Drawing 1 Presentation

In drawing one today we had to do a presentation of an artist of our choice that did a lot with drawing. Well, as usual I bit off more than I could chew and chose the company Pixar. Pixar uses drawings in every aspect of their film making process, And I thought it would make a good presentation to profile them. I didn’t think about the fact that Pixar probably would no let out many of those drawings onto the internet, and indeed they have not. So I was down to the wire with only a few days left before the presentation, and I’d only found about two pictures. I needed a new plan and fast. Then I came up with the idea of doing a report on the history of drawing. This eventually turned into a history of the uses for drawing. When I was finished with it, I was not very happy with it, but I didn’t have more time to work on it, and decided that was that, I wasn’t going to worry about it any more.
My teacher loved it.
I was shocked. I hated it. I did learn some interesting things along the way in researching for the presentation, I just didn’t think it was that good. But when I was finished, he told me it was one of the best ones, and he asked me for a copy of it. Out of the whole class he only asked three students for copies of their presentations. Joel was one of them, which I wasn’t surprised about, he had a good presentation about John Howe, one of the main artists behind just about everything in the Lord of the Rings movies. Joel’s presentation was even animated. Mine had nothing. It was a boring PowerPoint, along with me reading my report/speech that I wrote. But for some reason he thought it was great, and commented that it was like two presentations in one.
So, in case anyone out there would like to read what all the fuss was about, here is my presentation.

My report is going to be a little bit different. I started out doing a report on the film studio Pixar, but since a great deal of this report has to be a slideshow, I had to change my report due to a lack of pictures available on the internet. The reason I wanted to do Pixar was because I have always been fascinated by filmmaking, even though drawing has always been my medium of choice. Pixar always begins each film with drawings. That got me to thinking that drawings are integral to many things beyond just art and filmmaking, and drawings have always been a big part of human history. So I decided to do my report on the history of the uses for drawing.
Even though I am not one to believe in ape-like cavemen, there is no doubt in my mind that some humans thousands of years ago did indeed dwell in caves. And these cave dwellers drew on the walls. One of the most famous is a series of caves called the Lascaux caves in France. These caves have since been closed to the public to protect the drawings, but there are many pictures available to view, and a replica of the caves has been built for tourists. The use for these drawings is not clear but it is thought that this was a sacred place of worship, and there are even charts of the stars in the cave.
 
People have long used drawings to convey messages. The most obvious example is hieroglyphics. The ancient Egyptians used pictures instead of an alphabet. They used papyrus leaves to write on, as well as carving the drawing into stone.
The big step in the advancement of drawing came with the invention of paper, however paper was expensive and hard to make, so it was mainly monks and scribes who had access to it. When paper began to become more readily available there was a big surge in the number of drawings produced, and artists began to become famous. Drawing is the basis for most great art. It is much easier to start a painting, or plan a sculpture when you have an idea of what you want to do, and drawing is the best way to get these ideas in motion.


While art is the first use that one thinks of for drawing, it is not the only one. Drawing is also a requirement for just about any architectural project. When first planning a building one needs to draw out what they want the building to look like. When they have that idea finalized, they need to design the insides of the building and put together a floor plan. All these things require that drawings be made each step of the way.

Even after the building is completed one might draw out another plan for how they want the building to be decorated. And even though this may not be art in the usual way, the final drawing could be used as art, or even as the beginning of a bigger work of art, for example a painting of the building.

Another related use is in engineering. If one is to successfully invent or build something, you’ll need a plan to start with. If you are using your own ideas and inventing something, you will have to draw your own instructions, or it will be very easy to get lost in your own project.
Something interesting that I discovered while researching for this presentation, was that a drawing is needed when you go to get something patented. I had never thought about this before, but if you want to make sure that no one copies your invention, you need to explain to the patent office how the invention works. That’s where the patent drawing comes in.

Another kind of drawing is called a technical drawing. This kind of drawing is used to explain things of a technical nature to someone who is not technical at all. I think this would also cover things like instruction manuals, or anything where a reader would need to know something about an object that they couldn’t otherwise understand without seeing it for themselves. This goes back to architectural drawings, but it also covers civil drawings, electrical drawings and plumbing drawings.

The last use for drawings that I want to cover today, is the use that I had originally set out to study, which is the use of drawing in film making. I had planned to feature the art of Pixar to show how integral drawing is to the process of movie making. Drawing becomes necessary very early on in the process as the film makers plan out how they want the film to be. They draw pictures of key points in the story to show how important those points will be in the finished product. As soon as the script has been finished, drawing becomes the most important part of production.

The film makers use drawings to create a storyboard, planning out the entire film using just drawings.
Drawings are also important to every other aspect of the film as well, as costume designers draw what they want the characters to wear, set designers draw what they want the sets to look like, and make-up artists draw what they want the characters to look like. If the film is an animated film, especially if it is a sci-fi or fantasy film, concept artist will be required to draw out entire worlds for the film to take place in. And character design artist will need to draw out characters and animals.

Also within the realm of animated films, small details have to be designed. This means drawing out what every object in the film will look like. Everything from the plants, to the pieces of trash will have to be designed.

After everything is ready to film, drawings aren’t going to be needed as much, unless this is a hand drawn animated film, then every single frame of film must be drawn. This means thousands and thousands of drawings. As you might guess, this can take years to complete.

After the film is ready to be shown to the public, drawing once again comes back into play, as they will need to design posters to raise awareness of the film, and the marketing department will design ads and merchandise.
After the film has been released and has been in the public consciousness long enough, the film will be marketed on home video. Once again drawings will be needed as the packaging will need to be designed, and an ad campaign launched to help drive the sales of the DVDs.

As you can see drawings are very important to our society. Without them society as we know it simply couldn’t exist. There would be no plumbing and no electricity. There wouldn’t even be any buildings. Drawings are not only essential to great art, they are essential to life as we know it.