Click the image to be inspired.

Hey guys, Peter Driscoll here! I’m going to be contributing to On Animation for a while, which I’m very excited about! I work in the animation industry here in the UK and I’ve been very lucky to have worked at some really great studios during my very short career so far. I hope to be able to make posts from our wonderful animation community, and share and learn with you all!

I thought my first contribution would be to post a much fuller copy of the Disney Sample Portfolio Notes (these guys really know where to place lines!) These are a little bulkier than before: 89 pages long and with some notes! I’ve spent some time cleaning up the pages so that they are a little clearer to look at. I’ve also included a PDF download here. So far, all we know is that the notes came from sometime in the early nineties, and that these notes in particular, possibly came from the Paris Studio. If anyone knows anymore info, I’d love to hear it. Enjoy! Pete

I fed off Wednesday night’s gesture session, and stayed loose for my first 1 minute warm-up. Unfortunately, it all went down hill from here.

I also finally produced a full set of color pieces worth posting. Who knows, maybe one or two might make it into the portfolio.

Here’s a couple gestures from last night. I decided to work in charcoal. It’s the first time I’ve been able to get this loose with the medium. It’s pretty exciting.

I never really achieved that sense of flow for the rest of the night, but here’s two more that show a little emotion. It felt like the model always had his back to me, no matter where I sat. When I finally got to draw his face, I got so excited at the rare opportunities, that I bombed them completely.

Here’s a festive color spread from Tuesday morning.

Off to my Thursday morning session!

I got off to a good start this month with posting, but it’s been a while. Here’s some of the work I’ve done since last post. This first one’s my favorite.

I like the composition of this one:

The expression in this one:

The looseness of this one:

The expression of this one:

And the color of this one:

I’m putting together a gestures spread for my portfolio. This is not an easy task. I’ve been narrowing down nine months of gestures to a two-page spread. In the process I discovered some gestures I haven’t posted before. Here they are:

A couple of 2-3 minute gestures from this afternoon:

This was one of those times where I got looser and looser with every drawing. That might sound like a logical progression, but it doesn’t always happen like that for me. I’m usually either on or off; I’m able to connect or I’m not. I thought I would have a ton of gestures for this post, but when I got home to check them over I was only happy (barely) with these two. At least I was having fun!

Here’s a couple from last night’s horendous gesture session. I didn’t connect with the figure at all despite some interesting and lively poses. Back to color for this morning’s regular session.

I’m getting better at spreads, though I still have a loooong way to go. Here’s three from yesterday morning. I have a gesture session today with (hopefully) something worth posting tomorrow. These are all incomplete. As in, I might spruce them up if I decide to put them in my portfolio.

This one’s my favorite:

All NuPastel on Fabriano.

Fat guys have their ups and downs in life drawing. The one big down is that they’re usually too out of shape to do anything really interesting pose-wise. Another downer is they can’t hold 30 second poses for more than 20 seconds, at least this one couldn’t.

But those limitations are fine, because there’s a principle that can be practiced on fat people that everyone could use a little practice on now and again: WEIGHT. Here’s some NuPastels on Newsprint. All are 2 minute gestures except the last.

I think I did an okay job of showing weight in these two without having to waste time on the stool.

In this one he’s holding a pole, but I didn’t want to waste time on it. I think I rushed in this one, and it shows in the nubby arm.

I like this one. I think I got personality in the posture.

One of the few that I actually indicated the floor. I have to get better disciplined at this. Time is no excuse, nobody likes a floating figure.

This one was either 3 or 5 minutes. I like how loose I was here