Saturday, March 21, 2009

why mickey wears shorts

As I was trying to draw some legs on a simple character it occurred to me that putting Mickey mouse in shorts wasn't just for modesty's sake.

If you look at a typical flat-colored rubber-hose style appendage as in "a" it's rather ambiguous as to which way it is really bending.



But if you add that pant cuff just a little bit down the leg as in "b" or "c" you get a clue as to the intended direction of the knee.

Of course, there are lots of times that Mickey doesn't wear shorts, but then they have to work harder at drawing him with real articulated knees.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

vertical jump test

This is really just a preparatory study for a more complicated exercise I'm working on, so I didn't spend any time doing cleanup on it. I'm working on a character jumping forward and I did this to simplify it down to just the up and down motion.