Cartooning: Drawing Bodies and Poses

1. Introduction: Hey, my name is Ira Marcks and welcome to Cartooning 101, The Guide to the Illustrative Language of Comics and Cartoon Art. In this lesson, we'll learn to draw a cartoon bodies and expressive poses. We'll start by reviewing the main parts of the body, the torso, the arms, and the legs. I'll even give you a little crash course in drawing hands and feet. After we've covered the basics, I'll show you how to apply these skills by working through a few emotive poses. For example, nervous, bored, confident. I started Cartooning 101 as a way to explore the world of visual storytelling, comics and cartoon art. Since I was a kid, as a young illustrator, moving into a professional career as a freelancer and even as a teacher, I always go back to cartooning as a way to get an idea across, expressing emotion or make a message really clear. My hope is that these techniques can help you in the same way, giving you more ways to create expressive characters, share stronger ideas and bigger emotions with your drawings. Whether you're a cartoonist, illustrator, graphic designer, animator, or any other kind of visual storyteller. Let's get drawing. 2. Tools: Let's start by talking about tools. For the sake of the video, I'm going to be using a digital tablet. If you have one, you can do the same, but you can still follow along with traditional art tools. Set of graphite pencils, let's begin with a non-photo blue pencil. It's a traditional cartooning tool, they come in different brands in different shades. These are both Prismacolor, you can see one is a little lighter than the other. They don't smudge just like a graphite pencil, which is nice, and when you scan them, they're easy to photoshop out because they leave a really light line. Non-photo blue pencil, and a couple options for inking. A sharpie, this has the usual fine tip and then the extra fine tip on the other side. You could work with micron, which is a waterproof technical drawing pen, they come in all different sizes, this one is an eight, they go all the way down to a 005, this one is a three. For the advanced to illustrator, you could use a nib calligraphy tool, and my ink of choice, Winsor & Newton. There is a lot of good ink options. For a couple bucks, you can be all set. If you're working with ink, I'd recommend a watercolor paper or bristol board, but if you're just using sharpies, some card stock will do or any illustration paper. 3. Let's Talk Torsos: Let's look at how I've set my page up, first of all. I've made a little template to help us keep our proportions in order. This is our friend Floyd, let's call him Floyd. You can see that the top section of the template represents the main part of the head. This little section right below is the neck. The mid-part is the torso, which is where we will be focusing our energies in this first part of the lesson. The bottom half of the page is for the legs. So Floyd says, let's talk torsos. This mid-section of the body is the torso. So in this lesson, we get a way to think of your characters as the actors, they can't speak, so they're going to use their body language to represent emotions and ideas in action, in gesture. I'm going to set up to the right of Floyd here. Four variations on the torso. Will begin with the most simple and also the most static, the rectangular torso which is basically a two-dimensional rectangle to represent the main part of the body. Put little circles for the feet here and a little wedge for the toe and the foot will get into feet. It's a little more detail later noticed the length of the arms comes below the hips, the waist are below the belt line. So that's the easiest form you could use to represent the torso. More specific in detailed version of that is the rib-cage. So instead of a rectangle, we make a spine and we build out the chest area and the hip section. Now let me increase this version of Floyd. You can see there's just a little more definition, and the upper part of the body. So we could inflate the ribs to give it a more muscular feel. Or we could shrink them down or we could enlarge the hip separately, so it makes the torso two independent working parts. Another version of the torso is similar to the way we looked at a character head. The lesson on faces and expressions. Two circles one to represent the main part, the upper part of the torso and then one circle to represent the bottom. Again, this is another way to just create some variation in your character design. So with this version of Floyd, I've popped out the chest, the upper circle and kept the hips about the same size. So now we've got a version of Floyd, it looks like he has been working out a little too much. First version is style of torso that's pretty common to the original Disney era of animation. The pear shaped body. The smaller upper half saggy or shoulders, big round hip region. I thought of another one while I was building this, so let's do a fifth here. This is the hourglass torso, which I guess you could call it a little more feminine. You have two triangles meeting around the belly button area. You dropped the shoulders on the top to create more of a diamond form. Then when you go to ink this shape, it's just got a more feminine form to it. The hips come out a bit, the midsection comes in. That's the hourglass. 4. Applying Gravity: Now that we understand proportion, let's build on that idea. Let's apply gravity to our design. Part of the fun of designing a cartoon character is that we figure out a way for them to exist in their imaginary worlds. If a cartoonist wants their audience to really connect with the character, they need to show how the character's body responds to the gravity of their world. So how do we do this? Here's a really simple technique. We're going to make a greater than symbol across our proportion template. If you stand up for a second and stand naturally, you notice that you don't balance your weight on the middle of your body and on both feet equally. You shift your weight back and forth. You rest on one leg for awhile, when that leg gets tired, you shift over to the other leg. Often, if you want your characters to feel like they're responding to the gravity of their world. You can work this idea into your drawing. It begins with the shoulders and hips of the character, just like most postures. If I'm using our basic rectangle design, we can see Floyd's right shoulder drops down a little bit and his right hip comes up. So that's the leg, that we are putting the weight on. Now that means the other leg, the left leg has some freedom to bend and move, even if we lift it off the ground, it's not going to matter because there's no weight on it. To help you remember this, we can say the raised hip is the support leg, the lowered hip is the relaxed leg. Raised eyebrow. He's very cool. You want to practice that a few times to settle it in your brain. 5. Cartoon Aerobics: Floyd seems pretty comfortable with his body now, so we're going to go meet him at his new aerobics class. He just signed up last week. He's feeling a little out of shape and rigid, so he's going to start learning some good flexible techniques. Let's begin by looking at the joints that can bend on Floyd's body. Here's the rectangular torso, and it's straight on position. We've got two circles for the shoulders, two circles for the elbows, which are set right at the midpoint of the torso, and two circles for the wrist, don't forget the wrist. Two circles at the hips, where they connect to the leg. Two circles for the knees and two circles for the ankle, because we want to bend the feet. This torso is a combination of the rectangle and the rib cage because I want to be able to identify the spine, which is called the action line. We'll get into that a little more next. But for now, let's just put Floyd through a couple of different aerobics poses. This one is called the hot calls, I guess. We're going to bend the torso and we're going to put the arms up. The hardest part of this and why it's good to represent the joints with the circle is keeping the proportions of the arm the same now that you're moving them along. There's going to be a tendency to shorten limbs, so always go longer than you think. Longer limbs, exaggerated form, that is a better rule of thumb than shortening with cartooning because you have more opportunity for gesture if your limbs are longer. So Floyd is shifting his hips, and he's balancing on one leg. A little tip to keep in mind when you're drawing exaggerated poses, is the head should be positioned over the foot that's planted on the ground. That gives it a sense of balance, so you notice I'm tipping the head just a little in this first pose to balance Floyd out. This next pose is called the, give me what I want, pose. I've never been to an aerobics class. Do they name the poses? I don't know. Again, we're shifting the weight. Instead of bending the torso in, I'm pushing it out and pushing the chest out. That pose instantly made me feel that I should put the arm forward and then plant the other wrist on the hips. Not too fond of this leg, so you'll see I've redrawn it. I'm going to balance his floating foot there on the toe, just looks better, creates a nice little negative shape there in between the two legs. Now, I'm going to start to ink it. Once you've done all this work, to position your character through the stages that you may not have ever done, and instinctively, you might say, "It's a whole lot of work just to draw one version of a character. Do animators or cartoonists really do this?" Yes and no. If you're drawing a position you've never drawn before, it's good to figure out what it really looks like before you put in the work of detail in the body. In the long run, it's going to save you time. Once you start to move through poses that you're comfortable drawing, you don't have to go through all those stages. But you'll notice as I ink here, I've got a lot more flexibility and I'm comfortable with the position of the body, so I can have more fun with the inking lines, and they can feel softer and have a more flowing feel to them. Here's Floyd in two aerobic poses. Looking good, Floyd. 6. The Action Line: Floyd is back in his street clothes, and we're going to talk specifically about what's called the action line. It's the invisible line that runs through a character from his feet, up through his head. This line is the emotive line that represents the feel and the weight of the character. I can use an action line and just apply it to a flower, and we can see that alignment curves back in on itself. That feels like the chest is puffing out. That's looks like a confident line. Then if we bend it over further and make it seem off balance, now it seems depressed. This action line goes along way to representing the feel of your character. A stiff action line, is not going to read as well as a dynamic bendy action line. There's the phrase, "Push your poses". Always push your character's poses so they read very well. Let's apply some action lines to Floyd. Again, pushing a pose. Let's look at Floyd here. Floyd's feeling confident, so the action line like in the flower version, is bending forward. I'm going to use that action line to design the body on top of. Again, we'll look at the balance, balancing the head over the ankle with the weight, and we'll ink this. Of course, we're not going to ink the action line, but you can see it at work in this design. An action line is going to keep you on track. Now, we're going to draw Floyd in an unbalanced position. Very stiff, it's like he's been electrocuted, and he's falling over backwards. Now, he's unbalanced. Notice the head is no longer balanced over top of an ankle. We got to ink this rigid position. It reads like that original action line. Sorry Floyd. 7. Hands and Feets: Action, balance, let's zoom in on the hands and feet of our characters. I should dedicate a whole lesson to these topics, but I'll just give you a quick crash course here. Things to remember. Your hand is not just fingers mounted to a wrist. We need the pump, which begins with a circle. That's the main part of the hand and we put a secondary circle down inside that represents the joint of thumb. Usually cartoon characters only have four fingers because that fifth finger isn't totally necessary in the reading of a hand gesture. A lot of cartoonists cut it out. I do sometimes, sometimes I don't. Depends on your style, but we just use basic lines here to represent the length of the fingers and then we start to fill them out. When we ink it, we've fleshed out the whole hand beforehand. With hands, If you just hold your hand loose, it doesn't have that rigid feel. Fingers usually back, if you look at a lot of cartoon characters, there's usually a bend in the fingers when they're just relaxed, so something like this. Just like when you're sketching the body, building the skeleton up and building the form of the hand through shapes first, before you add the details goes along way to saving you time and it reminds you of the details that are important. In this case, the curve of the fingers is crucial. Some of those notes for myself appear in my sketch. Let's give our hand something to hold onto. Here's a little button, and now you'll really see where the circle for the palm and thumb come into play. Position a hand around this button holding it from the back. Some loops around the front fingers scoop around the top there usually at an angle and just go around your house picking up different objects in observing how your hand naturally lifts them, grips them. Take a couple of pictures if you need to. Keep a reference folder. I'm going to expect you to know these things off the top of your head. Just like with body language, there's a weight to the hands. The fingers want to curve down, they almost want to settle into the palm. Unless there's something standing against that they bend on their own. This posture, you've got a finger resting on top of the button that the other fingers curved down because they're not being used and the thumb is positioned on the other side. Let's turn our button sideways and grip as if we're hanging from the top, so we curve the fingers around the top. Thumb is holding from side here and now let's put even a little more weight on that hand. I'm in a stretch the palm, stretch that thumb, and stretch the fingers. Now, it looks like the grip is weakening, your character is about to let go. Also looks like a ninja turtle hand now. There's your crash course on hands. Let's look at feet. First, we have the leg and the circle, which is the heel of the foot and on top of that we're going to put a wedge. I'm going to draw it in a three quarter time. We get a sense of the side and the top at the same time. Here's our wage for our foot, I'll put a little circle there on the ankle and let's just draw a bare foot with four toes. The wedge is crucial to helping you figure out the angle of the foot and also the placement on the ground. Now, let's try from a profile view. Your wedge in your ankle and just for fun, we are going to throw a shoe and sock. Let's do a little like converse style high top here. Shoe fits right over top of the wedge. Let's go back to the three quarter turn and look at the shoe again. See right on top I put a couple of curved lines to get a sense of the angle I'm going to draw the laces at for giving a little more form to that wedge, and there's the high top sneaker at three-quarter turn. Let's look at another shoe type. Let's put a high heel on foot. We bring the heel up in this case. I'm going to throw another circle and here this represents the big toe and then that helps us find new placement of the weight. Now, we've got a more exaggerated band in the foot and a risen heel. 8. Poses Part 1: In this next section, I'm going to cover a motive poses. The way I've set this up is I picked 12 action words at random, and I'll reveal those as we go through. I didn't have anything really planned out. I have my word, and I'm just going to start drawing and take you through my creative process. Let's get started. The first word is adoring. Adoring basically means to regard someone or something with love, and respect, and honor. I'm going to start with my action line. I'm going to lean this character forward. Just off the top of my head, I've got this idea, a young girl admiring somebody, say maybe a baseball player. We can't see what she's looking at, so I'm going to dress her also as a baseball player. She's looking off to some unseen thing that she's adoring. I'm got her leaning forward and I'm drawing her arms close to her chin. She's tucked in a holding in. Her emotions trying to let not let them burst out of her body. Put some hair on her. Make sure the angle of her back matches the action line. Darken a few details the face. I actually feel like I could push this pose even further. I'm going to put her on her tiptoes. Now she is a little more off balance. You see, the balance line, her head is forward of her legs. Tighten up her leg muscles. Spin the back a little. Use her hair to represent some of the energy she's feeling. She's got a baseball jersey on, so I'm going to make it a little droopy and give her some sports shorts. Let's switch that hair to a hat. Start 18 and I'm going to use the cheek to push up the smile. I guess over time my style, it's really softened. A lot of my lines curve and bend more than they used to. I think that comes with the constant effort to work in a looser way. It's almost like this character is built out of rubber bands and their little droopy. For me, those are the lines that seem most expressive. Her little details on here and the shading, find some spaces to blackout, shadows, few details. There we go, we've got a young adoring baseball fan. Cool. Couple more shadows here. Now, we're going to move on to the next pose. My next word is watchful. That means to be alert, to be on the lookout. A character that's attentive, observing, looking forward to see what's coming. In this case, actually, I'm going to do a superhero character because it seems to fit the term. See something more interesting. Instead of looking forward, I'm going to make him lean back, so he's flying forward, but his head is facing backwards. Let's go with a superman type character, so muscular, torso, round muscles, and instead of just straight lens, I'm going to bulge them out. Not a lot of detail in the muscle, just basic shapes. Got a calf, size, forearms, biceps. We're going to go with the angular jaw, and a pointy nose, and a clean haircut. In the same way I use the pony tail from the last character to imply movement, will do that same thing with the cape. Let's build a little contrast into this design with some shadow. Watch me shade in this cape here. Enhance some of these shadows, keep it a more dramatic fill. A few motion lines. Let's try that one. Then we'll do some illumination around the face to imply that he's having an idea or a thought or is seeing something in the distance. Black in the boots. Each of these feet just a little, and there we go, watchful. Our next pose is joyous. Joy is an emotion of great delight, extra happy. That's caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying happening. We've done a standing, flying, let's do a walking characters. Joy, she's really leaning into her pose and I'm going to tip her head back wave it. That makes you seem more carefree and delightful. It also enhances the smile. Our mouth is curving up, eyes are curving up, her chest is forward, and I'm going to bend her arms in a walking pose. When a character is walking, you have opposite limbs forward at the same time. If her right arm is swinging forward, the left leg is coming forward. I want to make her seem balanced. Let's rework that go. She's leaning into her pose. Let's start inking here. Big round cheeks, big full hair. Put her in a tank top. That way I can get some more curvy happy lines going on her body. Jeans, foot flat on the ground, in this case. I'm going to add some shadow, let's fill in the hair again with this character. I Like overlap whenever possible. You can see in this case I'm just having her swing her arm so they intersect again with her body. That's just part of the style I've developed. I guess I like things that create closed shapes. My designs often don't stretch out into empty space they're more closed in. Up next, we've got appeased. Appeased is bringing about a state of peacefulness through some action. Somebody that's feeling [inaudible] their content or calm. My first thought is someone that's eating something they like. I'm going to have this character lean in a bit, and let's make him a bit of a Mickey Mouse shape, big round, pear shaped torso. Resting on their stomach, they're going to eat in a sandwich or a hamburger. Let's do a little squat face, big smile, compressed facial expressions. I like the sandwich idea because it puts a point of emphasis in the middle of the design and I can do this funny little drip coming straight down the character. Let's push that steamboat Willie Mickey mouse like a little further and put some suspenders on. How about some funny slippers and scrawny little legs. Just for fun. My favorite thing about approaching a design this way is as you're figuring out where you're drawing, you can make unexpected changes. Let's do exhausted. When you're exhausted, you been drained of energy. You're worn out like a state of fatigue in a person. This character is going to lean forward, they're going to feel like gravity is really weighing down on them. That's going to be reflected in their arms and their heads. They're walking but both feet are dragging on the ground. I'm going to use the hair again to create that sense of weight. With some parts of the hair hanging straight down forward. You don't want to make it too depressing. I'm going to tilt the eyes up away, a little bit as if they're looking off into something. It's an L fish character apparently. Let's go with some elf boots. A lot of shadows around the eye like the light is placed behind the head of the character. We're casting shadows on the face. All right, there is an exhausted elf. We did exhausted, let's go in a totally different direction with this next one. Let's do sneaking. Someone that's being stealthy or slinking around. The action line for this one is going to be coiled up. I'm going to go with this S-like pose, which is going to be fun to work over. This character is walking. I'm going to put them on their tippy-toes. Toes pointing straight down. I'm also going to use that gesture in the hands as well. Everything is pointing and restrained, held in close to the body. I'm going to tip the nose and the face up in a way as if they're avoiding eye contact, and bring up that shoulder. Shoulders and hips, for me are really important ways of expressing a character. Then its frontal. Again, drape the clothes on the body, so you get an opportunity to make some more wobbly emotive lines. If you look closely, that wobbliness is reflected in the shine on the hair, the stripes on the shoulders, the wobble on the shirt, the wrinkles, and socks. There's a coiled energy inside this sneaky pose. 9. Poses Part 2: Let's do celebration. Celebration according to the dictionary, to perform with appropriate rites in ceremonies, and also to make known publicly so to put something on display. That makes me think of dancing. I had fun with that coyly S-line in the last post. I'm going to use that one again and see what comes of it. Where it had a tightened, squeezed position of the dance. It's almost a little awkward, but you can still tell this person's enjoying himself. It's just a more inner enjoyment they're dancing with themselves, you could say. Get the head tilted straight down. I like that pose, try not to rely so much on facial expressions, and force the body language to do a little more. [inaudible] maybe we're in a Western bar. Let's do the cowboy boot thing, we haven't done that yet. It's a big belt buckle and a little bolo tie and a little Western pocket here. The next word is strain, which means to put a lot of tension on something to stretch on an object, something that's resisting. That makes me think of somebody trying to lift a weight. I'm going to do the action line straight down the middle in this case. We're going to set the weight, actually the balance line. Not really the action line. The balance line is set straight down the middle. The action line is pushing against it. It's almost like a bow and arrow. It's real taut, so the chest of this character is pushing out. I'm going to point the heads straight up. In this case to emphasize that balance line. I'm going to center them right over the top of their hands and their legs are spread. There's like a tripod balance going on in this case, almost. There is a couple of muscles, big hair. Let facial expression do a little bit of work, but a lot of the responsibility here is on the body. I'm going to just stress the neck muscles a little. Figure out this belt. There we go. A really glamorous weightlifter here. We'll have him lifting a dumbbell. It's about one tonne. Create some contrast, just a little bit, and some sweaty marks. [inaudible] more emotive lines. That's strain. For this next one, I picked the word bursting, like a balloon, something explosive that's breaking open, flying apart. A little bit of a violent pose, you could say. I'm gong to have this character, let's face them the other way this time. They're leaning into their pose and it's like an accusation they're making. They're bursting with anger and that makes me think of a bratty king type character is not getting his way. Put his head back a little bit. It's almost got like a cylindrical head and then it's giving me a good mouse shape on this face. I'm going to draw the body, but a lot of it is going to be hidden beneath the robe. It's really on the chest and the arms to get the pose across. We'll let the face do a little bit of work in this one. I'm having a good time with his face, so we are going to let it do its thing. His big awful defined teeth. Some royal details and little spindly arms to represent his incompetence. To go with these spindly arms, we'll need tiny little legs, and some good shadows to push the white shapes out further. You can really see how shadows can go along way to create a sense of depth. Look at that shadow under the gown behind the legs and how it really isolates those legs in their own little space. Poor king, not getting his way. Up next, we've got a fun one, anxiety. Anxiety is a sense of distress and uneasiness, like a psychological issue. It's associated with fear, danger, misfortune, and I'm going to keep that all in the character's mind. It's like the anxiety's wearing them down. We haven't done any poses load at the ground yet, so let's do that with this one. This character is hunched over on their knees on the ground, so we're going to bend the back. I'm going to put the knees at an angle a little so it's like a three-quarter turn. In the same way you plan it three-quarter turn with an angled horizontal line. The knees need to be sitting on that line on the ground. This character is I guess a werewolf, I'll say. A lot of anxiety about the end of the full moon and he has to go back and deal with all the families of the people he's murdered. But the cartoony nature of the animalistic character has given me this idea here, to put the hands instead of just clenched around their jaws like we did in a door. Put them right in the mouth pulling down on the corners of the mouth. Create some texture here, ragged clothing and some good shadows in the mouth, and the nose, and in the eye. We're tilting the head back away from the viewer. Some wobbly little motive lines, and we've got this closed in little ball of anxiety here, sitting flat on the floor. You notice the tail is also going out of its way to reflect the weight of the character as well. It's flat on the ground, it's not sticking up. Well let's do an easy one here. This is the word sleeping, so put, take a rest. Here are suspension of voluntary bodily function. I'll interpret that as laying down on the ground. I guess if you've grown up with the movie 'Back to the Future' you can't help but think of that first scene of Michael J. Fox asleep. I'm going to use that pose as the root of this design. They're not lying flat on the ground. There's a bend and the hips are stuck up in the air. Shoulders down on the ground, and hips up. This is the pair shaped torso, but it's tipped over laying on the ground. We're at about a three quarter turn again here so you notice like the waistline, you can see it really lightly is at an angle. I am going to use the arms to rest the head on. I'm going to pull the legs up close to the character, and overlap the nose over the arms so the face isn't completely hidden, at the right angle of the back and hips. Just to get some movement going the other direction, let's do like some pigtails. They're pointing upward. Notice she's barefoot now and it just seemed appropriate. We haven't tried any toes yet, so. There we go we've got a sleeping character. Let's put some shadows on the ground in this case, instead of on the actual character. There we go, it gives it a better sense of the floor. Darken the shirt as well. Jeans work really well for me anyway on character design because you can use the stitch going up the side of the leg as a decorative element, but also a motive line. I've got one more for you here. This is the word struck. If you've been struck, you've been dealt a blow, you've been hit with something like a fist or a weapon of some sort. Let's go away from those coil body positions. This character is going to be lying on the ground, but they're lying flat out on their back. Not a perfectly straight line, we're going to give it a bit of a bend, just to make it seem more human. The shoulders and hips are back at an angle. I'm going to make the face point straight up and I'm going to give him a big hair do just to frame the head a little bit. Legs follow that action line. Again, you can see these curves of the socks and the shorts going a long way to create a sense of the two quarter turn and the roundness. All the lines I use, try to serve a function even right down to the lines on the bottom of the shoe. They move off towards the vanishing point and they enforce the position of the body on the ground. I'm going to make this a real tight wrinkled face. It's like as head has been pushed back into his hair, his nose's scrunched up. Some boxing gloves here, wrinkles on the front of the clothing. Let's widen the legs here a little bit [inaudible] here with pair of hips. You'll notice I get a little curve on the inside and the foot separate the right foot from the left foot. Darken the shoes here. Again, like with sleeping I'll put shadows on the ground. This fellow has been struck. Great. These are 12 exercises. Of course, you could pick any verb or adjective that you want to draw up but again, the most important thing is to think about the action line that represents the pose as a whole and all the details you build on top of that new tip enforced that original action line. The more focused you are on your action line, the easier the pose will be to read. 10. Class Project / Wrap Up: All right, now it's your turn. For the class lesson, I'd like you to pick an adjective or a verb. Basically, an action word to illustrate. Just like in my examples, I often picked a type of character to work from. With the term "adore," I chose a baseball player or with the word "strain," I chose a bodybuilder. It'll help you define the character a little bit and lead you into their personality, and also help you create an outfit for them. Once you've done your drawing, please share it in the class section. That way, myself and other students can see what people are working on, and it'll inspire new people to take the class and participate. It'll inspire me to come up with new lessons for you guys. All right, have fun drawing, and I'll see you next time.