Critique (& practice) keep Animation alum moving

Christopher Parker (Animation, 2018) is a creator on the move. Look no further than Bodies in Motion, a respected blog and resource site for animators that recently conducted a Q&A with Parker about his approach to the craft. In the interview, he shared some choice advice from one of his Columbus College of Art & Design professors:

“It was a wonderful and honest critique that a teacher gave me in a Layout and Timing class (for those who aren’t animators, Layout and Timing is an important part of setting up and finalizing a shot). The conversation went something along the lines of this: “Chris, you work really hard, but your hands and faces are bad and I don’t think you understand how to draw either. You should try drawing them more.”

The comment was “entirely correct,” Parker says. “All I drew for my entire life was monsters and doodles with a zebra ballpoint pen! I knew nothing about anatomy, gesture, or form ... The one thing I did know for certain is that I absolutely HATED drawing people because I thought there was nothing interesting about a person. You see people everyday so why would anyone care to draw something that is casual and ordinary? To me, ordinary was boring and the only cool things were monsters (which is a huge irony, because I love ordinary now).”

So, he got to work with a goal of drawing 100 hands each day, each within 30–45 seconds. “I remember at the very end of my first hand drawing session that I was amazed at how much better my hands looked after only 20 minutes of gesture drawing,” he says in the Q&A. “There was also something very comforting about gesture drawing because the disposability of the drawings meant that I was never too concerned about failing a drawing because in 30 seconds or so I could be on to a new attempt.”

Intrigued? Whet your appetite with this Taco Bell “Fry Force” commercial by Psyop (for which Parker was a storyboarder), before checking out Bodies in Motion’s Q&A with Parker.