Product Description

Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators

Capture the force in your life drawing subjects with this practical guide to dynamic drawing techniques - packed with superb, powerfully drawn examples that show you how to:

* Bring your work to life with rhythmic drawing techniques
* Create appealing and dynamic poses in your drawings
* Experience the figure's energy in three dimensional space
* Use the asymmetry of straight and curved lines to clarify the direction of force in the body
* Build on your foundational anatomy and figure drawing skills to animate your drawings
*Apply the theory of force to your on-location and animal drawing observations


Whether you are an animator, comic book artist, illustrator or fine arts' student you'll learn to use rhythm, shape, and line to bring out the life in any subject while Mike Mattesi's infectious enthusiasm will have you reaching for your pencils!

Mike Mattesi is the owner and founder of Entertainment Art Academy (www.enterartacad.com) based in Southern California. He has been a professional production artist and instructor for the last fifteen years with clients including Disney, Marvel Comics, Hasbro Toys, ABC, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, DreamWorks and Nickelodeon.

Audience level: Intermediate to advanced

* Discover and master the techniques of rhythmic drawing and bring your work to life
* Learn from a professional production artist who has successfully taught his unique techniques for the last fifteen years
* Written in an accessible, enthusiastic style which will have you reaching for your pencils!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #71482 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-10
• Original language: English, German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

Review
'For animators or anyone exploring life drawing, this book is an inspirational choice.'
3D World, Feb 2007

'Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators, 2e is key to understanding how to capture forceful poses with dynamic drawing. It is informative, concise, and packed full of inspirational illustrations...Force is not just another 'anatomy for animators' book - it assumes that the reader has experience of figure drawing. The focus here is to build on that knowledge and to use straight and curved lines to show the direction of force in the body. Every point in the text is thoroughly demonstrated with the help of superb, dynamically drawn examples.' - Animated News, Oct. 2, 2006

About the Author
Director of the Entertainment Art Academy based in Southern California. He has been a professional production artist and instructor for almost 20 years with clients including Disney, Marvel Comics, Hasbro Toys, ABC, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Dreamworks and Nickelodeon.

Customer Reviews

Instructive AND inspiring
I love this book, it's exactly what I was after! There are many relevant and beautifully drawn illustrations, not all of them by the author, Mike Mattesi, but some by his friends/colleagues. Nearly every single page is filled with drawings.

Here's a breakdown of the 6 main chapters:

Chapter 1 Seeing Life - This is pretty much an introduction to the ideas behind drawing forces - the author explains how to look at a model and focus on drawing the verb/action rather than trying to copy what you see. The theory is good and I saw major differences in my drawings after just this chapter.

Chapter 2 Forceful Form - This chapter is about technical skills involving drawing from varying angles and perspectives. He talks about creating depth in pictures using foreshortening, using overlapping and using tangents.

Chapter 3 Forceful Shape - This chapter is about shapes and silhouettes - how to draw effectively by knowing where to draw curves. This is a bit harder for me to explaing without showing you the illustartions used in the chapter with the authors' descriptions, but I'd say it was how to draw the descriptive nouns of the objects, while also capturing the verbs.

Chapter 4 Clothing - This chapter is one of my favourites. At first the author discusses capturing the texture and weight of the fabric. Later he talks about using clothing in character drawing to enhance the qualities you're trying to convey about them and their pose. I really love the drawings in this chapter.

Chapter 5 On Location, Reportage - This about going out into the big, wide world and drawing the people out there! There are tips on how to observe people and what you should try to capture about them. The author also discusses drawing "moments", relationships between people, and crowds.

Chapter 6 Animals - Mattesi talks about "comparative anatomy", comparing human anatomy to animals', in this case, a dog. The following drawings are of diffrent kinds of animals seen in a zoo (or Natural History museum) with some pointers on what to note in the drawings and useful tips on drawing birds, something I struggled with. This is the shortest chapter, I this book focuses on drawing people.

At the end of every chapter is a list of pointers for that topic. The book closes with some recommended reading, a brief glossary and a very comprehensive index.

A great thing about this book is the way the author writes, he is really passionate about drawing and his enthusiasm is infectious through the pages. The tone is encouraging, and there are little uplifting quotes about art dotted around the book.

I wouldn't say this was a beginners book but you probably don't need to be "classically trained" to use it. I have a completely technical background and I work in the vfx industry. I've never taken any classes or courses, I've only done clay sculpture and casual sketching as a hobby. I'm working towards becoming a 3D character animator and this book has helped me a lot with practice storyboards. It's more of a guide than rigid instructions, the author doesn't give you numbered exercises, he rather mentions things he gets his classes to do and these serve as exercises you can adapt for yourself. I personally find this combined with the pointers, more interesting and helpful, and less daunting than a structured list of instructions.

A little masterpiece.
It's a honour to write a review for this book.
It's inspiring and very well written, and the illustrations are of outstanding quality. Mattesi doesn't simple teach you how to give life and power to your drawings (as well as correct common technical mistakes): he makes you change the way you look at reality and drawings.
Whoever you are, whatever your job is (painter, comic artist, illustrator or animator) this book will surprise and help you.
The author holds his readers in great respect and is passionate about his job.

Useful for animators and life drawing
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R23F6VPPCHKHDT Here's a very useful book not just for animators, but for anyone who do character drawings. It's called Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators, authored by Michael D. Mattesi.

First of all, this is a book for intermediate and advanced artists. Foundational knowledge of anatomy is required to fully appreciate and follow along with the lessons.

This book is about creating realistic poses for life drawing. Examples show how forces inside the body and outside (gravity or objects) act on the human figure, and how the body reacts to the force.

There are lots of tips and illustrated examples on strong and memorable poses, such as the using of structure and form, overlaps, foreshortening, silhouettes etc. The explanations are clear and simple, even very sketchy illustrated examples bring the point across with very few lines.

While many instructional drawing books teaches how to draw, this book teaches how to think before drawing. Whenever I draw, I always remind myself of the tips to help prevent my characters from being too static.

Additionally, there are also chapters on handling clothing, drawing on location and drawing animals.

There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.