Those who cannot begin do not finish


A perceptive overall distribution of all the below elements concentrates the viewers attention on the vital aspects of the gesture.


as told in walt stanchfield's "those who cannot begin do not finish."

Weight distribution: How the figure balances itself because of what it is doing.


Thrust: Body language usually requires a hip to be thrust out, a shoulder up, knees apart, or an arm out (as in throwing something or pointing), etc.

Angles: Straight up and down figures are generally stiff and static. Angles will add life and a feeling of movement.

Tension: Whenever one member of the body moves there is the set up between it and its counterpart. You can capture an effective by working one elbow against the other elbow, one knee against the other. Likewise the feet, hands, and the shoulders. Never draw one appendage without planning a counter move with its opposite .... never.

Straight against curve: All work and no play makes a long and dreary day - or something like that. All curves and no straights makes a dreary drawing. Straights and curves tie in perfectly with one of animation’s key tools, “squash and stretch”. Straights and curves used indiscriminately is but trickery, but when used logically they can emphasize and clarify the gesture.

Extremes of the pose:
Extremes in animation usually mean the farthermost extension of
some pose or the drawing just prior to a change of direction. A single drawing also has extremes, which, in a “flash”, explains what is happening in the pose. Those extremes are vital to such an explanation. To the degree they are missing or diluted, the drawing will deteriorate from “expressive” to “bland” to “confusing” to downright “boring”. Silhouette almost explains
“extreme”, but not if it is thought of as a tracing of the outside of the figure. Forces are at play in a gesture and it is force and thrust and tension that generates an extreme.



To gloss over them in a muddled and nebulous way is to cheat the
viewer out of a clear look at what you are trying to “say”.