Burton Style?

Here are some Style Study sketches. A friend had suggested I try my hand at new styles for portfolio work, so I was looking for some more dynamic styles. Dynamic here meaning significantly different from my own. So, I figured Tim Burton's fun, strange style would be interesting to try out.

The Study actually started with the bottom three sketches, because I wanted to practice drawing my own characters, Veronica and Ferdinand, in that style. There are certain things I noticed in Burton's style that I was trying to get down: The large, spaced eyes, the lowered mouths, the usually very thin, tiny chins. Even the line quality is unique and I found I didn't really get it as I like to do my sketchy bases. Most of his work, though it is very scrawly in it's own right, seems to make single, deliberate lines that aren't perfect. I noticed this when I was looking at the facial shapes: they were squiggly to a degree and not perfectly smooth, but they worked and compliment the rest of the drawing well, as most of the lines are like that.

Another thing I was looking at was his use of shapes, as well as his warped proportions. I remember hearing in a special feature - I think on Corpse Bride - how creating the models for Burton's thin characters were rather hard, especially in making them stable enough to support their own weight. Many may think of Jack Skellington when I mention his proportions too. I kept that design in mind for Ferdinand's tall figure, as well as for Veronica's. I made her much, much shorter than she's supposed to be, because that's how Burton's proportions can work. For her, I kept thinking of the Mayor from the Nightmare Before Christmas: short legs with an overly large coat and cone shaped arms.