Tutorial: Construction

Ok lemme explain, not too long ago a friend of mine asked me to look at a picture he drew of Lisa cloud surfing like in Tale Spin so this was in response to that. But I think it accuratly portrays the basics of character construction. Here is a tutorial I wrote about it here...
On the left you can see how I constructred the figure, this is how you should treat your subjects. Always think of them as 3 dimensional forms with volume and wieght, never as just a flat image. This is what will bring a sense of relality to your drawings. Even the most stylistic and flat characters are drawn this way. See how I drew thru each form? I actually drew her legs and how they connected to her body, how the kness would bend, the ankles, everything is connected to the central body just like ours are. Getting good animation drawings is very tricky and you have to have a firm knowlage of how the body works inside and out, as well as physics and acting. Chuck Jones had a great saying that went "Every artist has 1000 bad drawings and 1 good one so the faster you get the bad ones out of the way the quicker you get the good one," which has a lot of truth to it. No one is born knowing everyting there is to know about drawing, it's a skill like playing the piano or building a house. The more you do it the better you become. Anyway back to the drawing, during construction I thought of the story I wanted to tell. I showed how Lisa is in a very extreame situation, one that she clearly isn't used to and how she's dealing with it. From the way she's holding the bar, standing on the board, her posture, expression, all these things convey to the viewer a story about Lisa. I know this may seem like a lot to have to think about when all you want to do is doodle, but you're already thinking of these things without even knowing, you just have to learn how to apply them. All I thought about when I was drawing this was "how would Lisa react to this situation?" now of course all characters are different especially in the Simpson world, Bart is obviously going to act different to cloud surfing than Lisa is. This is where the actor in all of us comes out, as animators we become the character. Know who the character is that you're drawing and become them on paper. Convey your emotions thru them to the audience(the viewer). Always remember character first details later; ever wonder why three circles make you think of Mickey Mouse? It's the symbol of that character that people instantly reconognize not what kind of buttons are on his pants. Ok I've rambled enough...the right pic is obviously a cleaned up version on model, and for those of you out there don't fret about model with these characters. I draw them everyday so I'm familiar with all the tricks and rules but that doesn't mean you should give up. Practice practice practice, that's the bottom line.

*and as a note, this can be applied to all styles of drawing not just Simpson drawing. The Simpsons are copywrited by Matt Groening.