How Important is It to Have Talent?

by Christopher Hart | Jun 12, 2014 | Ruminations

Many aspiring artists, who love to draw – and who yearn to improve – become somewhat pessimistic about their progress because they don’t believe they have the innate talent to become good at drawing. This is the biggest myth about drawing. Really, how important is it to have talent?

Talent is an asset, to be sure. But talent alone cannot produce superior work unless it has three essential ingredients:

• The motivation to draw often
• The willingness to seek out and learn new drawing techniques
• And most importantly, having what I term as an “Editorial Eye”

If you have the three assets, listed above, you can become an excellent artist, with or without innate talent. If you have talent, but none of the attributes listed above, your art doesn’t improve.

So the question becomes, what is an “Editorial Eye”? It’s the ability to look at your art dispassionately, to recognize its flaws – as well as its strengths. It’s having the willingness – even the desire – to redraw your work in order to get it right. There’s an old saying for writers: “Writing is re-rewriting.” The same is true for artists, “Drawing is re-drawing”.

I’m here to encourage you to pursue your passion, you art, your dreams. You can do it. You really can. And always remember: You deserve to succeed.

TV Animation or Movie Animation?

by Christopher Hart | May 27, 2014 | Ruminations

I’m a fan of both animated TV shows, and animated movies. But I like each for different reasons. I love the weird and wacky character designs of animated TV shows, like “Adventure Time. ” But I enjoy the seeing how inventively form and structure is used to create characters in movie animation.

In film animation, which is relies on computer programming, the characters must be drawn in a logical manner, or the software will not be able to turn them at various angles. But animated TV characters can “cheat” form and structure, like a character drawn with both eyes on the same side of his head in a profile.

For the aspiring cartoonist, it builds a better foundation to study the logical character designs from movie animation. Once these principles become familiar, then going wacky is easier. I hope that was helpful.