Drawing vs. Cleanup vs. Inking

A huge revelation- inking is NOT the came thing as clean-up. Clean-up is not the same thing as drawing. Drawing is neither inking nor clean-up. All of these things are completely different mental processes, and I feel that understanding this has been one of my greatest leaps forward in terms of progress. This is how I perceive the three tasks:

1. Drawing- drawing is about gesture, silhouette, acting, shape design, solidity/construction, getting the proportions right. You do these things to CONVEY AN IDEA QUICKLY. This is a drawing:


2. Clean-up- This concept exists only in animation. It's about streamlining the roughs- picking the right C, S, and I lines, avoiding tangents, avoiding parallel lines, and flipping to ensure it animates as intended. And you make these choices to ultimately ANIMATE. That's why clean-up is not inking.

3. Inking- Inking is NOT drawing or cleanup. Inking is rendering. Inking is about feeling out a hard or a soft edge, texturing, varying the line weight for clarity, spotting blacks. You make choices that ultimately get you to a CLEARER PRETTIER version of a drawing. It's only similar to clean-up in that you also have to be cautious of avoiding tangents and parallel lines.


The mistake I always made is that I always thought that inking was the same thing as cleaning up a drawing, and that cleanup is just re-drawing the gesture better. NO. YOU CANNOT DO THIS. All of these things are completely conceptually different! If you misunderstand this, you only end up with a bad clean drawing, or it only looks good because you shit it out of your ass and tried super hard.

The catch is- cleanup and inking help your fundamental drawing abilities tremendously- I think mostly in a physiological/memory associated way. The simple experience of feeling what the "actual finished" lines of a character brings you a greater understanding of how the lines are spaced out, and how much pressure you need.

A Huge Tip

Most lines SHOULD be thick, especially your first lines, your gesture lines- any line that delineates different shapes. It should be thick, in fact thicker than you'd normally be comfortable with. The thicker you start with the better.

Why? It's a control issue- fine lines are a lot harder to make and edit than thick lines. No matter how thick you make your first lines, you can fine tune your interior lines a lot more easily.

Line Quality

I showed my some sketches for critique a year ago on an online forum there, a wise man told me:

LINE-WEIGHT MOTHERFUCKER- learn it!

Unfortunately I've never heeded this advice too well, as it's still something I struggle with. Some concepts I've been playing around with that give good results:

1. Keep a good grip- a 1.5" grip distance from the tip- esp. on outer contours.
-close in up to a .5" distance on details.
2. Slide into your strokes to keep a "thin on the edges-thick in the middle" sort of quality, dont hammer and stop from point to point.
3. Practice with brush pen.
4. I'm used to sketching with lines- in the case of improving line quality step back and instead sketch with dots, and render with lines. This is to say you figure out your proportions and everything with dots in a loose way, and you try to make all your lines high quality from the get go.