If you're animating a bouncing ball, it's tempting to draw a circle in the first frame and continue with that shape in each frame as it rises and falls.
To apply the solid drawing principle, you would think about how the ball changes shape as it moves: at the point of impact, the ball squashes slightly to show weight and impact before stretching as it rebounds. As the ball moves towards or away from the viewer, the animator adjusts its shape slightly to show distance, with the edges tapering inwards when it's further away.
But bouncing balls aren't all there is to animation: you need a few guiding principles to apply the same thinking to other types of animation. That's what we provide in this article.
Why Solid Drawing?
Animation is all about optical illusions, and at its core are the 12 principles of animation—a set of guidelines that animators have used for decades to create believable animation.
Among these principles, solid drawing creates a well-defined sense of three-dimensionality within two-dimensional frames to engage viewers.
A crucial aspect of solid drawing is achieving a well-defined silhouette for characters and objects.
In animation, silhouettes play a significant role in making a scene visually readable. They help distinguish different characters and objects from one another at a glance. Without a strong silhouette, characters can appear flat, or hard to distinguish from their backgrounds.
Solid drawing also helps animators draw characters consistently as they move through different poses and perspectives without losing what makes their design unique.
1. The Basics
Solid drawing comes down to several foundational concepts. The first one is to understand the basic terms that define a drawing:
- Form - For an animator, bringing a character or object to life starts with turning the basic shapes into forms with depth. Form refers to the three-dimensional nature of an object: by visualizing characters as three-dimensional forms like spheres, cubes, and cylinders, they can maintain consistency across different poses.
- Volume - Volume is about how much space an object occupies. It prevents characters from appearing flat and inconsistent when moving in the animated world―an object must retain its volume as it moves through space, bending or twisting without awkward stretching or shrinking.
- Proportions - Proportion is about relationships—the relative sizes between different parts of an object or character. Getting proportions right is key to producing balanced, natural, and relatable animations.
- Perspective - Perspective creates an illusion of depth and space, giving the audience a sense of where objects and characters are positioned. It allows animators to shift viewpoints, guide the audience's focal point, and enhance the storytelling of the scene.
- Shape - Shapes are the 2D version of forms. Elipsis, rectangles, triangles, and lines convey emotions, define characters, and establish visual themes. Look at our dedicated article on shape language to learn more about their complex usage.
After practicing these basics, an animator will move on to more complex concepts to make their drawings more solid.
2. Line of Action
The line of action is the invisible line that guides a pose's primary axis and flow.
Every hero leaping through the air or villain slinking through shadows has one thing in common: a powerful line of action. This line dictates their movement's energy and direction, like the pose's backbone.
The line of action isn't arbitrary―its direction and shape add meaning to a scene while guiding the viewer's attention.
It's a tool for clarity in complex scenes and a way to add dramatic effects. The line of action also facilitates smoother transitions between poses by suggesting key frames.
3. Balance
One of the core concepts in achieving balanced drawings is avoiding symmetry, often called twinning―the unintentional mirroring of elements that would look stiff and unnatural in the real world.
A character standing with arms down their sides perfectly symmetrically would look strange.
Instead, animators add a touch of asymmetry, using strong silhouettes, twists, and counterposes. They would, for example, vary the angles of the arms or shift the weight to one leg.
A strong silhouette communicates the character's actions clearly and quickly. When designing poses, animators reduce their characters to a simple, recognizable shape. The pose has a strong silhouette if the action is easily interpreted, even in its most simplified form devoid of details.
Incorporating twists and counterposes in your drawings introduces dynamic motion and a sense of energy.
A twist is when different body parts face different directions, like the torso turning one way while the hips face another, to reflect better how the human body naturally moves.
Similarly, counterposes involve positioning the hips and shoulders to face opposite directions.
4. Turnarounds
A turnaround is a drawing of a character as it rotates 360 degrees to provide a comprehensive view from multiple angles.
Typically, a turnaround includes front, side, back, and three-quarter views to help animators maintain consistency throughout production.
Design discrepancies can detract the viewer's experience, so keeping width, height, and design details similar is important.
Creating a turnaround also forces the artist to understand every facet of the character, which implies grappling with how various body parts interact in different poses and angles.
In an animation studio, a well-made turnaround is a reliable reference for the entire animation team. It streamlines the production process by allowing different animators to work on the same character without needing constant guidance or corrections. Retakes and redesigns are costly, so it's best to avoid those.
An often-quoted example is the character design sheets used in major animation studios, where each character undergoes extensive turnaround drawings to solidify their design.
5. Posing / Life Drawing
Another way to get better at solid drawing is to practice life drawing.
Life drawing is sketching live models to capture the human form quickly and accurately. It typically involves short, timed poses known as gesture drawing, where the artist rapidly captures the model's form.
The emphasis here is on speed and fluidity rather than precision, so you're forced to apply solid drawing concepts.
It's an excellent way to train an animator's eye and hand to capture the essence of form, motion, and weight distribution: you have to distill the complex human form into its fundamental elements while avoiding unnecessary details that would weigh down your characters.
Consider attending local life drawing classes or joining online sessions if available. You could also commit a few minutes daily to sketch quick poses using online resources or apps designed for gesture drawing, or you could simply sketch a person sitting in your favorite café or library.
6. Lighting
Without any shading, a simple sphere looks flat. But when you introduce a light source, the highlight, mid-tones, and shadows all contribute to a realistic drawing.
Lighting affects how we perceive forms. It determines how effectively an object's form and volume are portrayed.
As previously mentioned, perspective focuses on creating a believable representation of a three-dimensional world, and lighting is your ally to emphasize the spatial relationship between objects: where you position a light source influences how an object casts shadows and catches highlights, reinforcing its placement within the environment. It clarifies which areas are closer to the viewer or receding into the distance, guiding the eyes across the canvas.
Conclusion
Solid drawing connects together form, movement, and dimension to create more engaging animations. Mastering its principles allows you to turn even the most mundane drawings into captivating stories.
Solid drawing is not the only best practice to take into account in your animation, though: there are 12 principles of animation to master, and you still need the discipline to keep practising each one.
