Thursday, August 6, 2015

Grand Design II


Fred Moore drew this pose of the dwarf Happy twice. First as a lively intuitive rough, then as a tie down. What I love so much about this drawing is that it shows Fred's natural sense for interesting design combined with a great feeling for personality.
Happy's waistline is set extremely high up, so the viewer can appreciate the full size of his belly.
Lots of line work on the upper body, combined with bold simplicity on his lower body. This creates contrast, the shapes show a great deal of variety. It always bugs me when a character drawing is made up of evenly sized, similar shapes.



Look at how boring the pose would have been with the waistline drawn right in the middle of the figure.



If you'd place the waistline lower, you get the contrast back, but since Happy's body is arching backward, it makes much more sense to design the pose the way Fred did.