Line = duck
The Japanese are especially good at it: they draw a single curved line, and you immediately see the duckiest duck or the cattiest cat you can imagine. There’s no doubt: that grey, somewhat woolly line IS a duck (or a cat).
There’s a story about this. A man wants a drawing of a duck. Months later, the artist presents him with a single line that represents, without any doubt, an extremely ducky duck. ‘What?’ the client exclaims (in Japanese). ‘Did this have to take such a long time? One line? And you want to get paid for that?’
The artist smiles kindly and replies: ‘Before I could produce this single line, I had to draw countless ducks.’
Simple is difficult
To keep a drawing or an animation simple, you need lots of experience. And to work fast as well, you need even more experience. You can liken this experience to the ‘countless ducks’ I had to draw to get there. That’s why it often looksas though I simply pull my cartoons out of my hat. But especially the simplest drawings and the shortest animations cost a lot of time, effort and trial.
Duck perspective
Luckily my clients understand this. I seldomly encounter somebody who exclaims: ‘What?’ (fortunately not in Japanese, I wouldn’t understand.) But when I explain to them how many ‘ducks’ I had to draw to be able to express their message swiftly and surely, their misunderstanding vanishes. Then the client sees how many ‘ducks’ I had to draw in order to get where I am now: in the head and the heart of my clients, together with my drawing materials.
