Drawing from references - Dog Animation Part 1

I haven't had a very productive day in terms with work but, I did however complete most of the christmas shopping earlier this afternoon. So, that's something to smile about. I have more or less have an idea of what my next animation will be about, it'll be based on a dog sniffing around. I then might link on with another idea to this.

So like before starting any animation or key poses, I then had a session of drawing dog references from videos, pictures that can be found online and so on. With the help of Stuart S. Sumida work, I then felt that it was necessary to look at the anatomy of a dog.

This proved to be useful as when I was then drawing from the references I can then figure out how long a leg is based on the dog anatomy. It made things easier as my drawing skills isn't that great at all.

Dog anatomy structure

 As well as looking at the dog anatomy, I then found the image below which highlights the dog's muscles.

Dog muscles 

As mentioned earlier my drawing skills isn't the best but, I hope that as I continue to do more of this, that I will gradually improve. You can see that the first image below on the left hand side of the page that I did a few warm ups before, I started drawing.

Few minute warm up

 I started drawing with a pencil but then found that when I used a blue crayon really relaxed my mind a little as it felt as though I didn't need to get it perfect. Some animators do in fact do this, where they start with a rough sketch and then go over in their work again to clean up the drawing on a different layer.

Anyone that watches CTFXC? - Spot Marley

Video above is one of the few references I've used

So my workflow is to find references, most of the time it's from videos as I can scrub through the video to find some interesting poses from the character or creature. I then just draw and make sure that the form of the body is right and has that feel of life. 

In the Zone

 There are times when my mind does seem to drift and the quality of the drawings does go down. At that point I sometime like to experiment in the way I draw then, where I draw more lines than it is necessary.

Slowly drift off

When I feel confident however, I start to draw in pencil again as it gives me that extra boost where I have to pay more attention to how a line is drawn.

Try to use pencil again and be more attentive to the way I draw

Planning the animation is something that I want to make sure that I get right. So, I think I will continue drawing just a bit more before finding my key poses.