Adam's Blog

Like usual I started this warm-up sketch with just blocking in some colors and quitting. Then I remembered it was my goal to render more, so I worked on it more this afternoon. Ah....the Kardashian backside. :)

I stumbled upon a blog by Sirspamdalot who wrote a few things about Alex Toth's work. Sometimes I think I have a hard time analyzing and putting in words the works of the great ones...I feel so insignificant. But he did a good job with his list here.

Now for 7 Reasons Why Alex Toth Drew Better Than I Do:

1. RESEARCH & OBSERVATION.
Despite resembling quick, offhand sketches, Toth's drawings were very well researched and carefully rendered. Every detail, from the cars to the shirt folds, was drawn from careful observation, and you can tell by looking at his pencils that he really worked at those careless-looking lines.

2. ARRANGEMENT OF EDGES.
His foreground, middleground, and background elements were positioned carefully, so that their edges convened and related in pleasing ways while suggesting depth. Imagine hanging a dozen photographs on your bedroom wall, but instead of being square, each is shaped like what it depicts, and they must all overlap while looking orderly and uncluttered. That was a challenge Toth took on with every panel. (Most cartoonists are satisfied if the figures' faces are visible.)

3. "CAMERA" ANGLES (or "station points," if you prefer a drawing-based term).
Toth chose camera angles that not only set the scenes clearly, but resulted in balanced and distinctive compositions. Where others like myself would pick a simple "two shot" of a pair of conversing characters from the chest up, Toth would pull back to include hard-to-draw foreground elements that add verisimilitude and depth, or shift to one side to offset the shot's obviousness with a daring helping of negative space. A conversation on a simple air field might be shot from beneath a nearby plane, whose silhouetted wing and landing gear would frame the figures beneath a diagonal black "ceiling" and "wall," focusing us on the pair while adding visual interest and local color. Toth used this cinematic approach to storytelling better and more often than any other cartoonist.

4. BODY LANGUAGE.
Figures in Toth's work show us their emotions even in silhouette. Their postures and gestures tell us before they speak what mood they're in. And where the average artist might cheat a pose or gesture into profile for easy drawing, Toth never shied from the difficult task of foreshortening characters' bodies and limbs, often pointing them toward the reader to add depth and lead the eye into a scene.

5. LINE.
Toth's trademark -- the skill for which he is most praised -- was his ability to draw with maximal succinctness. Often this skill is summed up as "drawing more with less," or some other cryptic phrase, but what it comes down to is that he used as few lines as possible to delineate objects, and his lines change direction as infrequently as possible. Where others will trace every nuance in a form's contour in an effort to mimic it, Toth would draw a straight line (or follow a basic curve) along its edge until hitting a hallmark corner on the form, then decisively shift direction around the corner and continue going straight until the next hallmark. His lines are like swift rivers, carving the most direct paths around landmarks, sheering off any trivial corners en route. The result is that the objects and people he drew read like kanji or letter-forms. There's no impediment to absorbing their key visual information; as one critic said: they are easier to comprehend than not to. This approach is difficult even with "cartoony" forms and figures (see Walker's Beetle Baily or Ketcham's Dennis the Menace for fine examples of such), but the difficulty increases the more realism one attempts. No one balances such a high degree of realism with calligraphic simplicity as Toth did.

6. DESIGN.
Design is an ambiguous term in art, but it usually refers to the way lines are bent and arranged for compositional purposes. When shapes are arranged to look nice, we call it composition; when values are arranged to look nice, we call it spotting blacks and greys; when lines are arranged to look nice, we call it design. Toth is highly praised for his design, which is perhaps best seen in the model sheets he drew for Hanna Barbera. Any good animation designer knows that simplicity is paramount, but Toth often excelled his animation peers by alternating curves with straight lines. It's tempting when aiming for unified simplicity to reduce a figure to a series of curves and bends, or a series of straight lines and sharp corners. But the eye craves variety. Toth found ways to introduce variety in his lines without adding detail or creating disunity. He'd use curves to delineate one side of a limb and straight lines to delineate the other side, or straight lines for taught folds and curved lines for loose folds, rounded bends on one limb or fold and sharp corners on another...etc. The result is a pleasing verisimilitude of form that sets his designs above most Disney offerings (which err on the side of curves) or, say, Mike Mignola's excellent work (which errs on the side of straight lines and corners).

7. LIGHTING.
Toth lit scenes for drama. Lesser cartoonists like myself typically light every scene like an office cubicle, with no dramatic shadows in sight... or inconsistently, with occasional shadows to shore up a weak figure or composition. Toth was more diligent than that, choosing lighting for each scene to give it a sense of time and place, and to establish mood. A lit desk lamp in a darkened office... the last lateral rays of sunlight stretching across a plain... shadows cast on a storefront by figures passing a streetlamp... his scenes were often lit with the care of a movie set, to great effect. And always, his patterns of dark and light strike a pleasing balance of order and variety.