Comment by nonethewiser
2 days ago
Im curious what the process looks like to implement this. It seems like it would be easiest to start with the animal using only perfectly(?) curved lines and then complete them into circles after the fact. Although that seems kind of pointless and I imagine they start with circles. And I guess it would hard to have a curve from a perfect circle without the circle?
I just have a hard time imagining you start with circles, lay them down (resize as needed) and continue. I mean I guess that doesnt sound so crazy after I say it... it just seems like it would add a lot of extra noise to the image that would make it much harder to draw.
I can't speak to this but I took a drawing class a long time ago. I'm not very good but it was a lot of drawing circles. When you see people freehand stuff it's kind of wild but that's not how people learn how to draw they're just very good at it from practice. Most of learning is drawing very basic shapes, usually circles, and erasing parts that don't make sense and continuing.
> drawing very basic shapes, usually circles, and erasing parts that don't make sense
There's a hilarious Spongebob bit [0] where Squidward is teaching an art class, and he starts off in that exact manner of trying to draw a perfect circle, only to have Spongebob subvert the entire idea. The whole episode is artistic gold IMO.
0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTlpFEvmxdM
I do remember that. Sorry I can't find a better website but this is a similar joke.
https://www.reddit.com/r/restofthefuckingowl/comments/6f71jm...
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I have been practicing art a lot lately. You can draw just about anything using spheres, cubes, cylinders, and cones. You start off with the 2d versions.
I stopped after a few classes but I was amazed at how good I got in a short amount of time after learning how to break stuff down which isn't something I really thought about before. By all metrics I'm still a pretty terrible drawer but prior to that stick figures would have been challenging.
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True, I did some amateur vector art (in Illustrator) and you basically have to compose objects out of basic shapes. It is truly highly meditative.
There's some information on: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/01/illustrating-animal...
"While sketching, I kept track of the number of circles I was using, counting one for every curve." After sketching an animal, it should be easier to adjust the image by inserting/removing/moving circles.
Awesome, thank you!
There are some photos of sketches at the bottom of the page. Looks like they started with curves and turned them into circles later
I suppose the thing the circle is really informing is the "perfectness" of the curve. You cant just draw in curves and extend it to a circle (wont be perfect). I guess Im not sure how you get "perfect" curves.
I suspect its a stencil or something. So in some sense the circle does exist first, even if they only draw the curve from it initially (before marking it up with the full circle after the fact).
If I were trying to do something like this I would sketch it out first with imperfect curves and then worry about making it perfect once I was at the computer. It would look slightly different but I don’t think it would make that much of an impact in the initial design process.
What's wild is how much clarity and personality you can get from that process. Instead of adding noise, it forces simplification, which actually helps with visual clarity