. I stared at those people while John made more flipbooks and that's when I noticed what I drew above. Every single person at every table got a glassey stare and collapsed every few minutes. It's subtle, and I probably would never have noticed it if I hadn't been for the flipbook, but when you know what to look for it's unmistakable.

Interesting, huh?

HANDS HAVE A LIFE OF THEIR OWN

I love to draw hands. That's because hands have a life of their own.

Hands are pretty good at revealing what their owner really thinks. A face may listen to a boring speaker with what looks like rapt attention but way down below the hands are playing with keys or tapping on the table. Sometimes the hands are more than just magnifiers of their owner's true feelings. Sometimes they have feelings of their own. Hands may be macho, gay, happy, sad, lecherous or virginal, even if their owner possesses none of these qualities (these thoughts cry out for drawings to illustrate them. Sorry, I didn't plan this post very well). I'd love to do a short, pencil-test film of an extreme version of this idea where a guy's hands, acting completely on their own, grope the people around him and get him into trouble.

Here's a drawing where the excitable hand is frightened and clings to the face, which is only mildly disturbed. At least that's what I had in mind when I drew it. The understory about the excitable hand is sometimes for the artist only. Sometimes you want the understory to be so subtle that the audience isn't even aware of it.
Most stories don't lend themselves to this hand theory and those I board the normal way, as above. Even so, it still works for the occassional scene. I'll try to find some examples.