line of action

ARC
found a little vid tut from an Australian animation school blog about line of action. Interesting idea he had:

Draw the ball of the head first, then draw the line of action down from there (this helps to keep the weight centered, as opposed to drawing from the ground up you might wind up unbalanced.)

He claims that a relaxed or casual character will tend to flow more with the line of action, whereas a tense character the tension will pull the limbs away from the line of action.

So flowing the limbs flow from the line of action like a Y (like branches), vs tension a lot more perpindicular working against the line of action like a + or T, down to the thumb sticking out from the hand instead of flowing from it, and interestingly the head tilted against the line of action.

Also 7 golden camels had an interesting post along time ago about using 1 side of the character straight for the line of action, as blunt and clear as possible, and then using the other side to make it look like the character has ribs hanging and stuff. (see pic above) And it flips, the back is the straight line, the bottom of the character fills out the shape of the character the belly hanging the arm hanging down and stuff (so it isn't just a stick figure) and then it flips and the bottom of the beak is a straight line and the top of the head defines the character's anatomy.