Day 60: Francis Glebas' "Iggy's Incredibly Easy Way to Write a Story"

Quick Overview

Level:	Beginner
Pages:	64
Published:	2012
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

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You may already know Francis Glebas from his other books "The Animator's Eye" and "Directing the Story".  That's not what you should expect from "Iggy's Incredibly Easy Way to Write a Story: The visual way to see your story structure".  In this brief introduction to plot structure, Glebas lays out some of the most popular story devices in a short illustrated story.

When I say short, I mean short.  Thanks to the Kindle format and the illustrations you can roll through this book in less than an hour.  Still, it's one of my early favorites because it made the idea of plotting out a story easy to understand.  While you could use the dragon template provided in this book for all of your stories, it would probably be a good idea to research other methods or simply experiment on your own.

Following a formulaic approach like this can make it easy to hit all the necessary points to have a complete story, but there is a serious drawback to being too routine.  My personal opinion is that cookie cutter stories can be too predictable and that causes me to lose interest even when other aspects are done well.

Side note:  This was my break glass in case of emergency book.  I was saving it for an especially busy week to make sure I would have something easy to read in my spare time.  Unfortunately I ran through several craptastic books so I may run into a rough spot finishing one of the longer books by next week.

Day 57: Week 9 Summary

This was a rough week for drawing.  I'm throwing some time at working up a script from one of my old plot lines and it's been eating into my dedicated drawing window.  So I've had to squeeze in drawing sessions with my daughter's Crayolas while I'm watching the kids.  I'm still enjoying the gesture drawing practice, so that cuts my actual drawing cartoon window down to 30'ish minutes.

This is actually two days worth of drawings.  I rehashed the opening example from Cartoon Cool using the new stencil I got to make the base circles uniform.  Didn't do much for making the final pictures more uniform... but the third face actually turned out pretty close to the reference.  Alien guy is from the Simpsons for any younger readers out there.

This is a Prinny from NIS's Disgaea series.  They just released a port on Steam which I'm really excited about and I figured I would roll with the idea of doing a focused study a little early.  The mapping and notes are ideas I worked out from deviantArt's Chickenlover13.  His complete study includes contour lines and is way above the level I'm at right now, so it's pure gold as a reference.

This is what a week's worth of 30 minute gesture drawings looks like.  Well, half of it anyway since I didn't flip every page.  Yeah, I did it on lined notebook paper.  Thanks to school I have dozens of partially used college ruled notebook paper and this seems like as good a use for that as anything.

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Metrics

Pages Read This Week	130
Total Pages Read Since Launch	943
Books Completed Since Launch	11
Total Tutorial Run-time	4 hours 45 minutes
Days Since Launch	57
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	57
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours 5 minutes
Drawing Time Total	58 hours 19 minutes

* I'm considering Friday to be the end of the week for tracking metrics so that it lines up with my summary posts.

** I had to use a some fuzzy math to figure the page count for some of my Kindle books since they only have location tagging.

Day 55: Tutorials by Mike Koizumi

My recommendation for today is Mike Koizumi a.k.a 'koizu', and his YouTube channel.  This is the first channel I've dug up for my blog that doesn't seem to be active anymore, but it still has some valuable information.

Don't let the low level examples in some of the videos throw you, this artist has a strong grasp on anatomy and perspective which really shows in his more advanced drawings particularly the video on How to Draw Fight Scenes.

It's no exaggeration that I've watched that clip over a dozen times since I first subscribed to his channel.  The sad part is that after all these years I'm still stumbling around on the "fill in the details' stage even though he describes it as the easy part where you start to coast.  Still, laying down the fundamental shapes and poses before starting the drawing is sage advice.

Lately I've been experimenting with laying the groundwork in a thumbnail sized version and referencing that but it's easy to lose proportions when I start to expand to full size.  Now that I'm back into the swing of drawing I may have to revisit Mike's ghosting technique and see if that doesn't work better for me this time around.

Day 53: Tim Stout's Short Notes on Long Comics

Quick Overview

Level:	Intermediate / Advanced
Tone:	Beat Sheet Breakdown
Pages:	63
Published:	2010
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

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What's with these books having massive titles?  This week I finished up Tim Stout's "Short Notes on Long Comics: 10 Great Examples of Story Structure in Graphic Novels".  Fair warning, the intended audience for this book is pretty niche.  The author does an amazing job of breaking down popular comics into Blake Snyder's popular plot structure.  You can find a detailed explanation of the structure on Tim Stout's own blog at:

https://timstout.wordpress.com/story-structure/blake-snyders-beat-sheet/

The only reason I can't call this book perfect is because the ten titles he chose mostly fall outside my preference.  On the plus side, if you're interested in writing it's a safe bet that at least one of the comics he chose will be exactly what you're looking for in an example.

The best fits for my goals are Batman: Year One, Hellboy, and The Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper.  Two out of three I already own and one is on my to-read list.  There's a spoiler warning in the front of the book, but just to be extra safe I'll repeat it here.  Short Notes on Long comics contains spoilers, since the author systematically brakes down the stories and explains where they fit in the plot structure.

With less than 100 pages you can easily crunch this book out in a single setting, but it has a great re-read value since you can revisit it whenever you're stuck on a story or having a hard time figuring out what to write next.

Day 50: Week 8 Summary

I'm looking into starting some courses at one of the local colleges around May.  The progress has been coming along pretty smoothly solo, so throwing a teacher into the mix should speed things up.  For now I'm keeping my focus on the fundamentals like line quality and anatomy.

Of course that gets boring, so every now and again I find kaiju to draw.  The originals were done by Marcus Erdt and posted on deviantArt in his Chibi Zilla project folder.

Here's a little cartoon work from Christopher Hart's Cartoon Cool book and generic anatomy sketches.

Finally a few skeleton to form studies.  This process seems much easier on YouTube than in practice.  I keep struggling to draw the body the way it's supposed to look and not the way my brain remembers it looking.  Practice, practice, practice.

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Metrics

Pages Read This Week	78
Total Pages Read Since Launch	813
Books Completed Since Launch	10
Total Tutorial Run-time	4 hours 13 minutes
Days Since Launch	50
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	50
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours 10 minutes
Drawing Time Total	51 hours 14 minutes

* I'm considering Friday to be the end of the week for tracking metrics so that it lines up with my summary posts.

** I had to use a some fuzzy math to figure the page count for some of my Kindle books since they only have location tagging.

Day 48: Tutorials by Drawing Tutorials Online

So this weeks recommendation is a little odd.  Drawing Tutorials Online is this  website / YouTube channel that I have been following on and off for over five years now.  The odd bit is that I've watched literally hours of videos from these guys and I still haven't actually seen a single tutorial.

I always end up caught in this loop watching the sketchbook videos of the students.  There's a lot to be picked up from looking at the different tools and techniques they're using and the kinds of assignments they have to turn in.

It might just be my perspective, but I find it more motivational to see a younger person building on their talent than watching an industry veteran show off twenty or more years of experience.  Don't get me wrong, the talent in most of these sketchbook videos blows anything I can produce out of the water.

Seeing younger people who have just started their artistic careers putting out that level of quality is inspirational to me.  I'll set my sights on drawing at Joe Mad or J Scott's level when I'm ten or twenty years down the road.

If you're not sure where to start, I recommend these two students as an introduction to the channel:

Spencer's Sketchbook and Allan's Sketchbook

Day 46: Christopher Hart's "Cartoon Cool"

Quick Overview

Level:	Beginner / Intermediate
Tone:	Step-by-step
Pages:	112
Published:	2005
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

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My Opinion:

Over the years I have seen more books by Christopher Hart than I can count.  The guy has something published for pretty much every style you can find.  I'm not entirely clear on the why, but he's also pretty polarizing in the drawing community.  Some people like his books a lot, some people hate them.  There's even a few people who have dedicated web sites to why you shouldn't read Hart's stuff.

My local library had a copy of "Cartoon Cool: How to Draw New Retro-Style Characters" and I couldn't really pass on a whole collection of guides just because of some mix reviews.  Plus, this style is still way outside the range that I typically draw so the bar for improvement is pretty low.

One tip that I learned directly from this read is that you add bold lines by tracing along only one side of the original sketch.  This probably sounds super obvious to anyone who has experience drawing, but I had always assumed you just trace over the original line.  That's why my lines would wobble back and forth on both sides of the original and always looked awful.

Learning something new, even something small is a step in the right direction for me.  I also appreciate that the pages are stuffed with examples and step by step guides instead of pages of discussion on what makes a cartoon style.  I'm not sure I'm ready to give Hart a glowing review for all of his publications, but this one is definitely worth a read if you're looking to draw cartoons.

Day 43: Week 7 Summary

Not as much to post this week.  I got carried away with gesture drawings when I found that charcoal pencil buried in my art supplies.  My typical approach to drawing is to over analyze every line and draw the picture like I'm trying to solve some advanced math formula.  Taking a step back to just capture the action lines and train my eyes to really take in the image was helpful for me.

I got into was some random cartoon studies and a bit of Christopher Hart's stuff that has been collecting dust on my book shelf.

I also ran through a few eye tutorials to work on my symmetry and use of values.  Eyebrows still kill me and pretty much any eye that isn't a near perfect circle or rectangle turns out wonky on one side.  I read somewhere that an artist was asked what was the hardest thing to draw and his answer was, "The other eye."  That is no joke.  You can nail the first eye, but that just puts more pressure on you not to bone the next one.

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So far the shotgun approach of throwing a little effort at everything feels like it's working for me.  I'm thinking in March I'll choose a single topic and dedicate the whole month to drawing the crap out of it.  Then I can compare notes and see which method feels more productive at the end of the month.

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Metrics

Pages Read This Week	135
Total Pages Read Since Launch	735
Books Completed Since Launch	10
Total Tutorial Run-time	3 hours 30 minutes
Days Since Launch	43
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	43
Drawing Time This Week	7 hours
Drawing Time Total	44 hours 7 minutes

* I'm considering Friday to be the end of the week for tracking metrics so that it lines up with my summary posts.

** I had to use a some fuzzy math to figure the page count for some of my Kindle books since they only have location tagging.

Day 41: Tutorials by Mark Crilley

I've gotten a little carried away with doing gesture drawings since I dug up an old charcoal pencil.  The last few days my 20 minute warm up has ended up running for almost the whole hour I set aside for drawing.  Which isn't bad at all, since observation is one of my weak areas.

On the other hand, I still like to soak up some of the expertise that's floating out there and since I looked over one of Mark Crilley's books on Monday, I thought it would be a good time to skim through his YouTube channel again.

If you check out his How to Draw playlist, you'll find 217 tutorials and that doesn't even include the other videos like his realism challenges.  At this point I've literally watched less than 2% of the how to playlist.

One of the things I really appreciate about Mark's tutorial is that he considers the length of the video and uses time lapse editing to skip through the time consuming parts that might not shed much light on the topic at hand.


I followed along on his first ear and hands tutorials for a quick refresher.

How to Draw an Ear [HTD Video #1]

There's something about drawing the ear that's still challenging for me.  Even when it's reduced to cartoon simplicity I struggle with nailing the symmetry between one side of the head and the next.  It's especially difficult when drawing atypical ears like you would find on goblins or aliens since you don't really see those out in the real world.


How to Draw Hands [HTD video #3]

Drawing hands is still hard, but it's starting to come along now that I have basic shapes to build with to establish the general location and motion of the hand and fingers.  I still need a lot of practice to draw them on the fly, but at this point I feel much more confident drawing from reference and that's a good first step.

Day 39: Mark Crilley's "Mastering Manga: How to Draw Manga Faces" [Kindle Edition]

Quick Overview

Level:	Beginner
Tone:	Step-by-step
Pages:	135
Published:	2012
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	Yes

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My Opinion:

I'm going to err on the side of caution here and recommend that you view this two minute video on Mark Crilley's Realism Challenge #3 if this is the first time you're hearing of him.  Mark Crilley is the artist / creator of "Brody's Ghost" and a number of drawing guides, including "Mastering Manga, How to Draw Manga Faces" which I actually knocked out in a single sitting.

I wanted to highlight the realism challenge so that less people will rush to judge the book by it's cover and assume his artistic range is limited to one particular style.  As an added benefit, you can find a ton of tutorials on his YouTube channel at markcrilley.

The book includes 20 hair styles for both girls and guys, 100 manga eyes, 12 common expressions, and front / three quarter / profile head shots for young, old, heavy set, and child type characters.  It's a little on the brief side, but you can get a lot of mileage out of the step-by-step lessons provided if you're leaning towards a manga influenced style.

Day 36: Week 6 Summary

Another week down!  Going by the last self-help book I read, I've passed the six week mark to form a strong habit so it should be down hill from here.  Now I just have to keep up the practice, improve, and repeat.

With the pep talk done, I should mention that I'm still stuck in a slump right now.  It's hard to find a strong theme to draw from day to day so I ended up just thumbing through my tutorials folder until I found something that I'm weak on and practiced that.

Which is why I ended up drawing 100'ish mouths to improve my range of expressions.

The heads in the top left came from a tutorial I bookmarked forever ago at Cartoon Fundamentals: How to Draw a Cartoon Face Correctly  The noses in the top right are from Proko's tutorial and the profile view is from a random tutorial I found on imgur.

More hand practice, because hands are hard.  Like really hard.  I also dropped in some loose cartoon work to try and grease the wheels for the three panel gag strip I'm working on for my next 757 Comic and Cartoon Creators club meeting.

I didn't churn out as many pages this week because I dropped another two hours into Krita and threw some time at mocking up a business card.  If learning to draw is anything like learning a language, application is every bit as important as practice if not more so.

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Metrics

Pages Read This Week	245
Total Pages Read Since Launch	600
Books Completed Since Launch	9
Total Tutorial Run-time	3 hours 2 minutes
Days Since Launch	36
- Active Days (1 hour or more of practice)	36
Drawing Time This Week	7 hour 5 minutes
Drawing Time Total	37 hour 7 minutes

* I'm considering Friday to be the end of the week for tracking metrics so that it lines up with my summary posts.

** I had to use a some fuzzy math to figure the page count for some of my Kindle books since they only have location tagging.

Day 34: Tutorials by Stan Prokopenko

Disclaimer:  Proko's tutorials cover a range of topics, including anatomy, which commonly have NSFW reference material.  Please keep that in mind before you follow any links in today's post.

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While I haven't had the opportunity to view any of the premium content that Proko offers on his site at proko.com, I've watched close to two hours of his free content on YouTube.  There's a healthy debate on the merit of tutorials with paywalls when there is so much available for free but my opinion is that this would be a worthwhile investment if I had the extra funds.

Proko's videos are more polished than other tutorials.  He makes use of proper editing, voice overs, and even some jazzy background music.  A number of lessons include a split screen showing both the reference material and his step by step process.  This is much easier to absorb than the typical web cam dangling over the shoulder technique that's used in many of the free tutorials.

Some "safe for work" examples of what Proko has on his channel are:

Drawing Muscles: What You Need to Know

I included some of my sketches from this video lesson in last weeks summary.

How to Draw a Nose - Anatomy and Structure

His nose tutorials are incredibly helpful for moving from flat cartoon noses to more convincingly realistic drawings. I'm still struggling with anatomy at this point, so every little tidbit helps.

Day 32: John M. Byrne's "Cartooning: The Best One-Stop Guide to Drawing Cartoons, Caricatures, Comic Strips, and Manga"

Quick Overview

Level:	Beginner
Tone:	Introduction Guide
Pages:	191
Published:	2008
Arbitrary Rating:	4/5
Plan to Reread:	No

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My Opinion:

Phew, that's a mouthful right?  John M. Byrne's "Cartooning" is a crash course in a variety of artistic disciplines that you can find in that crazy title.  As an example, chapter 7 is on caricatures and is about twenty pages long with multiple illustrations on most pages.

I really like this approach for beginners because it's easy to follow along with the visuals and there's just enough instruction to get your feet wet.  That being said, if you're looking to improve on any of these styles you're going to need way more than the one or two examples provided in this book.

The chapter on humor, using puns, and generating interesting ideas was probably my favorite.  A lot of books take the approach of showing you a pretty picture and then breaking it up into a few easy to follow steps.  Byrne gives advice on tools to use, writing tips, and observation techniques to choose the best details when translating from real life to cartoon.

While the contents of this book may not carry you as far as a more academic text, it has plenty to offer in an enjoyable and colorful presentation.  That's one of my biggest gripes so far.  Most of the books I've been reading through are so heavily focused on the use of charcoals and pencils that they don't bother to include any colored illustrations.  Looking at 100+ pages of black and white can be a real drag, so I'm happy to find a guide that goes that extra step.