Need help with cartoon anatomy
sublime tool
Can anyone help me figure out the basic head model\structure that the characters below have?
These are screens from the "Wild Kratts" show, so they're all official.
The show uses mostly cut-out animation. Most of the time the characters retain that 3/4 view (example clip).
I don't have a lot of practice with cartoon art, and I can't seem to find the fundamental structure to each of these characters, like how the facial features are placed on the face and their relative distances etc. The facial features also appear out of place, or twisted.
It's as if the designer didn't think in terms of volume.
These are screens from the "Wild Kratts" show, so they're all official.
The show uses mostly cut-out animation. Most of the time the characters retain that 3/4 view (example clip).
I don't have a lot of practice with cartoon art, and I can't seem to find the fundamental structure to each of these characters, like how the facial features are placed on the face and their relative distances etc. The facial features also appear out of place, or twisted.
It's as if the designer didn't think in terms of volume.
Replies
This is why characters like The Simpsons never translated perfectly to 3d, they simply change too much. But, as you can see in the many simpsons games out there... you can get "close enough". So I would make that your goal rather than trying to make the model exactly like the drawings from every angle, because that won't happen.
I should've expressed myself better.
I was referring to an "animation model," a 2D study of character anatomy.
The following is such a model for the "Belle" character in Disney's Beauty and the Beast 2:
The head, in particular, is what I'm interested in. It has those guide lines showing the facial features and how they relate.
This sort of document is given to every inbetweener and cleanup artist working on that character to ensure consistency.
I was looking for something like that but for the head of the characters from that show.
From my attempts (sketching on top) I was unable to find something that "made sense" in terms of structure that could be reproduced from several different viewpoints, so I imagine it's just an arbitrary structure.
I'm sure that the artists animating those characters have a premade set of faces that they just copy and animate the eyes etc. instead of redrawing heads from scratch, which would require a well-established model like that one from Disney.
I agree, it does seem like that.