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Backgrounds (cont'd) Eric's Drawing Tips The softer the pencil lead, the darker it marks. Eric sometimes likes to make a model of what he is trying to draw. Eric built a model of the tomb for Zoom Upstream, complete with all the Egyptian statues he wanted in it. He was able to move all the pieces around and arrange them in different ways. This helped him to decide how the tomb should look inside. Eric does lots of drawings. Many of these drawings are of the statues that will be in the tomb.
The statues are carefully drawn on graph paper so that Eric can get the proportions just right and make sure that the left side of the statue is exactly like the right side. These drawings will help him when it comes time to draw the statues in different sizes.
The model helps him to play with the light and shadows in the tomb, to get them just right. He can also see the tomb from different angles. Once he knows how the tomb should look, he takes photos of the model and uses them to make a sketch.
Eric does sketches to figure out the angle he wants in his drawing and the correct perspective.
Eric's Drawing Tips When Eric is transferring his sketches onto tracing paper, he uses a 4H pencil. This kind of lead makes a hard, crisp line. Perfect for tracing! Eric also uses cutouts of his characters, such as Zoom, Maria and Uncle Roy so that he can move them around on his backgrounds like a puppet show. He plays around with the cutout characters until he finds exactly the right spot for them in each picture.
Once Eric decides on the best spot, he tapes the cutouts onto the paper. All the layers can then be photocopied so that he can trace the final outline.
When the backgrounds and characters are just right, Eric traces the outline onto good paper and shades the drawing. This shading can take a long time, up to 12 hours a day. He uses LOTS of pencils at this stage. This last drawing will be the one used in the printed book.
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