Hello, and welcome to “How toDraw with Disney Animation.
” My name is Alex Kuperschmidt.
I've been working as an animator for Disney since 1989 all theway till now, I was also a lead animator on Stitch, from Lilo andStitch.
So today I was going to show you how I approach drawingStitch.
So let's learn how to draw Stitch.
So I'm going to use two pencils.
One of them is going to be lighter, which I'm going to dothe underdrawing and the other one is a black pencil which I'm going to use the finalline with for the lighter pencil I prefercolor tuscan red, it's just soft enough and light enough togive me what I need but you can really use any other pencil that you want.
It'll do the job.
Now, for those of you who'veseen these videos, you probably noticed that we like to drawstarting with simple shapes.
But I also like to do what wecall an action line, which helps me with an overall pose of the character.
So, the first thing I'm going todo is sketch Stitch's overall head outline, and unlike a sphere, his head isactually kind of like a large hunk of bread.
Then, I proceed to drawing thebody which looks like a flower sack, a filled floursack.
Rough in the basic position of his legs and hisarms.
This is what I call his sneak pose because he lookspretty sneaky in this.
These lines, we call themcenter lines, they help us establish which way thecharacter's head is turned.
We usually don't like drawingthings too central because they make the character look flat.
The center line allows me to find exactly where his noseshould be.
And his eyes He's got a very large nose.
Itkind of dominates the center of his face and his eyes are on the slight angle.
Again, this helps with dimensionon the character.
The mouth comes next it's verywide, it goes all the way to the end and he's got a rather thin, although still substantialbottom lip.
And then for his ears, I use something similar to what the artists did on Bambi.
If you look at Bambi's ears, he's kind of got this ball of muscle.
And then on top of that, this leaf shape for that, when you draw it, you cansee how the ear looks.
So this is sort of similar to whatStitch has, except Stitch's ears is quite a bit larger and they're a little bit notched.
One of them has a notch on topand the other one has the one at the bottom.
His eyes are very special becausehe's probably one of the very few Disney characters thatdoesn't have pupils.
He's got just solid black eyes, which Ilike to fill out and then introduce just a hint of highlight.
There's a couple of wrinklesjust above his nose, and his eyebrows, and his wrinkle under the eye.
They all kind of echo the same position as the eyes themselves, just larger, so the eyes sort of just nestle in this shape here, on one side and on the other.
He's got quite a lot of teeth, almost like a shark.
And and he has no sharp corners.
Everything on Stitch is sort of rounded.
I call them roundedcorners kind of looking like that.
So the body has just a bit of a break here whichsuggests an ample tummy.
Everything about him is sort ofstout and generous in terms of mass.
And another center line helps mefigure out which way his body's turned and how to do the column break on his body between darker shade on top and the lightercolor on his tummy.
His arms are very robust, especially hislower arms, they kind of look like breadrolls.
And he doesn't have much of a wrist I just sort of take, take his little knobby fingersand stick them in there.
Then from them come these very nastylooking, but not, again, not sharp claws.
So, that's a usually a good ideato vary the direction the direction of his fingersso they have this kind of spread out look that suggestsanticipation.
For the legs, as a rule is a flat bottom.
But I don't like making the legslook the same because it gives him a lot moredimension.
One of the interesting things about drawinghis feet is they sort of look like coasters.
Right? So it's kind of like a shape like that.
Downhere, to which again, I add thick, rounded set of toes.
His toe, the claws on his toesare a bit, bit more solid and a bit more stubby than the ones onhis hands, they kind of look likethat like kernels of corn.
As you notice Iuse a lot of bread in my drawing, but it's just trying to figure out a simpleshape usually helps me to visualize what kind of shape it is.
So this process of sketching veryrough and very loose with a soft, lighter pencil, it's kind of a trick of getting a drawingdone.
And when I'm ready to switch, I simply switch thepencils and I proceed with a dark line.
But as you may havenoticed, what we do is essentially use very simpleshapes and very light quick drawing in order to do our drawings quickly and inorder to have control over the drawing, learning how to drawwith simple shapes is really the key to being able to drawproperly and that really covers almost any kind of drawing.
Sonow that I'm ready to tie him down, so to speak, I'm going touse a dark pencil and use a darker line to basically start outlining him in the final, now that I have the underdrawing I have confidence and I as adraw, I can correct any mistakes that I see.
So Stitch, even though he looks cuddly, andvery thick, almost like a plush toy is actually a very, veryheavy character.
One of the directors on the film describedhim to me as “A creature that has a weight of a fire hydrant, ” sohe's very heavy and very solid.
Right? Even though he looks likea plush toy, don't forget that he makes, he's made up oftitanium cartilage, which makes him an extremely dense andextremely heavy character.
So human beings to him being 70%water, look rather insubstantial.
Now these darkeyes is one of these key characteristics.
As you know, you can usuallytell characters' expressions through the eyes, being thewindows of the soul, for Stitch, one of his key characteristics is that he's unpredictable.
So having his eyes so dark, always difficult to read hisexpression and makes him an unpredictable character.
One ofthe great things about having an animation desk is that I havetrouble drawing a particular line from a certain angle, I can always turn the disc and get that line down in a morecomfortable position.
So, he's got these nice generous “S”curve shaped lines in his ears and you can obviouslyplace his ears down.
I usually save it for more say sad orfearful positions because on animals the ears are about asexpressive as their eyes.
So if the ears point forward, it makes him lookmore aggressive and also like he's zooming in or aiminghimself at something.
It's a very alert pose.
So, most of our work most of thework that I had done at Disney were done through thistechnique, which is drawing light first using simple shapes.
And then going over with adarker pencil.
It's great technique, especiallyif you have to do a lot of drawing, very quickly.
And if youpractice this, you can probably get it down.
I mean, you have toremember drawing, there's nothing mysterious about it.
Obviously, it helps if you have a gift for it, and especially ifyou have an affinity for it.
But like any other skill, it's amatter of practice.
The more you do it, the better you willbecome at it.
And I have heard folks say before, well, you know, there's nothing artistic about me.
I'm not anartist.
But you have to remember as kids, we all drew and painted.
We all didart.
It's just some of us.
Stop doing it.
And some of ushaven't.
It all depends on what you're interested in.
Butbecause of that, all of us have an ability to do art, it's justagain, it's a question of practice it's art.
Drawing is askill like any other.
The more you do it, the betteryou become.
So right here, basically, that's about how quickly or how easily youcan draw Stitch and sketch him.
So I was gonna take anopportunity to very quickly show you how to draw Alien Stitch, which is the one that has four arms, two legs, the spines.
And it's, it's a bit more it's a bit more careful kind ofdrawing because of the number of elements increase in a drawing.
You have to be very careful with your composition so the drawing doesn't getcluttered.
I'm gonna pick an easy pose so you can see how his arms work in it.
So, and this is just a quick andrough sketch.
So it's not gonna be finished.
But the idea isthat he's got two more arms comingout underneath the first set.
Right? And, in addition to that, on hisback, he has a spine.
So if you saw Stitch from the back forexample, let's say this is his back.
This spines kind of lookthis way.
The longest one is the middle, the next long is the oneunderneath it and the shortest one is the one that's closest tohis head.
And there, if this is his tummy from the back, thespines are actually where his torso would be here, you know, and then his arms would come over like that.
Obviously, whenhe's facing you, in this position, the spines are ratherharder to read.
So I usually tuck them down, so they don't clutterthe silhouette of the rest of the character, right? And, again, the challenge is to find the open space for all of hisparts.
So when you look at the pose, right, you have a lot ofwhat we call negative space.
Which helps you to read thecharacter expression, right, negative space is extremelyimportant in animation drawing and because it makes it veryreadable and as far as his antennae go, which is anothersign of Alien Stitch, they come out just behind his brows.
So they have these tiny little nubsthat the, they kind of look like heads of mushrooms if you wereto draw them large they would look sort of like that.
Usually, as a rule book, his antennas have this nice little S curve tothem which makes them look veryorganic.
So as you can see from drawing acharacter that has all these elements, I always try to figureout a way to position these elements in such a way thatthey're all readable and can be seen by the by the audience.
His tail bythe way, it's just a big thick knob.
It's not fluffy, it's very denselike the rest of him.
He does have these nasty lookingbut not sharp teeth, a tongue, And again, everything I do I use quick, simple shapes to get a character down very quickly.
Another advantage of that isthat if I mess up, I didn't spend too much time on mydrawing, I can throw it out and start anew.
So that's basically all there isto drawing Stitch.
The rest is just a matter ofpractice.
So, I hope you enjoyed seeing how I approach drawing Stitch.
Please remember when you drawanything, is not to get worried about failing, I failall the time, can always throw it away, you can always start anew so I hope you enjoyed it.
Thank you.
