Presentation
Capture the essence of the pose to tell your story!
Whether you’re working as a character designer, storyboard artist, animator, fashion designer, illustrator for comics or children’s books; all require strong drawing skills to tell your story. Gesture drawing is the most important part of those skills to effectively communicate your ideas to an audience. These series of evening courses will look at how to capture the essence of the pose for character design, storyboarding, animation, design and illustration. Each week we will have lectures and demos exploring different graphic principles including lines of action, rhythm and exaggeration, shapes and the flexibility of the pose to create expressive drawings.
Building on 40 years of experience teaching animated storytelling, GOBELINS is organizing this online course to enable students and professionals from around the world to better understand the importance of gesture drawing in artistic professions.
One-line gallery
Take a look at the work of our participants!
(February-April 2021 Session)
Programme
This course will show the importance of gesture drawing and look at capturing the essence of the pose to understand movement. The course will look at graphic and animation principles to create expressive drawings through lectures, demos and critiques.
LEVEL 1
Basic Course: Drawing Warm-Ups
- Week 1 Warm-Ups - Continuous Lines, Mark-Making
- Week 2 - Lines of Movement - Rhythm & Flow
- Week 3 - Key Lines - Essence of the Pose
- Week 4 - Contrast - Straights & Curves
LEVEL 2
Intermediate Course: Graphic & Animation Principles
- Week 1 - Flexibility - Squash & Stretch
- Week 2 - Angles - Clarifying the Pose
- Week 3 - Silhouette 1 - Shapes (cut-outs)
- Week 4 - Silhouette 2 - Shapes (drawing)
LEVEL 3
Advanced Course: Storytelling
- Week 1 - Anatomical landmarks
- Week 2 - Exaggeration - Pushing the Pose
- Week 3 - Action Analysis - Anticipation / Action / Reaction
- Week 4 - Character & Storytelling
Class schedule
Classes will be held on GOBELINS’ online platform every Monday from 6.30 P.M. to 8.30 P.M. (Paris time) from 14 February to 2 May 2022. Certain classes or activities may begin earlier and finish later.
CONTACT
Charlotte SAURAT
International Development Manager
Tel: +33 7 64 79 57 41
Email: onlinecourses@gobelins.fr

Speakers
Niall Laverty
Niall Laverty has been teaching gesture drawing to animation students and professionals for over 15 years. He is a part-time lecturer in the Animation Department at IADT ...