Teen Titans GO to the Movies! - Beast Boy Draw-along (part 2 of 2)

#TeenTitansGOMovie was a blast, yes I know it's not like the comics, and that the creative team is doing just that; taking creative liberties with the characters and having fun with them.

In the last blog and video, I addressed how I was trying to hit the XYZ coordinates to get a dynamic result. Definitely check that out so it brings you up to date. In this one, we're focusing on how to essentially decide on the build of the character and choosing how much detail we can logically work in, in order to achieve that cool look of the masters that I'm going for (legendary status like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bernie Wrightson, Marc Silvestri, Jim Lee, etc.), but of course you can choose whichever amount if any, that you want to include and set your own pace.

I imagine Beast Boy as leaping up and over a fallen enemy or wall, or what have you, essentially leaping into action! In my style, I like to capitalize on that sweet spot that doesn't make it realistic so much as believable. Meaning that I just want you to get that he's leaping forward, stress the posture and the pose, and the XYZ positioning to enhance that dynamic feel.

One of the first things I did this time around was bring Beast Boy's broad right shoulder in a little closer to his body. I don't mind experimenting with this piece to make him into a slightly more muscled teenager, but I don't want to make his shoulders too broad and put him in the same physical characteristics as Cyborg or Batman or something.

After that I moved on to his face where I tried out some angels to see if they worked, but too many lines and he looks like "Old Man Beast Boy," so I had to tone it down just enough to make him look grungy but not too old. I then finished "enclosing" or deciding on the placement of his left hand and then it was time for adding some details!

You can always learn more from practicing realistic art, then take those principals into a pose that looks more interesting, that's a good way to learn and progress and stretch your creative legs. I love doing that because it just up's your game every time. For the hands, for instance, I know that the palms, fingers, and even the positioning would not necessarily look like Beast Boy's here if he had very realistically proportionate hands ... They'd be much smaller, and nowhere near the size of his entire face or 3/4 of his head. So why'd I draw them the way I did? Well, because visually it's more engaging on the page. As stated before, when you draw a character in a position barely taking advantage of any direction other than it's static position, you won't really have a dynamic piece. In fact, it'll look posed, or very referenced and uninteresting. Which of course is everything you don't want, even if your skill was far beyond anything I can turn out. A boring image would still be a boring image no matter how well rendered it is. In the case of comics, Rob Liefeld (Extreme Comics, Youngblood, X-Force, Cable, Deadpool) said it best when he said it can be anything but boring! If you like going for that "something else" in you art, knock it out of the park, try several poses over some quick sketches and just stretch your muscles beyond what's just a good looking standing pose.

After I roughed in all the fingers and the shoes sole, etc., I then moved on to roughly filling in the areas that were black, which is most of his costume. For all the areas that were pink, or white since we're only doing this in pencil, I followed the contours of the shapes of those areas. Meaning I would look at the position of his right leg, see that it tapers down to the left on the page, then follow the light source that I set and fade the lines from right (heavy) to left ( lighter, more separated lines) which gives the impression that the shadow is fading out from right to left. I used this same method for all other parts that had shadow from one area to the next and then you eventually get to the point of a drawing that feels like it's leaping out right at you!

That about sums up this draw-along, hope you enjoyed it! I'll catch you in the next blog and video!