Classic Cartoon Model Sheets

 

Classic Cartoon Model Sheets have been a resource for animators to draw the characters and movements for nearly a century now and is one of the most iconic things when studying animation not only because there is rotation and expressions behind the scenes, but it's generally important. Like me these pictures I'm showing you can give you a perspective of the creations of characters and how they should work. You may think this is difficult and hard to draw, but it's easy for young animators like me to do anything your heart desires to make a pleasing cartoon for everyone. 

Here's how I first discovered them.

It all started when I almost finished 11th grade, I was overwhelmed alot of the time cuz I had to go 5 days a week at school, and my classes were boring, mostly scribbled on my sketchbook and would do anything for making cartoons like Tex Avery and Disney until I looked into an animation website and this is what basically was the first picture I saw, "Construction Of The Head". I said "What the heck is this?" and something like "That's just utter logic nonsense!" I was kinda stubborn as a 16 year old and didn't know how to be more confident, so I rarely cared about the thing. 

A few days later after my complaints, I started to get along with it, it felt like a trusted tool and could save me from animating and learning how to rotate my characters. This is what classic animation was like back then for the most part. Mostly 1940s animation was like that. Heck it all started back in the 30s. 

I was starting to like classic animation just for these model sheets alone, and the style it brought for. After graduating 11th grade, I started to get myself into watching Fleischer cartoons, Classic Disney shorts, and more Tom and Jerry. I was extremely joyful more than ever and had more interests in my life except having only Looney Tunes be a thing to me. And by that time when I watched classic cartoons, I was more into looking at certain aesthetics from that time period. The 20s to 50s. Those decades also had the best music ever, the best entertainers, the best movies, and one of the best magazine covers to date.

    Some Donald Duck model sheets. Amazing.

                                      Cute.

The person who decided to invent the idea of having cartoon characters and models being used for guidance is genius.

Now you would say this, "All of these model sheets were specifically made when cartoonists needed to draw it by hand and not on screen, and while that is true, when cases happen when you animate on a computer, the easiest bet is to draw it handrawn first and then once you feel good about the way you designed your character, the face, the rotation, you can simply follow the paper you just drew and draw it on the screen. It may not be extremely fluid but it's a good way to know your route to animating what most people do nowadays. Including me which I use Digicel Flipbook and it's amazing as a beginner animator. 

And while I'm almost finished I want to show you my model sheets I drawn when I was 16.

I will see you all next time on what I will cover next. Have a good day. Bye-a! 👋