Master assignment

This Master Assignment episode is mainly about gesture drawing. Walt Stanchfield is full of it. I should was full of it. In the 1970s, Stanchfield focused his efforts on establishing a training program for new animators along with veteran animator and director Eric Larson. Stanchfield held regular weekly drawing classes and lectures for the crew, and among his students were young talent that went on to become prominent figures within the animation industry: Brad Bird, John Lasseter, Don Bluth, Joe Ranft, John Musker, Ron Clements, Glen Keane, Andreas Deja, and Mark Henn, among others. In The Walt Stanchfield Lectures: Volume One, chapter 39, page 79: "In our class, time and again there has been a pose where the model, having brought a prop, has built a pose around the prop; for instance, opening an umbrella. Last week, 5 minutes into the sketching, there were, out of 17 drawings, only 3 or 4 umbrella's sketched in. The "first impression" should have been "woman opening umbrella".

So if we look at this sketch of a heron, there should be a reason for him to act and pose the way he does. His 'umbrella' is obviously out of this frame. We'll look into that the next week.