Uploaded February 2020 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Start your training here: 2d101.com/manga
Hi, Mark Diaz here for 2DAnimation101.com, in this video we're going to talk about the importance of consistency. I'm talking about consistency in two levels. One level, the technical level that everybody can see is that you have to be able to replicate one drawing again and again by memory, and each time you put it by memory, it has to look almost the same. It has to be consistent, so that's one type of consistency. Consistency in your drawings. If I draw, for example, a character in profile view, the side view, then if I draw it again, I have to be able to draw exactly the same as I did by memory. Okay? That's one type of consistency.
The other type of consistency I'm talking about, and this is probably the hardest for any beginner, is consistency of habit. That is daily action. A lot of students want to get everything perfect from the get go. Don't do that. Don't be super scared like, "Oh, my drawing is not perfect. My drawing! Agh!" Now, you know you have a framework and you can know that, hey! it's not perfect, but at least I'm tackling, I'm getting 6 of the elements correctly out of the 9, right? Not the 10, the 9. 6 elements I'm getting in okay, so I'm not that bad. All I need to do is focus on those other three elements. Let's say my spacing is wrong, my proportions and my line cleaning, so okay, just work on that little by little, but when I talk about consistency of habit is... Okay, here's the thing. If you're starting from zero and you haven't drawn and this is just a dream. The very first step, the very first thing you need to do is develop a habit of drawing every day. That's it.
Now, if you haven't read... There's this beautiful book by James Clear the book is called "Atomic Habits." I highly recommend it. If you follow his teachings, all you would do is just take a piece of paper, take a pencil and draw for five minutes a day. That's it. Just draw for five minutes. It's a challenge we give in an online training. We give an online class and just draw for five minutes every day for 30 days until that becomes a habit. When it becomes a habit, then you can expand it to maybe 15 minutes every day, and then 30 minutes, and then one hour until you're drawing every day for around one hour at least, right? When you are at that level, it doesn't matter if all your drawings are crap, it doesn't matter. Okay? This is important to understand.
We're not building the skill. We're building the habit. So when I talk about consistency in drawing, that comes later. The first thing is "consistency of action." Doing it every day. If out of seven days, for example, the week has seven days, if out of seven days you keep drawing and drawing for five days a week, that's also good, right? So the first thing you need to do when you're starting is consistency of action. If you don't have the habit, try drawing every day for five minutes. That's it. Don't worry about the quality of your drawings. That comes later. Once you have the habit now you can start to improve using the 9 element framework to... Like for example, yeah, all your drawings are crap, but at least I'm getting very clean lines.
So, what happens if you stick with it, if you have the consistency of action? Okay, this is what happens. Take a look at this drawing. We can see that some things are correct and some things are wrong. For example, the placement is okay, the eyes are where they are supposed to be. The cleaning can be improved a little bit because the tracing is not very good. And also the shading can also improve and a lot of elements. But as you can see also the angles, right? But this is from a student called Basel, and he kept drawing and drawing.
This is the power of consistency of action. Look at what happens. Just pay close attention to this because this change didn't happen from one day to another. It took like two months. Okay, so pay attention to this. This is very important. He started like this and then he was not only drawing faces because it can be boring. He would draw faces, and then bodies, and then references, and then the face again. And then bodies, and then clothes, and then hair, and then references, and then the face again. So it took like two months and look at this.
He started like this and then he kept drawing and drawing and look. Huge improvement. We're still struggling with the proportions, right? Let's see the proportion of this one, for example, it's a little bit long. This one is a little better, but the angle of this one is not very good and actually for the, this is another example. This should be a little bit steeper and in general all of these phases are improving and the eyes woof! the eyes are probably the biggest improvement.
Start your training here: 2d101.com/manga
Hi, Mark Diaz here for 2DAnimation101.com, in this video we're going to talk about the importance of consistency. I'm talking about consistency in two levels. One level, the technical level that everybody can see is that you have to be able to replicate one drawing again and again by memory, and each time you put it by memory, it has to look almost the same. It has to be consistent, so that's one type of consistency. Consistency in your drawings. If I draw, for example, a character in profile view, the side view, then if I draw it again, I have to be able to draw exactly the same as I did by memory. Okay? That's one type of consistency.
The other type of consistency I'm talking about, and this is probably the hardest for any beginner, is consistency of habit. That is daily action. A lot of students want to get everything perfect from the get go. Don't do that. Don't be super scared like, "Oh, my drawing is not perfect. My drawing! Agh!" Now, you know you have a framework and you can know that, hey! it's not perfect, but at least I'm tackling, I'm getting 6 of the elements correctly out of the 9, right? Not the 10, the 9. 6 elements I'm getting in okay, so I'm not that bad. All I need to do is focus on those other three elements. Let's say my spacing is wrong, my proportions and my line cleaning, so okay, just work on that little by little, but when I talk about consistency of habit is... Okay, here's the thing. If you're starting from zero and you haven't drawn and this is just a dream. The very first step, the very first thing you need to do is develop a habit of drawing every day. That's it.
Now, if you haven't read... There's this beautiful book by James Clear the book is called "Atomic Habits." I highly recommend it. If you follow his teachings, all you would do is just take a piece of paper, take a pencil and draw for five minutes a day. That's it. Just draw for five minutes. It's a challenge we give in an online training. We give an online class and just draw for five minutes every day for 30 days until that becomes a habit. When it becomes a habit, then you can expand it to maybe 15 minutes every day, and then 30 minutes, and then one hour until you're drawing every day for around one hour at least, right? When you are at that level, it doesn't matter if all your drawings are crap, it doesn't matter. Okay? This is important to understand.
We're not building the skill. We're building the habit. So when I talk about consistency in drawing, that comes later. The first thing is "consistency of action." Doing it every day. If out of seven days, for example, the week has seven days, if out of seven days you keep drawing and drawing for five days a week, that's also good, right? So the first thing you need to do when you're starting is consistency of action. If you don't have the habit, try drawing every day for five minutes. That's it. Don't worry about the quality of your drawings. That comes later. Once you have the habit now you can start to improve using the 9 element framework to... Like for example, yeah, all your drawings are crap, but at least I'm getting very clean lines.
So, what happens if you stick with it, if you have the consistency of action? Okay, this is what happens. Take a look at this drawing. We can see that some things are correct and some things are wrong. For example, the placement is okay, the eyes are where they are supposed to be. The cleaning can be improved a little bit because the tracing is not very good. And also the shading can also improve and a lot of elements. But as you can see also the angles, right? But this is from a student called Basel, and he kept drawing and drawing.
This is the power of consistency of action. Look at what happens. Just pay close attention to this because this change didn't happen from one day to another. It took like two months. Okay, so pay attention to this. This is very important. He started like this and then he was not only drawing faces because it can be boring. He would draw faces, and then bodies, and then references, and then the face again. And then bodies, and then clothes, and then hair, and then references, and then the face again. So it took like two months and look at this.
He started like this and then he kept drawing and drawing and look. Huge improvement. We're still struggling with the proportions, right? Let's see the proportion of this one, for example, it's a little bit long. This one is a little better, but the angle of this one is not very good and actually for the, this is another example. This should be a little bit steeper and in general all of these phases are improving and the eyes woof! the eyes are probably the biggest improvement.
