Getting It Right
To conclude the current blog series (No's 157, 158 and 159) we now will have a look at my revised pencil test. I had said I would be erasing arms from the original drawings rather than creating all new drawings, and you will be able to see in the pencil test the ghost drawings where I was unable to get them erased completely.
Here is the new pencil test.
Now this character-without-a-name raises up his arm in a flamboyant way that says as much about his arrogance and intolerance as his facial expressions and his head movement. And it has come to me where I had seen almost exactly this same gesture before. It was years ago, when I lived in New Orleans. In the lobby of a hotel where I then worked I saw a handsome young FBI agent look at his watch in precisely the same way. (How I knew he was with the FBI is a longer story.) But he had an attitude combined of vanity and self-importance that I obviously have never quite forgotten.
A good character animator must be an acute observer of human behavior. We never know when we might be able to make good use of such observations.