- Lesson Details
- Transcript
- References
- Instructor
- Mark Westermoe
- Subjects
- Entertainment Arts
- Topics
- Anatomy, Composition, Design, Drawing Exercises, Head & Portrait, Human Figure, Light & Color
- Mediums
- Colored Pencil, Paper
- Duration
- 1h 42m 36s
- Series
- How to Design Movie Posters
In this unique course, Mark Westermoe, the creator of feature film posters for blockbusters like Braveheart, Total Recall, and Home Alone, teaches you how to design a movie poster. This course will teach you how to go from developing ideas for your poster with thumbnail sketches, through preliminary drawings, all the way through to a finished poster. Mark will cover the business side of designing movie posters, including how to get into this rewarding field of work. You will also learn the history of advertising illustration, and learn many insider tricks and finishing techniques.
In this lesson, you will learn how to plan and set up a photoshoot of your body doubles. Mark does 3 photographs for 3 different compositions and shows how to size them to 6’x9’ standard format, using a photocopier. Then he sizes actors’ heads the same way and attaches them to body double photos. Now he is ready to start drawing the comp. He takes you through this whole process so you could repeat it yourself and use body doubles in creating your poster.
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Discussin a class that was basically a progression from
one through ten, I'm gonna show us
how to do a photoshoot with a model
is gonna be the body double for one of our two main
characters, Robert Downey Jr.
He'll be wearing the appropriate clothes, in this case
the jacket, a vest, a shirt, and a tie.
Sometimes he'll just be wearing the
shirt. But we're gonna do three shots for three of our comps
And
there's one other that I still have to do but
I didn't want to take up the whole class time with that so I'll just do it at my home.
Okay and then
they are gonna take the photos, print them out
on the computer, onto the printer of the computer, giving me
hard copy. So I'll file each one in the appropriate
folder. We have 11 concepts. So it'll be
number two, number whatever.
And then I'm going to size them
so that they fit into the format
of the 6 by 9 template. Once I've done
that, then in most cases
I'll need to size the actor's head. So this would be
Robert or we have body doubles that I shot
last week for the female.
That's the body double for Emily. So I'm gonna
size her head to those shots and I'm
gonna size his head and figure according to what we did already
and at the end of the lesson - by the way I'll be showing you how to
do that on a simple photocopier,
$80. It's much faster than you could ever do on
a computer printer and it takes a little time. You
might have to size something three or four times to get it
so you don't have time for that unless you have a fast means of doing it.
And this'll do it in a matter of a few seconds each time.
The copier itself, I'll talk about it, is $80.
It's not a bad investment for general use in any
case. Then, after I've done that,
I'll take one drawing, one concept and go ahead
and draw in the figures with the sized heads
according to the concept and how it fits into the template.
That's something I'm gonna do for all the
concepts but for tonight I wanted to share with you one that's
a little bit complicated. Good.
sizing body doubles here
for Robert Downey Jr. and here for Emily Blunt.
The concept is really straightforward.
They've been working together on all the problems that she's got.
She has gotten a little impatient and
he's trying to reassure her. This is her therapist Robert
Downey Jr. So we're gonna do - I've already done a
photoshoot of the body double for Emily.
And I'll show that to you presently.
But in the meantime - and we've also sized a head of Emily
to the scale of that photoshoot of the body.
In the case here we don't have a really good angle
of Robert Downey Jr. but our model
for the photoshoot today happens to have a similar
head structure and also similar facial hair so
we're gonna use him. He'll take a pose
that as you see here is a down shot
and he will place his hand, cup his hand on her shoulder
to reassure her. She's seated, he's
standing, and then we haven't done this today
but we will, Malkovich is blurred outside
the window which is a little bit frosted. So we haven't done
his head yet, we'll include that later. This is
the second of our - what will probably be 11
comps that we're doing for this project
on the suspense movie
with Emily, Robert, and John.
So having said all that, let's now go
take the photoshoot and that involves somebody sitting in
for Emily and then
our model for Robert, he will be leaning - standing
behind and leaning over her a little bit. So
now let's go ahead and do that and I'll
remark about that as we go. So here is the body double
for the body double but that will give us
something good for our model
Gil to reach over and touch. That's good
yeah and that's good. Try to lean into her just a little bit
more Gil. And maybe
if you could, Lucas, if you could put this in front of them.
The actual paper copy. It's good to have for these photoshoots
more than one copy of your idea.
Because that way you can lay one on the floor in front of your model and
he or she can check that and it helps them
assume the proper pose, good.
Okay turn your head slightly toward me please.
That's it. And
I think we're pretty
good to go. You might wanna step a little bit to your right Gil.
With your feet. And move in a little closer that way. Just
shift your feet. That's it.
Now you'll notice a couple of funny things.
Our second model, Amir, his head is casting a shadow
across the torso of Gil. That's something we're
not gonna draw but we got the lighting we want which is
coming from the left. We have actually done a mirror image
or flop rather, of the
actual pose. You'll notice in this example
Robert is to the side over here,
the left of the composition. But in our photoshoot it's opposite.
That's not a problem because we can always flop it.
And that's what we're gonna do before we actually use it. But let's
shoot it now, I think you've got the post real well.l
And if we can just put the pose back on camera.
That's it. That's good. Alright.
I think we can shoot that as is. Now even though
we're only gonna draw him from the knees up
we'll probably wind up with the whole pose
on the shot. So this is exactly
what we're gonna get on the camera. And what
we're gonna do next, well we'll do another photoshoot.
There are three I'm gonna show you tonight but
we're gonna take these and print them out
on the computer printer. And then I'll have hard
copy, which I can enlarge and reduce by any single
percentages that I want on the photocopy machine.
Which is much faster than a computer printer.
Okay thank you. I think that was a really effective
shot. Okay, here, this is a shot
it was actually lifted
from a 60's illustration. No one's
gonna care. It's beautiful, I love the abstract shape you see
of the whole thing. Let me change colors here.
Now I can see.
Look at that, see it's just great. And it sweeps
really nicely across
the poster. And we look at just the dark
shapes of the figures it's even better.
I love it. So
we've already done the shot here of the body
double for Emily. Now we're gonna do the shot
of the body double for Robert Downey Jr. And it's kind of
a tricky pose to stage. A couple things I'm gonna look for:
the hand is light so it helps to
form a nice, negative shape right in here. Another negative
shape that's very important is between his arm and his torso.
So when I pose him those are the two things I'm gonna look for.
Also, the lighting. The lighting is coming from this side.
Now that means
that we're gonna need to move a light stand over into that position.
Just a footnote to what I'm saying: here we have some kind of
a visual device that separates our two
characters. We're gonna do the same thing. We're gonna research
and find a candelabra or some such item
and sculpt it only it in a very kind of angular
chiseled way. We're gonna turn it into a
little work of art. And it will form at the top
the head of the crown. That has to be done very
carefully. If it looks too comical than
the whole idea is destroyed. So it has to be made
out of crystal or silver or something like that.
We have not researched it yet, but that's the easy part.
And you'll have to have a front view head
of John Malkovich and we have a near profile
of Emily and then we have a down shot of Robert
and we do not have any of that research
here because we've pulled things up from the internet
and there was no such angle. So Gil is actually
kinda similar in head structure to Robert Downey Jr.
and he's got the same facial hair almost so we're gonna use him.
And tweak a few things here and there and lo and behold
we're gonna have this angle. So what I like about this pose
is the figures are really just silhouettes.
There's no folds within them, no modeling
and together they form a unit.
What's interesting to me is just the overall shape.
The mood is, well you know he's pondering
what's been going on, he's a bit weary
and back then they had a pipe
in his hand, well that's a little dated
so we're just skipping the pipe and
yeah that's what we're gonna shoot now.
We're gonna go ahead and switch over. What we do have to do
is get the light source to come from the angle we want it.
And that's gonna be the other side of his head.
So first step is an assistant,
Amir, will go ahead and move the light stand for us.
And I'll tell him when to stop.
That's pretty good.
Maybe angle it away from him a little
bit, just rotate it basically, other way.
Stop. This
is very good. Very good shot. Now a couple things. You'll notice
that his leg does not extend as far as it does in this
beautiful illustration. So I'll cheat that when I
use this for the actual finished drawing, I'll extend the leg.
That's not difficult. So you have to look at these photoshoots in a
certain way. If you contort yourself
you can get exactly into it, maybe. But you have to remember even this
was designed, it probably doesn't conform to an actual photoshoot.
And so you have to be prepared to move things
or lengthen things. Okay and in this case
that's what I'll be doing, I'll be extending that leg farther forward. Otherwise
I think that's ready to shoot.
Great. Now
there are a lot of folds, beautiful fold pattern on his
arm, etc. But I'm gonna minimize those,
maybe suggest them at most and just treat these figures, again,
as black silhouettes so the more it looks like
kind of an asymmetrical Rorschach test or ink blot
the better, the more happy I am with it. And this element,
the one I discussed earlier with the clown, is a candelabra
most likely, that's just gonna be inserted later.
Okay that worked really well.
Alright here we have a very loose
thumbnail drawing, which is what you're gonna get from an
art director generally.And the concept is
she is at the confessional.
And so we see her here and the light
is hitting her face so we can see Emily clearly.
But instead of the priest, this is how
dominant this constant, you know, image that she gets
and how much it's all pervading in the most
intimate of moments, here she is
and there's that clown figure. So what we need
to do, he is actually the priest so we have a
collar here, and
we're gonna shoot this either at eye
level or slightly down. Our model is gonna be seated
so it's easy, and we're gonna move the light source
on him so that it's coming from the upper
left. So
we already have a head shot for her and
we've shot a body double. They're not touching each other or even
intimately close, so we don't have to worry about difficult things such as that.
Here, the model is turned just
slightly so I get like a one corner view
of his head. And then it's the hair
that's gonna make us sure that this is that
terrible, omnipresent clown
that seems to not stalk or haunt but somewhere
in between. Okay. And then here's the
shoulder line, we'll pick up a little bit of a rim light on that so again we'll have
to move a light to the left and then this is gonna just
run off of the poster like that. Obviously
you can see this is not a six by nine or two by three format
so we're gonna extend it
when we do the drawing. But that's not relevant to the
photo shoot, which is now. So let's start off by -
Gil has already assumed the pose but the
lighting right now has to change. So Amir
if you was to just change the lighting, make it come from the left, we
actually have a second light stand, we're lucky here.
And you just turn that on, great, and turn
the other one off.
But turning that off, notice the difference.
Very dramatic difference. Okay turn your head slightly
to your left Gil. Little bit more. Stop.
And I think that works just great.
You wanna shoot this at eye level or slightly
from above. So you might wanna
step up on that stand and then hold your camera
up, yeah.
Great, thank you. We already have everything we need
for Emily so that's the last photoshoot
of the body doubles for Robert Downey Jr.
As we develop the drawings and complete them
we may find another one that we have to shoot for some reason or another
but that's not likely because we carefully planned everything out.
Okay, thanks Gil, thanks
Amir. And what we're gonna do now
is we're gonna print out these three shots that
we took. We'll do that straight from
the camera to the computer and then I'll have hard copy
of each one. With that in hand I can
go ahead and size it and
design it so that it fits my composition here.
He'll be larger than she is because she's a step
back. It's actually a down shot so we see him a little
lower and she's a little higher. As you go back in
distance in a down shot the heads become smaller.
So we'll probably have to size her down too.
Higher and smaller is what happens.
The opposite of upshots.
There we go, a beautiful drawing
of Emily Blunt. Hardly. But that gives us
the size approximately and we've already shot
a body double for her, which I'll show you presently.
Okay great, so let's - now I'm gonna
set up and begin to just - I've already sized
some of the body doubles of the woman
and I've got other matters that I can start designing on the
light table. While I'm doing that Amir is gonna be
kind enough to print these out.
we have a
Cannon image class copier.
It's something that we're gonna use
to photocopy the shots that we did.
We've printed them out on the computer printer.
And now I'll put them on the glass and
size them to the scale that I want that's appropriate for
the concept. Let's start with an
easy one here. And
by the way, it takes just moments to change the settings
from 88 percent to 92 or whatever you
need. That's why we do the first shot
here.
We shoot this
and
for this we printed it out on a computer printer which takes longer
to do than a photocopier but it's very nice copy.
Then we're gonna size it to the
thumbnail.
Now the thumbnail I've already blown it up a little,
that's about the same on both so actually we don't need this one, you can
dispose of it. If you have more
images in your file than you need then just remove them.
Here
the story is she's at the confessional,
she's lighted from the front, the priest is on our side,
he's lighted from the back and the priest
turns out to be, in her imagination but a very powerful one,
it turns out to be John Malkovich the clown,
not the priest after all. And so we're gonna see that mostly
by the silhouette of his head and we shot
here his body double
which needs to be enlarged in order to fit the comp,
this is the scale we're going with. Now
Emily - we've already shot the pose here
it's a body double, just like the one
we shot with Gil. So we need to attach
Emily's head to this and let's see what we've got.
(organizing)
We keep everything in a folder so it's very
easy to look at any accessories or backgrounds or furnishings
or props and we also can
easily size things. So if this is gonna be her
hose, let's imagine
that we're gonna size heads for it. We've already done that.
We've taken the master and we've put it on the photocopy glass
and we've reduced it or enlarged it to fit.
This one looks pretty good and it's best to
kinda cut them or fold them so we can see what we're doing.
Right there looks good.
(organizing)
And then our priest is down here so it's a little bit
of a down shot.
I can use
the scissors to do this but in the meantime I'll just fold it like this.
I can put that in the appropriate folder.
(organizing)
And we can get an idea. So you can see he has to
go considerably larger if he's scaled to Emily's head
at that size. Good. And we're
only seeing his figure
down to
A line just about half way down his arms.
So I'm gonna cut this.
Scissors is gonna be
an important tool for you.
(organizing)
And when you cut something that you're not gonna use, throw it
away right away. So it does not get confusing
with anything else.
In the case of Emily
we're probably only gonna
do it down to here but this is fine, we
can keep that, that's already successfully sized.
Here we ran a darker version.
And that's gonna be good for us because
we need a little more contrast. Let me cut her
head.
(organizing)
And we'll use that.
That means I'm
gonna discard these other ones.
And now
we're gonna attach this head
to that figure.
You have a choice. You can
design the figure before you attach it or you can do it afterwards.
And for speed and simplicity, let's just do this.
The expression is a little bland
but she probably should be looking
as though she's a bit in wonder but
she's not over the top. This is not comic book stuff.
It's a little more sophisticated - well, some comics are.
(organizing)
That's almost right. Okay so we've got this one solved. One
the other figure, here,
is the back of John Malkovich. The head of course is not
but we're gonna do it with silhouette, such as the shape of
his hair, which is kind of his brand or trademark.
So I'm gonna now do the important part of this process.
I turned of the energy saver
and I'm gonna go ahead and size this so that it's the proper size.
First of all you have density if you need to
lighten or darken it, it's fine the way it is so leave that.
Then you have -
what does it say,
put my glasses on. I forget my -
it says original type, text or photo, whatever. So let's look at that.
Let's put it on a photo setting and that's good
and now there's some machines have this
sharpness,
let's take that and put it all the way up.
Now we're gonna go back to the percentages.
That's called copy ratio
here. It now is set at 100%
direct. So I've gonna guesstimate when I look at
our Emily here.
He has to be bigger, he's in the foreground. So let's make
him about 135%,
that's close. So go ahead and hit this
percentage button and go to custom ratio
and let's see here.
Let's try it again. Yeah.
Custom ratio okay and we're gonna
go up. It'll go by
ten points at a time. So it's a 131. That's fine
for me, let's try that. Put it on the glass.
Face down.
As far over in the corner as you're gonna get because when
you're enlarging something you don't want it to be cropped.
Cover, hit the okay button, now we're set.
We're just gonna do one at a time
Okay. The reason is - well obviously you don't wanna waste a lot of
toner and paper.
This machine
importantly cost $80 retail.
And I just
bought another item at the same - it was Staples I believe -
and they have
copiers like this made by several different companies.
Well, let's
look at, compare some of these heads. And you can see I think
that his head is still not large enough. So
we go back to the copy ratio.
(organizing)
Let's try 147.
So we know this is too small so we
throw it away. Don't keep stuff out that you're not gonna use.
It'll just confuse you.
And if you get confused that takes up precious time.
Now let's have a look.
We're gonna compare size here.
(drawing)
to Emily. And he's still a little small.
So back we go.
(copying)
We're gonna go 161
Let's try that.
(copying)
You know this will draw itself because
we already have all the reference we need. And designing
Malkovich's head is easy. It's a back view anyway.
It's mostly the collar and the shoulders that I was
interested in.
(organizing)
I think that's gonna work.
I believe that that's
the size we want. And so I'm gonna
write down the scale that I used, 161
and importantly for both of these
the concept number. This is number
11 and so is this. So that goes in
the file and I have everything I need. I do not need
the second shot of her so I'll through it away.
Good. So we have the body doubles and we have
the head reference, the only one we need being Emily. I put it back
in your folder, close it up, okay, and you
go through all your concept folders the same way. Alright
let's have another one please. So what we have here,
this is our idea. This is
Emily - I'm just gonna use this figure, you know, because she's out for the evening
and here's a head that fits that figure
right there. In fact let's
cut it to show you.
(organizing)
And dispose of this
leftover paper.
And that head's a little bit big
probably. See that.
So we're probably gonna wanna resize it.
I traced this and showed you how we're separating
these figures. I took this head, which I
designed and I flopped it like that.
So you just leave it facing up. And let's resize that one.
I think - I don't know what size this was it's a good
idea to write that down. But we want
to go a notch smaller than this one. I'm guesstimating
about 67 percent, which is
two-thirds. Put it on the glass.
She's going down in size so there's not gonna be any cut off.
Okay. So we're gonna start a new one know.
(copying)
Okay.
We just want to go to 67%. We don't have to do any photo settings
because it's already graphically drawn but I think I will anyway.
Let's see here. The density is fine.
The original type I'm gonna change it to text photo - well it's
already on there. Let's see, we're not doing
two sided. The copy ratio, 67%.
(copying)
69,
68, 67. Okay.
And the
sharpness I'm gonna go all the
way up. There. Try it.
Now if you stop in the middle of this
process, for any reason at all, after a certain
number of minutes the machine will turn off and the settings
will return to normal. So bear that in mind.
Because once it returns to normal, you
obviously can't use it and you're just wasting
toner and paper. So we're going from this
size, considerably down.
That might be a little bit small.
Remember that from the palm of the hand, the base,
all the way to the
middle finger, that's the extent from the chin to the scalp.
So obviously this is too small. All we have to do
go back to
copy ratio and let's make it larger.
(copying)
Let's try 75%.
Notice how quickly
even with changes in percentage that the machine
gives us the reference we need, sized perfectly.
Let's see now - that's almost the same as what we had.
So we know the proper size is between 67 and
75. So here we go.
Let's try it
down one, two, three,
one, that splits the difference exactly in half.
Let's go for it.
(copying)
Well we had that, now we have a
smaller head. Let's test it on our figure.
(organizing)
Once you have this down
and you've done it a few times, it goes really fast.
But like anything in most professions, preparation
is critical.
No I think that's pretty good.
Alright so let's stick with this and
I already sized a head of
Robert Downey Jr., which is gonna go here.
So this is the difference between the two.
All the other ones
we'll throw away. Because I don't wanna confuse them
for the one that I'm actually gonna use. This
so it doesn't get lost, remember it's smaller than
8.5 by 11. Let's kinda position her here.
We may tweak
the placement a little bit but for now that's fine. As for Robert -
(organizing)
trash -
we can slip him in right here.
(organizing)
This was 71 percent in case
I have to redo it. Robert is for concept number 1.
And then Malkovich in between is this somewhat
sinister dark silhouette. Instead of a top hat we'll
have his characteristic brand hair. This one
we don't need to do a photoshoot, it's just a silhouette.
Good so now we have this one. Notice how it fits
into our template.
Good. So we have to do another
shoot to get Robert's figure but that's all we have to do.
Concept number three.
You can see here that it's
basically done. We wanna add
the top of her head so let me
make a note about that. Otherwise
it's good and you'll notice the concept is beautiful, with
black, black, white, and a light gray. Nothing more
to do. So this one's already been nicely done.
I'm just gonna put down
here we sized Robert similar
to that and we wound up with this.
So that's perfect, even the light and dark pattern matches.
I should have a copy of
the entire concept itself
but for some reason this is the only one I have, which
is fine. We'll put her in place because
this is the concept that inspired this
comprehensive sketch. Which now all
we have to do on this one is lay in the values.
(organizing)
This one you can throw away, it's too small.
This one needs to be labeled number three
in case we have to
refer back to it. We have this one also as number
three.
(organizing)
This
cross references is very important.
We only keep these
ones as references. That's all,
I've already done the
design on top of it anyway. S keep these two.
(organizing)
And tape them on the same sheet of paper
like that. This goes in the file,
so does your template. This gets thrown away
and we have
the whole thing ready to finish. When these
drawings are at this stage, you usually want to show them to the art director.
So don't bother filling in the tone until her or she
has approved it. He might wanna move the hands, he might
wanna do anything, and then you've done all this drawing and you have to take it out.
No, so you don't fill it in yet.
(organizing)
And we already sized this head.
So you can put this back in a file that we call
finished heads. Here, this is a folder of
finished heads. We start with Emily, three
quarter, three quarter but without the anxiety. Front view.
And this one was used just do
a single comp but it was very much needed. So those are
the heads. These are the ones we're gonna be sizing for all of our
folders. Then we have several heads of
Malkovich. A front view,
ominous looking three quarter view,
near profile.
And then
we have several heads of Robert Downey.
We have this one, front view with
light and shadow pattern. We have this one,
three quarter view. We have another, more
evolved three quarter view, closer to a profile, and
finally we have a profile. It's not
recommended to draw them this large
because to reduce something this scale is gonna take
sometimes two generations. The copier will only reduce as far
as 25%. If I had to go less than that I would need
to make one copy at 25 percent then use that
and go down and scale to whatever. 10 percent or whatever.
So but we have it anyway.
And when we photocopy and size the heads, we do it
from the tissues of the designed, finished
heads.
It wouldn't hurt to actually make
three folders, one for Emily, one for John, and one for Robert.
But we can do that between classes. Okay.
This one is done as is.
It's a concept that's very simple. I originally had a
dealer putting cards out and you would imagine
I changed it.
I have Emily looking at the cards she's been dealt.
So
how are we gonna arrange that on our page?
(organizing)
This one's a little clearer. For some reason it's not as fuzzy as the other.
We can literally just do this.
I'll raise it up a tad
and then we'll cut it.
Now the woman who posed for this
is older than Emily. So
when we draw the hands we simply design
a woman about 30-31 years old. So that's
just means essentially simplify.
And I think we can go a little larger with this. See we got too much
negative space. So let's size it.
(organizing)
Put it on the glass.
(copying)
Like so. I think we can
probably take it to maybe 120 percent.
Notice while I was doing this, the
energy saver came on and that saves energy
obviously it turns it off. So I have to hit
that button, now I can do the controls.
First of all, density looked pretty good
but because I'm gonna simplify this into a younger woman's hands
let's try this. We're gonna lighten this.
The original type should be
photo and the scale -
well first let's put the sharpness on high
and now we're gonna go scale it to
what did I say 120 percent?
(copying)
Here we go.
Okay custom ratio. Get that okay.
And let's go to 121.
There we are. Hit okay and let's see what happens
This one is so
easy it will just draw itself.
Except we need one card bearing John Malkovich's likeness.
So if you wanna look for the Malkovich stuff,
we need a three quarter with a Malkovich head.
How's this looking now?
(organizing)
Yeah that's pretty good. So let's keep that one.
It's number eight, among the concepts, and that's
121 percent. Okay.
So, you know, in these cards its - you can see
here that's where Malkovich is going.
It's gotta really reduce. Let's take a look at this
And it should go the other way. So we're gonna
have to bring that down in two shots.
Okay then. So let's go as low as we can
and I'll start by
doing this.
He's facing the wrong way but I'm gonna have to go two generations anyway
so let's see what I can do.
I guess I'm gonna have to do this.
That's gonna make it
even tougher. So put it down. This time
we need to darken because if we reduce him the darkness
might not hold up so I'll put it all the way.
Okay the original
type needs to be photo but you know to be honest
I'll put it on text photo because it's not gonna
allow for much shading obviously it's so small. And then
copy ratio. So we're gonna
put it on custom and we're gonna go as far
down as we can.
(copying)
It'll take us down to
twenty five percent so hit okay and let's try it.
Again if you were trying to do this
off your computer and you don't have a time deadline that's great.
You'll use an awful lot of ink, which is gonna be
costly but there you'll be. You know
what he's almost the right size so I'm gonna stick with that
and it's a little too dark so I'm gonna reset the darkness or the
density they call it here. And we're gonna bring it
down. Just one below the normal setting
because that's gonna be lighter. Let's see that. Sometimes
you reduce a head considerably like that, it kinda plugs
this up. That's what we call it it plugs up. So we don't want that.
This one is far more legible but it's a little
too light so let's set the density here.
Let's set it a little darker. Try that.
These are trash.
You should have a
recycling bin at home because you're going through a lot of paper.
Now this one
seems pretty good. Let me try one at the standard
density. And that's it.
Notice the scale of his head
is quite a bit
larger than here in the queen. But we'll just change
that. Besides he's gonna be the king of hearts - oh that is the king.
that. Besides he's gonna be the king of hearts - oh that is the king.
Okay and he doesn't have a big bonnet on his head like they had
in the 17th and 18th century.
but he will have the funky clown hairdo.
You know I think that both of these are pretty good. Let's save
them both in case one of them is a little too light and the other one
is a little too dark. And always
write down the number of the comp, this is number eight.
25 percent. And this is number eight
ready to do.
Good. So we put this back
in our catalogue of comps.
And what have we got next? I wanna do one
of the photoshoots that we did. For this one
(organizing)
I'm just gonna use - let's see if I shot this one. I do have a
body double. Oh this wound up in the wrong
folder. That's number twelve.
First of all, I have the head for
Emily. Let's cut it.
(organizing)
This is trash.
And the number is concept number
two. I don't know the ratio, I should have written it down when I did it.
But that's where she's gonna be. I'll just use this
body double shot, here,
That's too big for that, see?
Let's see if I did another one.
Ah-ha I did.
Try this one. Now remember if none of these
are quite right I can just go back to the original
tissue design of her head. This is trash, all of this
goes into the bin.
Let's see, did we enlarge
this one? Yeah we did. Okay.
Here we have - that's about right.
Now one of the problems is that if you're not using a
long lens, you're gonna get distortion. The hands are
slightly in front of her head but look how huge they are.
So that's gonna have to be addressed in the drawing. Just
bear that in mind. You could shoot the hand
separately or reproduce them smaller.
There are a few options we've got.
So I think that works for number two.
This is concept number two.
And we're good to go.
For her.
But now for Robert -
and I did give us another option which is a front view of her
that's what the comp says here, but I like it turned three
quarter. Here is the concept. We're gonna need a head of Malkovich
and a body and a head for Robert.
And that's just what we did the photoshoot for. So let me
cut this.
(organizing)
Amir stood in for Emily
and I'll cut this too because why use up a lot of black
toner.
Thanks that's good.
There you go. Here's where I use that little device.
A white Prismacolor pencil.
So because his pants are kind of massing together
with the background,
I make sure I can see it. And the same for his head.
(organizing)
So now when I reproduce this
it's gonna work better for me.
Good. Okay. So let's have a
look. He has to be
sized so that he fits that scale.
And I would say then that he's gotta
go up about 40 percent. Let's try it.
And he has
to go back in the file of finished head drawings
on tissue. Otherwise he'll get lost and then you'll have to
waste time doing it again. Not good.
Okay I might set this
at a little bit lighter setting. So let's try that.
The density it - it's quite a dark shot so we'll try
knocking it down two points. Okay so
which means raising it two points actually.
The original type we wanna use photo
and then we're gonna go to the ratio. And I said about 140
so go to the custom ratio
and hold it down, it'll move up by ten point increments,
that's 141, it's fine with me so let's try it.
Oh one more thing. Let's set the
sharpness again. For our purposes it's almost
always best to have the highest.
And let's see how he comes out.
(copying)
Well he is behind her but not really.
So we can see from this that his head
is still too small. So I'm gonna try
160 and it might be too large but we're gonna go with that.
So back you go to copy ratio, hit okay, customer
ratio, hit okay, and then hold it down once,
twice. 162 is fine, let's try that.
And this goes in the bin.
So there's a simple routine to all of this.
(organizing)
Let's have a look.
Alright.
Here he is. And that's not
too far off. I'm gonna go a little bit bigger.
So hit copy ratio, custom
and go up to $170.
(copying)
This might work so I'm not gonna throw it away.
(copying)
This is one
and that -
actually that is a good idea. This is 160.
And it's concept number two.
How about this new one, let's see.
Well he is
leaning over her a little bit so that justifies being a bit
larger. If you have a look here.
I don't know though, that might be too large.
Yeah, that's too large. So we're gonna go
split the difference again. Copy ratio, custom ratio, turn
it down, let's see, to 165.
You can lose
that.
(copying)
This might -
this is a winner, that's good. Okay.
So keeping this. And it's gotta be labeled
number two and that was at a ratio of
165. That goes
in the folder. Now we're done because we don't really have a good shot
of Robert from this angle. But Gil will stand in for him.
His head is similar so we can make Robert out of Gil.
Last of all we need the clown in the window. So for
John in the window, for this idea, let's see what we've got.
What did I do with that? Oh here it is.
Okay.
So let's look at the size of our two main actors. John
should be smaller than that. I think we're gonna
use a front view head of him and
boy he's gotta go down doesn't he? So let's try
67 - no - 60 percent.
Okay.
Don't need that.
This one,
let's see about the settings - first of all, copy ratio.
I'm gonna go down to 60 percent
(copying)
So that's set.
Let's look at density.
Okay let's hit that button and we're gonna
actually darken him a little bit. Let's try that.
And then original type
is photo so we're set for that.
and the sharpness is already on high so let's try it.
Notice how much more quickly you can get these images sized
with a photo copier than with a
printer and your computer. And by the time
you've done all this sizing, you're gonna be buying a lot of ink
for your computer printer. So that's not so
good. Right now he's almost
there. Let's see here. We compare him
to Robert. Let's just bring him down
a little bit more. Alright so back against the original type.
We got that. Up to -
let's see where were we? Copy
ratio, custom ratio, and let's bring it down.
I'll do 54.
And we'll try that.
(copying)
That one works.
So that's 154% and the concept is is
number two. So we're done. We got everything we need
to draw this
and just need a pair of hands but that's no problem.
Good.
the concept here.
And then the pose we already have
and sized properly. We have the body double
for Emily.
And here we have the body
and the head for Robert Downey.
But look it's way too big isn't it? So
let's bring him down to her size and that means
50 percent I would guess. By the way let's go back
grab our white pencil, this is
just another Prismacolor wax pencil. So make
sure we can see
everything we're drawing.
And this is the one where we actually see very little
of any folds or modeling within
the silhouette of the figure. It's driven by the silhouette.
(drawing)
There we are. Okay let's bring that down
what did I say - 50 percent.
(copying)
Let's see what can we do to cut back on toner use.
It's very simple really, just do this.
Save a lot of toner by doing this. Toner
is less expensive than printer ink.
You probably - if you bought one of these machines
not only would you have it for all future use
but for $80 you're probably gonna go through
two ink cartridges anyway and so it's gonna
be about the same as if you printed everything on your
computer printer. It might even be less.
It's just something you have to have.
to establish yourself so you're capable of doing these jobs.
If you don't and you accept a job and you got
12 or 15 of these to do in a day and a half,
well you're gonna be in trouble. So that's why we do this stuff.
We're gonna go back now to
make sure original type is on photo
and then we're gonna go back to density.y
Let's lighten that,
see what that gives us and we're gonna go down to sharpness,
gonna bring that up.
Every time you do it you hit the okay button. Different
copiers have slightly different commands. The ratio is at
100 and we want to bring it down to 50 so we're gonna go
up to the custom ratio and then down.
It'll go ten points at a time. 49
right there. Let's try that.
(copying)
He's way too small isn't he?
Let's have a look. See that?
So let's bring him up to 67
and I'm gonna lighten him some more too.
(copying)
Before I print it, let's change the density,
let's go all the way down. Okay.
Good. Let's hope this one
comes out right. Look how little toner I used.
By the way,
always have to keep an extra cartridge of toner. If you run out of
toner in the middle of a job and it's midnight
you're gonna be in trouble if you don't have that. Now this is getting closer.
Look at the difference here between her and him.
(organizing)
It's almost there.
And let's take another look at the comp.
Okay.
I would say
he's just about right. So let's
leave it at that and the ratio was -
let's see what was it here?
(copying)
We had it set to 67 percent.
And that's
concept number 12.
We have all the heads done and both of the figures.
So we're ready to do - we don't have her head, forgive me.
So let's get a three quarter view or even a
profile but close to a three quarter view of Emily.
(organizing)
Okay let's see.
What do we have for a profile, anything close?
Not really. Okay let me have this one.
So we're gonna use this head. Perfect.
She's kinda looking off
instead of at us in the actual comp.
That's okay, changing the gaze of the eyes is something
very simple. Now what size do we want?
I would say this should come down to about 54
percent.
All the other settings
are not right. For instance
the density doesn't have to be so low. We're gonna raise it.
Keep it
right there and everything else is as is
is correct. So let's try it.
(organizing)
Okay.
Let's see.
That's gonna be too big.
So we gotta bring it down to, let's try
52 percent. This comes a little bit
of experience but it's a very imperfect science.
(copying)
We had it at 54 so we need to bring it down even lower.
Let's try this. How about if we bring it to 38
percent.
Oh 36, try that.
That head's garbage.
(organizing)
That's getting
close. If we compare Robert's head to her's.
And then let's test to see how she fits onto
the figure itself.
Trash.
You know, she's close. She needs to go a little bit
smaller so we'll dump her down a couple spots.
(copying)
33.
Just a little bit too big. Maybe.
I dunno. She's very close.
(organizing)
She might be okay anyway, let's see this one.
(organizing)
Chuck that.
Let's see how she works. Wow, that's not bad.
It's a little too small though so let me go up just a couple points.
(copying)
Yeah she's a little small.
(organizing)
How about
36 percent.
(organizing)
You know that's not bad. Let's stick with
that. 36 percent and
it needs some tape and that's
concept number 12.
Thank you.
(organizing)
Actually let me trim her.
better, like that.
(organizing)
Can chuck that. And that's 36 percent.
Alright.
Good.
So now I'm gonna draw one of these for you
to show you how we fit everything together.
We're gonna keep this
one, which is our good copy, but it's
too big, it gives us something to draw from.
however.
(organizing)
One more - two more pieces.
(organizing)
Okay, thanks.
(organizing)
Now we're set to go.
He's in the foreground so I'll draw him
first and here he is, right there.
After I do this drawing, I'm gonna cut over
and do a critique of the work that was submitted
as homework. This can go back and just give me
any tissue. Thank you.
First of all,
this one might be too small,l
that's okay. I guess I can use it.
So I'm gonna put cross hairs in the corner.
Here, here,
and here. And then
let's see what we have.
This is our guide.
Always close the top of
the copier when it's not in use and it's gonna go to sleep
now while we draw.
To do this I'll set up the light
box as
we've done before
and let's position his figure. If I do something very simple
along these lines,
very lightly.
(drawing)
Put the silhouettes of the heads
(drawing)
and so on into place.
That will help me size things.
And this is a couch in front of
Emily, continues,
this shape cuts off his figure
but we may actually take the figure all the way down.
So alright, this is the rough layout
and where we wanna position our figures. It's drawn lightly
so it can be erased.
Okay we separate the folder, we have
the image at our side so we keep the spirit
of what we're about, and we're gonna start with the
figure of Robert.
(drawing)
And let's just double check to see
how that squares with Emily's pose.
Looks good to me.
Okay so now let's go ahead and we're gonna
tape down Robert. We put the reference in a
stationary position. And then we tape down
the tissue.
We tape down the tissue. Alright.
In the meantime, since he's been
spaced already, we're gonna
just do this.
Erase some of those
boundary lines.
The nice thing about tracing paper is when you erase it
it doesn't abrade or scratch the surface
of the paper that you're drawing on.
The head is fine in its detail.
So let's see what I can do here
Okay. In this case, I'm gonna have to make Gil's features
as similar as possible to those of
Robert. So I'm pulling out
this design of his head. It's a profile but it's close.
Gil already has a very similar everything so we're gonna go
ahead get started with that -
with this as reference. I keep it at my side. I'm gonna use a
verithin pencil because it's finer and harder and it works
better on small drawings like this.
Alright so starting with the head.
(drawing)
It's such a small head that we don't have to
worry too much about detail.
(drawing)
Okay good, so we have the eye sockets
here I'm gonna just lightly with a half tone suggest
the cheekbone. We've got the ear,
might as well get that taken care of, it's simple enough.
Always set the ear diagonally on the head.
We've got the back of his head,
(drawing)
very similar hairstyle.
(drawing)
I also have this at my side.
And so I can refer to that if I want to find
more detail.
Robert
may have a slightly longer nose
but we wanna keep him nice and ideal.
(drawing)
Now I have reference of Robert
without the beard and the mustache and I have others with, but
his character in our film will have the facial
hair.
(drawing)
So
for the sake of consistency, we should use it.
(drawing)
Not quite sure which exact style of beard he's gonna have so
I'm gonna make that a little bit generic and then tweak it
later. So now let's take a look at what we've done.
I don't know how visible that is but
in a moment after I've done his figure it will be.
So let's get the hand in there. The hand
we are gonna show some detail.
In the comp
he had a pipe.
But that's a little dated so we just
switched over to a more simple hand with
head resting on that hand.
And now
here we pick up the sleeve and the cuff
and this is the overlapping of the forearm in front of
the upper arm. And here we're gonna go ahead and
put the silhouette in. And let's keep
the collar visible.
Most of the rest of this is
just gonna be black or very dark gray.
So just inside that white line, that's
where we find the photograph, the edge of the
silhouette. Not outside that line, just
inside. We used
a fairly short lens to shoot this.
That's okay for a pose like this.
If he were standing and we were trying to do the full figure
it would be preferable to have
a longer lens but remember
you're gonna get a lot of reference where the figure is too short.
Sometimes but rarely too long. So you have to
learn how to adapt to that.
You really wanna keep this negative shape
right here. It's all about
silhouette and how we can make this a little bit interesting or
exciting. I'm gonna extend that
leg farther forward, we pick up the cuff here.
We are gonna show this hand
and it's just kinda resting
inertly on top of his knee and
then we're gonna extend this. Might pick up a
couple folds, which we may or may not suggest.
Even this arm, we don't have to draw the back of it.
Everything is gonna fade to black.
(drawing)
So it's pretty quick to lay this thing in. And
applying the values to it is gonna be very simple. There's
not a lot of modeling.
(drawing)
Let's see how that looks.
It's good.
That's all we need.
Alright now, let's switch around
and draw Emily.
Now for Emily - you wanna take off
the outside tape and give me some more? For Emily
we have this gal. And do we have the head shot
good, okay. So we're pretty much ready to roll here.
I just need to tape it on each side.
So here
and here it should not move.
This we can cut off.
(drawing)
Make sure it doesn't move
and then we position this so that Emily
comes into play here.
Again this -
let's have a look at the comp itself.
let's have a look at the comp itself.
Let's put her back a little bit.
(organizing)
Some of the qualities that I wanted in this
concept, such as negative shapes,
here her arm, her waist, and her
thigh is a nice negative shape. We don't have it in this shot.
We shoulda been a little more careful. So
we'll have to figure out if there's a way to
create some negative shapes. She
too is gonna be black, all
her clothing, black. I'm just
erasing some of these boundaries that we created in the beginning.
They should come up nicely, hold this
tight. If you hold it loose it will - and then you got a big
crease in the middle of your drawing. So just a few
basics but they make a big difference.
First let's
put this shape in right here. It's gonna be a little bit
different but let's see here.
Well I tell you what, let's
do something a little bit different. Let's start off with
Emily's head.
(drawing)
I'm using a verithin pencil again.
This will most likely, all of it,
be finished off using black Prismacolor but
that's a little heavy handed for such small head reference.
(drawing)
This is almost what we call
head indication. There's no detail to it.
(drawing)
We don't need the bridge of the nose, we just need
the tip and
a little bit for the nostril
and then
the mouth we find the peak of the lip and
the corners. Just leave that and then
draw the underplane like this. And then we
pick up the hair shape, the
shadow on her cheek, and
then on her jaw.
(drawing)
We'll finish off any detail in her
ear, not now, but later on your drafting
table or whatever surface you use.
(drawing)
Good.
Now let's pick up
here. I will change the
line of her shoulder, raising it
much higher, and running her arm
behind her knee
for starters. Then here, this is the other
arm. We'll show the hand
but that's it. And so now the negative
shape is shown between her arms here.
Makes it a little bit more interesting.
Okay. The back of her figure
if here, so make some adjustments on the hair.
We do that later. Her hand
here.
and here. Simplify it, don't draw any detail really
just get the pose solved.
(drawing)
Like that and that.
(drawing)
The knee is here and
it comes down, let's see,
this is the arm.
Again all of this is gonna go dark.
(drawing)
So no need for detail. And this leg
comes down like so.
and we see a touch of her foot.
but I'm not sure I'm even gonna draw that because I want this
these figures to mass together, black to black.
And let's raise this a little bit and put it here.
Okay now the back
of her leg, here,
looks like this.
(drawing)
We might draw that ankle.
So I'll include it now. Simple though,
very simple. And then the back of her thigh
let's first of all let's find the front of her thigh, which is
here and runs
up, has to hook up with her knee,
(drawing)
And from here then we're gonna pick up the
bottom of her figure, like so.
And
is there gonna be a negative shape here? Well if I want to, there will be.
There we go.
And the chair,
as in the comp, conceals part of her figure.
It's fine with me so we'll do this.
and then we'll pick it up here.
(drawing)
And run it up
like this
Even farther up.
So now we're gonna lift it up and see - make sure
we have all the elements that we need. I think we do
except we don't have the other foot for Robert.
And so let me grab that
once more and do it.
We have the other foot? Not really do we.
(drawing)
Alright.
Well let's add one. That shouldn't be too difficult.
(drawing)
Okay so that's
good.
When we look at this, we can see
that in between that's where we're gonna have some kind of a
device that overlaps each of them.
Somehow separating them visually and
emotionally. Okay
let's put this folder back together and we put this back in the
finished heads. And I'm gonna actually make a
photocopy of it, that way I can put this in the
file too so when I build the head of Robert Downey, I'll have a -
let me just reduce that then.
And I've been - something I've
I didn't ever do before but this is good.
First of all we're gonna go down to the density, darken it,
we're gonna go down to original type,
photograph,
text photo, we're gonna go to copy ratio, and we're gonna go to
custom ratio here. And actually all I have to do is put this
in. Five, zero.
And we're gonna make it - not yet, we're not done, that's okay.
The sharpness, I'm gonna bump it up
as high as it goes. Okay. This
head is gonna go in the folder because it's gonna be useful
in designing Robert's head.
Gonna cheat
her down in size a little bit. See here. There are ways
of doing these things.
(drawing)
Because I don't want her head to be too much bigger than his
obviously. Okay. So we put this in the file,
the folder is number what, 12? And there you have
an example of how to add a head to a figure.
And then all it's down to is putting in the
dark silhouette shapes of the characters. I'd like to say a word or two about
the next lesson, number seven. For this one
I'm gonna use the bypass on a copier. This
one does not have a bypass but I can run different
kinds of paper stock through that bypass and
I have two techniques that I'm gonna share with you.
And so those comps will be done using these techniques.
One of them is running gray paper so that
we can put white and black and get a very finished look. Toward
the end of series of drawings like this, when they're getting close to
actually shooting it and releasing it, printing it, they're
gonna ask you to do much tighter comps and so that's
what I'll demonstrate. So thanks for attending tonight, I hope you
learn a lot and then I'll see you next time.
Transcription not available.
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1. Planning the Photoshoot
3m 10sNow playing...
Watch the whole lesson with a subscription
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2. Photoshoot Set Up
16m 52s -
3. Sizing Heads with the Photocopier
44m 52s -
4. Building a Composition with Sized Body Double Photos and Sized Heads
36m 42s -
5. Photographing Body Doubles Assignment Instructions
1m 0s
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