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.
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
Packages
Package 1 : 330 €, package for one session includes :
- The programme of lectures and workshops for one level (Beginner or Intermediate or Advanced)
Package 2 : 900 €, complete package includes :
- The complete programme of lectures and workshops for all three levels (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced)
*GOBELINS reserves the right to alter the content of the packages and its fees whenever they need to be amended or improved.
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 1 February 2021 to 26 April 2021. Certain classes or activities may begin earlier and finish later.
Admission
Applicants should complete the application form (.PDF) and return it to onlinecourses@gobelins.fr with a short CV and examples of graphic work (accepted formats: websites, Tumblr, Filemail or WeTransfer).
Applications may be submitted all year long and up to one week before the start of classes. After assessment of the application by the selection committee, participants will be notified about their admission by email within 2 weeks.
There will be no formal evaluation, marks or grades during the course. GOBELINS will not return any submitted material.
Contact our team!
Cécile BLONDEL, Charlotte SAURAT and Hugo MORELL will be happy to answer your questions at onlinecourses@gobelins.fr
Tel. : +33 (0) 1 40 79 93 10

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 ...