11. Solid Drawing

Solid drawing is mostly an illustration principle, but it is very important to give more depth to any kind of animation. Traditionally, animators were expected to have very good drawing skills before they could animate. The principle of solid drawing is based on the idea that characters should be given a sense of weight and depth, and be based on interesting shapes that animators could reproduce from every possible angle. Although such practices were built upon traditional hand drawing, solid drawing is still very relevant for computer animation.

Here is an example. The character on the left is very flat and has no sense of depth. The one on the right has perspective, and could be more easily placed in a scene because of that.

Basic drawing principles such as using perspective and vanishing points to draw 2D characters and objects that perform as if they were in 3D environments are the base of a solid drawing. Avoiding the use of symmetry when posing and animating characters is also recommended. Animating the two sides of a character’s body doing different things (as the one in the previous example) adds personality to a character and visual interest to the scene.