Once again, Tom asked me to draw him something, to use as a base for a 3D model. He wanted a four-legged something, that he could try to animate.

I've spent the last hour sketching in Photoshop, and it was crappy to start, but then I wound up with this little fox thing. It was cute. I made it stick out its tongue and gave it foofy ears. It made me smile. I found some reference shots of foxes to get the legs right, and some reference shots of Arabian horses for the tail I had in mind.

Tom wandered downstairs just now, and took a look.

"...it's the same problem as when you drew me a person. Everyone knows what a person is *supposed* to look like." Thus, the animator's dilemma - if you're doing something people are already familiar with, they won't like it unless it's identical. It's really, really hard to give people a model of, for example, a person with an extra-long torso or something. It looks "wrong". This gets even worse when you go to try and animate the thing.

"This is a dog."
"I knooowwww, it's really hard to invent an animal! But that's why I started making it a little different..."
"You added fur." Which is notoriously hard to not only model in 3d, but also animate. And isn't an actual body structure anyway.
"... ..yeahhh..."
"You're useless to me."
"...isn't this what happened the last three times we tried this?"

As exciting as the idea of Tom'n'Melissa art collaboration is, I cannot do basic blueprint sketches of things to save my life. It's insanely hard for me. Doable if I have some actual object in front of me, but, honestly, doing a head-on shot of anything with a face and limbs and things is crazy hard. Plus it looks unnatural and unemotional and thus just doesn't interest me to draw. bleh.

Also, I do not do "manly" drawings. ever.

But my little fox is still cute! so there.

Labels: art, drawing, life in general