Hi, my name is Mark Henn.
I've been an animator for the Walt Disney Feature Animation Studios for almost 40 years now,
amongst many of the characters
that I've had the opportunity to animate,
many of them were princesses.
And the very first princess I had the opportunity
to animate was a young lady by the
name of Ariel. And that's who we're going to
draw today. So come along, and
let's draw Ariel.
Okay, the very first thing that we want to do and for
many of our characters is to start with a ball.
Or a circle,
it’s going to look like a circle, but in my mind's eye,
it's round like a ball.
So I'm thinking of the volume.
It's not just simply a round circle on a
piece of paper, it's a round
object and this represents the character's
head or skull.
And in this case, with a human,
it's definitely you know,
the skull of the character,
and I'm just going to put myself a little
line here which again
thinking volumetrically, thinking round
is going to, in my mind, give me kind of
the middle of where this is.
So it's a slight three quarter turn
with this round ball.
This represents Ariel's head.
Now we're going to add her cheeks,
and her chin and her jaw.
So that's going to come down here and you'll notice that as I'm drawing,
I'm kind of bouncing all over the place,
just putting marks down, nothing I put down, you know
is you know perfect
the first time out.
Artists like to feel their way through
a drawing. And so you'll see artists
constantly bouncing around,
feeling their way through maybe making
several strokes like
I'm doing here trying to find the right
shape and refining that.
So now we've got her head
basically enclosed. Her head and skull,
cheeks, chin,
and kind of roughly indicate
where her neck’s going to come off here like that.
Okay, and now the next thing it's really critical are her eyes
and her eyes are quite large.
So we can use kind of where the bottom of
this ball is
and use that as kind of an eye line to help us.
So we're going to go ahead and just rough in
where her eyes would be.
And they would be obviously on opposite sides
of this halfway point
on the ball, so we're going to
kind of do this like that.
And again, just very loosely lightly sketching in,
in her eyes to give me an idea.
It's all about relationships you know
how far apart are our eyes,
how you know high in the forehead are her eyes,
all those kind of things come into play.
The next thing we want to look at her eyebrows.
They're gonna play an important part
so they fit right over your eyes, just
as you, yours do at home
can look in a mirror and you'll see that
your eyebrows are right over your eyes like that.
But in this case with her left eyebrow screen, right,
this is going to become important in terms of
creating a graphic image
for her
in terms of the placement of where her nose is.
So this, we're going to kind of bring this line down here to
which would be the top or the bridge of her nose.
Bring it down here like this.
I'm just going to kind of rough in where I think
her nostrils would be.
And this triangular relationship
is very critical because then that tells me
where to put her mouth
and placement and proper placement
her nose into her eyes and everything.
So now that we have her nose kind of
roughed in here,
and we can put her with a big smile.
Again, we're just gonna, I'm just kind of
roughing it in very lightly,
very loosely.
Always have my eraser handy
don't go anywhere without my eraser.
Because you make adjustments,
you're constantly making adjustments.
And Ariel, of course has a really nice
big smile like this
kind of indicating where
teeth are, where her bottom lip is.
Where her top lips is.
Okay, so now we've got
kind of her face roughly blocked in.
I was doing a lecture once and a drawing demo
with a group
at a college, and I got
this far and I asked the college,
the audience I said,
“Who do you think I'm doing now?"
"Who do you think I'm drawing? Which character is this?"
And they kept throwing up all different answers:
Jasmine, Belle,
a bunch of different answers until I did this one thing.
And as soon as I did that,
there was no question
as to who this character is.
And besides her fins, her flippers,
Ariel's most distinguished
physical
attribute is her hair.
So as soon as I put that big swooping bangs
on there,
everybody knew who I was drawing.
Right now what I’m doing was just going back into the eyes,
and just kind of roughing in
the shapes of the eyes. The iris,
the pupil, and then
the littlest mark,
in the upper corner here
will be the highlight.
So again, I'm just kind of bouncing all over.
And just starting to indicate her eyelashes.
And as you can see,
one of the things I did when I added her hair was actually go a little
further than where the original
drawing for the circle for the skull is.
And that's because hair has thickness.
And so,
while this just gives me a basic idea
of the first
circular drawing I did,
now that I've added her hair,
I wanted to give her a nice, thick,
full head of hair that we all
know she has.
So I'm just going to kind of bring it down like this.
We've added her neck here,
added a little bit of a
sideburn on her.
We've indicated here where her ear fits in.
And it's okay, you can see here that I've
let her bangs cover up her
part of her right eyebrow, which is
perfectly fine. So all we have to do is
darken up the part
that’s sticking out from underneath the bangs.
Her left eyebrow is going to be
left visible like this.
And just before we finish,
we will
take an eraser, if you have one,
and just kind of lightly remove
some of these underdrawings so it doesn't
look quite so funny.
All right,
so going back to the eyes, I said, I just roughed in
the iris which is
the outer band, and the pupil which is
the inner circle. And then the tiniest is
is the highlight.
So you can kind of shade that in
as one color
for the iris and then a darker
darker shade
darker color for her pupil, which is the inner
inner circle there and then leave the highlight
as the lightest color, the whitest.
And then we'll come back
And kind of suggest the fold where her
her eyelids are as they fold up into her head here.
Kind of reinforce
where the eyes
set in the head here.
This line here on this side of the cheek which is visible
is very, very important.
We can actually too, shade in underneath the
swoop of her bangs here.
We can indicate that
space up underneath
underneath her bangs here.
And these extra little swoopy lines
lines are just suggestions that
make a graphic statement that her hair is hair.
We don't need to worry about, obviously,
drawing every single strand of hair
on a character like this. But we just,
But just with a few strokes,
make a suggestion
that it’s hair
like that.
So let me grab my eraser now.
And we can go in
and start removing some of these under
underdrawings or construction drawings,
just kind of lightly rubbing some of those down
including her eyebrow that's underneath her hair.
and including this little
center line here.
Just take those, knock those down a little bit. That'll kind of help
soften things up a little bit.
And we'll just come back
to her mouth here, and make sure,
put a little darker corner there to suggest that the
the teeth are going, are
curved, again thinking volumetrically.
those teeth curve and go back
in and around her jaw.
Like that. And if you want you can kind of
sketch in a color for her lips.
Just to kind of differentiate that from her teeth.
Okay, so we're going to just double check here,
just check a couple of adjustments.
She is shaping up here I think.
Looking pretty good.
And there we are just about there.
And there my friends,
is Ariel!
And I hope you've enjoyed
following along and drawing along if you had paper and pencil,
but my first princess
in a long line of princesses that I've animated:
Miss Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
Thank you for watching.