How to Draw Dynamic Poses for Comics

1. Drawing the 3 Main Masses of the Body: All right. So I want to give you some practice activities for you to improve, drawing the body in a variety of different ways. So so far, we've measured it out with, you know, the head heights and things like that. But the other thing you want to think about is, you know, drawing the three main mass of the body. So you get the head, torso and pelvis, and you want to draw these Very simplistic. I wouldn't say blocks unless you're really trying to get better perspective, figuring out what these shapes might look like independently on their own plane or whatever perspective blocks can help you to do that. So explain a couple of those as well, but just used in primitive shapes. Whatever you feel like gets you to your head. Shapes like that. Ah, ignore the neck. You're the reason for this is you're gonna actually learn to exaggerate these poses, and this helps you come up with dynamic, dynamic poses. So going to get the head, the torso from the front view torso could just be the rib cage, you know, line across the middle. I like to show the direction with line across the middle on each area. You'll see why Askew start to turn it more, but this is kind of important. And then, you know, just a little dish shapes on the side for the openings of the arms and get used to draw on those. Even if you can't see him, you might want a reference. One is a dotted line if it's on the other side of the upper torso. But just something like that, just a basic shape that you can memorize and get used to rotating on the page. And then we're gonna drop down quite a bit further and drop in the pelvis and the pelvis could just be kind of like I've heard it referred to is like just floating underwear or action figure with the arms and legs ripped off. Whatever helps you to commit it to memory, but something like that. And then, you know, we could connect all this with spine. Keep in mind, the spine is never straight, you know, even from a front perspective, it's gonna be a curved line. Doesn't mean you need to draw it as a curved line, But just be aware that the spine is never straight. So that's the basic shapes. And then we have to get used to turning these and and this is really a great exercise because once you start to get comfortable with this, you can elaborate and connect the arms and legs a lot easier. So let's go into a couple examples of this, and what you want to do is try to figure out how to make a more dynamic polls with this. So first you might just do front side back. And as we know, that's boring and, you know, it just doesn't feel like you're learning, right? But But really you are. But then what happens is after you get past that, you want to start doing a little bit more with you know, some perspective in my Now keep in mind. If you're not good at figuring out perspective, I'm just gonna give you a quick little diagram horizon line perspective lines Vanishing Point, and anything that falls in there would go to this perspective. Now we're gonna talk more about drawing characters in perspective, but I would just want you to be aware of you know, the basic simplicity of perspective, you know, in the simplest forms, I guess. But anything that's in these perspectives will convert to this vanishing point or whatever vanishing points. You can have things in multiple vanishing points, but if they reside in this perspective, they're going to meet it. That vanishing point. If they're above the horizon, you're looking up. If they're below the rise in line or your viewpoint, they're both the same thing. You're looking down at the object. Okay, so it's very simple. You know, you've got two and three point perspective and all that. We'll do some lessons on that, but But basically what I want you to get in the habit of is even just drawing a floating box. So, for instance, you want to draw this character, and you don't need to really draw arise the line of bash points unless you unless you feel you need Teoh. But I also want to do here. Let's start off with this floating box, okay? And what this is to me is just an area in which the character will reside him so and actually just the upper abdomen, her torso. So what I want to do there is used that for my faked perspective, and then I want to figure out, OK, there's that center line I was talking about for the chest. Here's opening for the neck is opening for the arm on this side and we could use a dotted line on the side and then we want to get a curve for the chest. We want to get a separation for the rib cage, then connected across the back with just kind of an oval. So really, it's, you know, it could be said that this is an oval. This is an oval, this inaudible. You know? Have you want to draw a lot of people sketch ovals almost entirely to do do stuff like this ? I'll do kind of perimeter shape, drawing or, uh, you know, just whatever shapes I'm seeing, really. But it doesn't have to be perfection. You just want to get in place. You can draw a little B for the collarbones or a dip down. Kind of like we've gotten the first sketch there, and there we go. I mean, it's not pretty, right? It's, but it's is there s so now for the pelvis. I have to perceive that I'm going with the same perspective but the pelvis is going to exist on a slightly different plane, especially to draw more and more dynamic. So let's bring that over intentionally and then shift the front viewpoints. You see, this is our front viewpoint of the chest. There's a dad to simple us symbolize where that's at and this one's like this. And now I could tilt these even further, but I'm gonna go with this and see what we get. And then with the head, I'm gonna bring that. Let's say just back would bring the head back. Here's the front and let's even tilt that a bit. So it's front and over, so you see how each one of those air pointing just a little bit differently in orientation . That's really the power of what this this exercises for, because it allows you to experiment so quickly with this. And when you're drawing characters, I think you get bogged down by things like, you know, where the arms that with legs that first you need to focus on where these three main masses of the body are. Get comfortable with where you can extend them, how far you can extend them. Ah, and remember that you can simplify things like the head with a circle here in a plane of the front phase. Or, you know, a lot of people just draw wedge shape on the front. Some people actually draw box right on the front of the circle and then connecting together . So there's there's lots of ways to simplify that, Um, but just getting some basic shapes. So you you know what's ahead? It doesn't have to be all that pretty right now. And it's, uh, chisel this down a bit. So my portions air obviously off. But again, this is more of an exercise than any kind of correct illustration at this point. Shoulder opening Here you see, the the actual, um it doesn't place, and I'll explain what I'm thinking here. So the actual head is tilted too far back and even too small in proportions s. I'll just grab that adjust it. But see, this is kind of where it's neat, because as you start to fill us in and check the work, okay, see why it's off. I see why the head wouldn't go that far back. And if you can correct things like that here, then the arms and legs are gonna make a lot more sense, Basically, just don't want toe, you know, draw this fully rendered character over a base pose. That may not be working anyways, because then you might sit around just shifting arms and legs all day thinking that that's the problem. And really, it lies within this. So, um, So now, as you were fined this, you know, maybe place some different lines for anatomy and, you know, figure out where certain things go, but you can start to visualize. You know, this character could have, like, an arm coming up and back and an arm down in front of the waste here. Whatever. They're falling back. You can kind of see into that a bit further. So this simplified drawing really helps with that. Let me, uh, find this one more time. Just glad to make some adjustments. And also, as you're doing this, you wanna tweak it and figure out where you can improve as you. Each time you approach it, You want to say OK, what's a little bit off? The head still looks weird. The chin is sitting right on the neck. It wouldn't do that. So I need to bring the cranium out like this. Extend mawr that face area outward, like this. Bring that jawline out the neck would be back here somewhere. So just keep making small interval changes. I'm big on that because I think a lot of times when I draw, I don't get it right the first time. But I don't let that stop me and say, Oh, wow, I just can't draw, you know, if not about to quit years ago. But but with interval changes, their small, incremental changes, I can keep correcting in adjusting. So if you keep an open mind of that, I think it really helps you not get again. Kind of, you know, you don't want to back yourself in a corner or mental rut of thinking. I'm just not getting it. And, you know, maybe I'm not good for some crazy thought process. You know, you just really want toe realize that there's a lot of ways to adjust on the fly. So, you see, that plane was way over here? No, I've adjusted it. Where? The plane of the face in the alignment or the front? Uh, the front plan, I guess, would be like right here. So, you know, keep aware of that that each one of these Comptel independently from one another, and that's what's gonna give you a more dynamic body. So I'm gonna do a few more examples like this on time, lapse for you, and then we can jump into some other things that will help you create dynamic poses. So practices exercise over and over again. Repetition is really key at first of probably gonna come out. Ah, bit clunky and a bit off. But it's what you're basically trying to do is spot the errors. So you're trying to see how far you can stretch these components of the body and make something that stylized yet still reads as. I wouldn't so accurate. But, you know, it doesn't look just like a bad drawing because there's obviously that Rome or that fine line, really, where you have to get things that are dynamic, but they have to still fit together. They still have to make sense or it just won't read is good art. But that also goes with the way you style lives. Your line work in your proportions. All these things kind of fit together and you know their culmination of these concepts. So you start here kind of play around, really? Stretch it, you know, practice shifting the hips from the shoulders and the the orientation of head and only things. And you really figure out how far you can take that. And then from there you say, OK, let me study some realism and you can study realism. But you gotta be careful, because if you were to just incorporate realism in the A comic work, it's just not gonna be that impactful. You'll see styles out there that do it, and they just don't have that ultra dynamic feel. They're usually not as popular as the people that you comptel are stretching the bounds of imagination and taking it pretty far generally those with ones that do the best with their book sales and everything. It's because of really letting imagination be the guide. Don't get me wrong. A lot of those advanced artists understand all the fundamental knowledge, and they could draw a person as well as anybody else in a portraiture style and maybe make it look identical to a real person. But that's not what they're after, and That's where exercise like this really help us, Because again, we're not working off reference to do this. We're working on basic, primitive shapes that, you know, with a little bit of practice anybody can draw. And then we're really seeing how far we can take that. And then you have to analyze the work and say, Well, like this one now, now that I'm looking at it, in retrospect, I can see it. The hips are too far away. I was really trying to go for that extreme for shortened up shot. And I think in some ways it reads okay, but the hipster a little bit too far off and you know, but the tilts right, You know that you could almost picture the character walking or something. So what happens is you have to pick and choose what works, what doesn't and then improve on your next renditions. So the other thing I want apart on this particular lesson is when doing these don't strive for perfection. Your perfection should be a linear thing that as you get better through art each time you're creating another piece of a similar subject matter, then you and make your improvements there. If you fight to make your improvements on every piece every time you're going to slow yourself down. That's just something I've seen within my own work. So really let go and be creative and just create more work. That's the key to getting better And always save this stuff because you're always gonna be able to look back your sketches just like your sketchbooks, and see that you were doing something right. And maybe you forgot or you didn't realize what technique you were using it. It actually worked really well. S so there's a lot of, ah, learning that you can do in retrospect to your own work and another good habit to get into the time your studies, even something like this is so simplistic. But make sure they don't really take you 10 15 minutes to do do each one of them five minutes really focus on the fact that when you draw quickly, you get more expressiveness in your work. And also it's very healthy to know what it takes you to create different things so that when you start doing more commissions and client work, you're very realistic about what you can achieve and therefore what you should charge on what you should deliver to that client. In the beginning, I think we worry too much that people won't understand our vision. If we don't refine it enough as you progress, you'll start to realize that there's actually a lot of expressiveness and your rough sketches. We're gonna talk more about that thumb nailing and gestures and things like that. But just keep that in mind that you do want to be aware of what it takes to complete these . So Philip the sketchbooks and let's head onto that next lesson. 2. Exaggerating the Pose: Now let's talk about the exaggerated pose. So whenever you're warming up and getting ready to draw comics, you should probably do a bunch of thumbnails. Bunch of rough sketching we've talked about and poses or something. You should always practice now again, you could study from life. But what's generally gonna happen when you do a lot of bigger drawing or study from life, you're gonna learn how the body works. You're gonna learn about the flow of the body, which is all very important stuff. The anatomy is very important, but you need to exaggerate it. Okay? And that starts with the poles. So they were to draw a pair. A person punching. I guess so. A character punching on a more realistic depiction might be something like, I'm just going to use Ah, stick man. Just never underestimate the power of a stick figure. It's where it all kind of starts. You know, we can use our other method for the rib cage and the the pelvis and that, but you can even just skip that and go right toe lines. What you're really looking for is just the polls and just the kind of extension of the limbs at this point. Eso, you know, generally have you got Contra pasta, which is this arm forward, which would mean this leg is forward, the opposite of each for balance. He and this leg back because he's leaning forward. So this character's off balance because if you look at the balance line, it's going like this, but it's because they're delivering a punch. So that's their means to catch themselves in a sense or they're just falling into it. They'll catch themselves later, you know. So that's that's maybe a punch in a more realistic depiction, and that's even probably a bit of a stretch. So if you were to align this over a photograph of a real punch, you might see that this is even more lean forward than most punches. Or maybe less. But but the main thing is this that that's probably not gonna look as dynamic is you want for for comic illustration. So let's see how we could take something like this and make it look more like you'd want to see in a comic, but again keeping in this basic format so that we can analyze it and see through the work and not get too caught up in details yet. Okay, so first off, I want to make sure the lien is even greater. Okay, So in the world of comics, I think that people are a little less concerned with balance and where they fall, you know, they get these powers in these suits and whatever. So, you know, falling in, you know, falling flat on your face Isn't that big of a deal when your superhero So plus, I get this awesome balance, I'm sure. But what we're gonna do is we're really gonna push that. So we want to take this action line. You know, you can think of the action line of the spine, whatever you wanna call it. But in action line is usually the momentum of the body and the spine kind of goes with that . So we're gonna do something like that. So here's really are action line. Here's our spine. Something like that. But I'm mainly trying to convey this character really leaning into this, okay. And then I'm gonna do circles for the shoulders. Gonna put even more tilt to the shoulders, see if I can add some dramatic flair there and I'm really gonna bring this back arm up, overexaggerated like this and maybe even towards camera bit. And you'll see me a lot of times the way I do it, I'll draw a fist with just a square and a little circle for a thumb. This to me. You start learning your own shorthand. Basically, this to me means the fist is actually the front of it is right here. It's coming out towards camera. So that's one of my shorthand. No pun intended my shorthand method for the hand coming out towards scream. So now what? This one. I want to bring this arm down. You can use these little lightning bolts to remember the curvature of the front of the arm in the top of the arm. Okay, so the shoulder and we'll get into that later. But this is just another little technique for remembering that. And then you got to remember or think about where this fist is gonna end up. Is it a side view of the fished which might look like this? And, you know, that makes sense for the polls, actually, but maybe you put just a little bit of tilt on the fist cause you remember that there's a lot of range of movement in the fist. So again there's that little front of the fist and thumb Simple. Is that done with that part? So I don't think too much about that. I'm just trying to get the basic broad strokes of the polls in place and see if this is even gonna work, cause I might get into it a little bit further and go, Oh, this is just an ugly pose. I gotta scratch it. That happens, you know? So if you're not wasting an absorbing amount of time in this stage, it's not, You know, you're not setting yourself up for a disaster. So So now let's get that upper abdomen in there. Let's go out and bring the collarbones down a little bit. You know, they're probably gonna have a big shoulder mass anyways, so we've definitely got more tilt week, even at this point, tilted a bit more, you know. But if we do something like this, we got remember, it's probably gonna be, you know, them punching past the character, which I think looks more impactful anyways eso something like that. Well, just give ah well, leave this little floating over there for a reference point. And then now we want to do is really want to take advantage of what we can do with legs. Now we see the orientation so far, and I'm gonna tilt the head even more this way. So when I'm looking at what he's, you know, hitting right, So So he's looking right at the character like this. And the chest is here cause he's really pulling this arm forward. So it's pushing the center line of the chest back this way. Okay, so we got that. And then as we get down to the pelvis, we want to really contort this body. That's what makes it look super dynamics here. It's kind of all lined, so we're gonna twist this and let's see if we get the shoulder up here. Remember that Contra pasta unforgiving from saying Iran Contra Costa? Hubbard said. But look it up. It's basically, you know, a form of our balance of kinetic energy or something. It's just the way that we contort to balance ourselves. So basically, this area, the leg is gonna be way up, you know, way appear trying to balance that mo mentum from that swing. So let's bring that up really high. Something like that. So we want to really show difference from that. That first post, we'll figure out what we're gonna tuck this leg. We might took this, like, really far back as well, because that can look pretty. Ah, pretty extreme and dynamic. So now this back leg is gonna be way back here really trying to stretch it. Uh, to a point of, you know, like, would this person be able to even make this move? Not maybe not in real life, but in comics s. So, you know, we're not bound by those same rules, right? So So there's our pose. I mean, we can get in here and we can make it all pretty and we can do all this stuff, But first we need to just make sure that we can get that idea down, and then it works in a very simplistic representation. And that's what this is so almost like this is, you know, just the gesture of it. So if you're doing figure drawing, you're gonna learn a lot about jester drawing on. That's do you want? Oh, Philip your sketchbooks with the same concept with comics, but very over exaggerated. You know, you want to extend the limbs, you wanna see how far you can push that laid back, how far you can contort the upper torso from the pelvis and the head and things like that. So that's where it gets a lot more interesting and fun to dio. Um, but this is really all you need to kind of work out a bunch of different poses and then catalogue, um, and, uh, learn through that process is well, and you'd be amazed at all the stuff you can achieve. Uh, I'm I'm always impressed when I see really well done sketches that air so simplified and you can still tell what's going on. There's just so much power to that, and you can learn immensely through that process. Let me just clean this up a bit. Is this kind of again away to check the work? We'll do what we did in the previous lesson and kind of get these other shapes and place, but not so much to where this is a full rendition. Yet next, What you could do is you could add cylinders over this. We'll talk about that. Probably. Ah, we'll definitely upcoming lesson. But maybe even the next lesson actually want extend this leg further. Just really a kind of a longer back leg. But again, we might need just that based on the scene. So right now we're working off a blank white canvas, and it's a little easier to kind of skew where we're at. Um because, you know, we might in a scene that's drawn out, we might want this leg to finish back here, so to be right with the perspective, but for now, on a blank white canvas, we're gonna say that works and let's see you get the neck and find this had just a little bit. So again, I want this to be a different orientations. I'm gonna bring this line over and I think would look a little bit more impressive for that is more of a tilt with the head. So again, always adjusting these things, always trying to see a little bit further into it on and see what what we can do to make it look more impactful. So something like that. So this is another good exercise. We're just taking a basic pose. And again, you could start by studying real life and then really trying to stretch it and see how far you could take it. But keep it simplified into a gestural kind of rough sketch like this. You know, a bit of a stick, man, really? And do lots of these as well. So let's do some more examples of these, and so it wouldn't come up with. 3. Drawing Male Superhero Poses - Quick Sketches: Okay, So for this exercise, we want to draw some different poses, and we want to keep the poses very loose and kind of lose to interpretation. So although you want to be able to read what's going on there, don't over detail it don't jump in and start tightening up the work, keep them very expressive, very quick and again think about gesture and also think about over exaggerating whatever pose you're working on. So this one's pretty stiff, and I tend to find that in the beginning there, Steph and they loosen up as you practice as you doom, or so get more and more on the page. Also try to create lots of variety. So one of the problems with doing this type of exercise is that you might just go with what you're comfortable with. So you might start drawing a bunch of characters standing there towards camera with one arm up, one arm down, and you gotta fight better have you got to think about the characters in action and moving around moving the camera angle around. So this is your opportunity to draw that type of stuff and imagine something more complex. But drawing it very simplified. I can't stress that enough how much that will spark creativity and how it will let you really explore ideas rather quickly. You also want to fight the urge of tensing up the pose. So one of the ways to do this is actually tried drawing things with less control. Eso If you ever see somebody tighten up on their drawing, they'll hunt over the drawing. They'll get real close to it will tighten up on the pencil. And you wouldn't think that all these physical traits would mean that much. But you can almost see it in their gesture of their own body as they start to draw. So one of the things that helps you is to either grab back on the pencil, where you have less control and used flexi or risk more or even drawing from your shoulder so you don't notice. Like figure drawing artists. They do this more naturally, and the canvases upright and they start drawing from their shoulder, the reason being they're trying to get more gesture into the polls. So although that doesn't always apply specifically to comics in the same regard, in the same way that the drawings created. You still want to think about that, so allow yourself to be more gestural, more free flowing and try different movements. If you feel yourself tensing up on the drawing too much and next I want to say, Just make sure to really over exaggerate. So that's another benefit of these quick sketches. You can really test that exaggeration and see what you get. So the character like this getting really overly expressive, you know, yelling up towards the air and a leg perched up on high. Oppose that you just generally wouldn't see any normal average person doing. And that's exactly the point. That's what comics are all about. So, really, take the opportunity to stretch the bounds of imagination and take it as far as you can, because these sketches air so loose and quick to dio, you can really get away with that. But if you were to refine every one of these in full details and you might get a bit bogged down, he might, uh, divert onto something else. You should be doing so the rough sketches of your opportunity to really explore all these different advanced ideas. But in loose, gestural line format. Keep in mind, too, that you could edit these poses because there's not a lot of time constraints of this type of drawing. But also remember that it's better to sometimes at it as you revisit that pose. So allow yourself to make mistakes. It's just not that imperative that these air some sort of perfection. And the reason why I think that's so important to know is because if you're trying to get just the right polls and if it doesn't look right, you scrap it every time. Then you're going to kind of push yourself back into your comfort zone of what you know how to draw and that experiment as much with the things that you don't know how to draw. For instance, one of the things that we have to battle his comic artists is. Does that look believable? Like this post Francis doesn't look believable, but that's OK. I mean, it's comics, and we want to again stretch that realm of imagination. But there's a certain part of us that just goes well. It doesn't look right, and everybody else is going to see it doesn't look right, so I need to make it better. So you have to not confuse the idea of learning better anatomy, learning the way the body works with kind of hindering your style, I would say so. Let's style kind of sometimes be your guide and have fun with it and be expressive. You're always gonna have times where you can come back and say, OK, I'm just not drawing feet that well, I've got a really study feet, and we're gonna talk about some different breakdowns of the body so that, you know, you know how to incorporate that into these types of drugs. But again, this part is just focused on experimenting with ideas and letting that fall down onto the page and not holding yourself to accountable, because again, whenever you get too strict and yourself, this is right, that's wrong. It's going to slow your creative process, and this should be very creative, and it should actually inspire you to come up with more ideas. So draw lots opposes. Experiment with this. Try to create lots of variety on the page, get anywhere from 6 to 10 on a page, keep them very quick s so that you're not eating up a lot of time in your day and see we can come up with. So what? That we're gonna now move on to the next lesson and talk about some more poses for the female characters. So let's press on. 4. Drawing a Female Pose - First Example: All right. So now, for the female poses one basically along, get the forms and really stretch the legs. And, you know, this is really dependent upon your style on what you're looking for. But as far as exaggerating the female poses, I think one of the best things to do, or at least start with is really get the curvature of the spine going and the ark of the back in the long legs. So if we were to do the proportions and say a nine heads tall model or something, you can really bring up the pelvis because you want to extend the overall length of the legs. So let me just drawn the length here real quick and kind of explain what I'm talking about . And you want to do like, lots of things like a kicked out lay or, you know, just ah, um, you leaned against a wall or hand on the hip. There's a lot to different poses, and you can really kind of stretch this with the proportions as well. So, for instance, you know, see, you've got ERM or shoulder back here. It's got this ultra long arms, so I tend to draw my female characters with long arms, long legs and short enough to torso, and that's completely up to you and whatever style depiction you want. But obviously there's. There's just lots of ways to do that. And then I worry about the ark of the back. In that tape, redness and arc you get and slender nous of the waste, a tape witness from the pelvis kind of tilted back so that that role tilts of where to draw the pelvis are pelvic bone. It would be shaped somewhere like that. Definitely be pointing back this way more. And that really helps to give that feeling of, ah, sultry or beauty, you know, seductive kind of look so lots of curves when drawing the women. Obviously, you know, there are styles that are very angular, that do it really well, too. But I think if you're just starting out and you're really having a hard time getting soft, feminine looking qualities, you might want to start with all curves. Eso me particularly. I use some angles, but a lot more curves on the women and more angles on the male characters. It just seems to be a good way to define male versus female. So So again, kind of overextending that front foot, you know, kind of making it look like high heels or something Just again just to push that Ah fact, make it a little bit more dramatic of oppose now a struggle to bring the ankles down thin enough. So even here, I feel like the legs need to be longer by comparison than I normally like to, ah, to draw. So what I'm gonna do is just short in the upper upper body a little bit like this. And let's see, it might even appear out what to do with that other arm. So, you know, might do something like one arm up back, you know, kind of messing with the hair or something like that. So, you know, just like that we get this kind of overexaggerated pose. Proportions are all wacky, you know, all that stuff, but it's not. It's not so much about that in the beginning. You just want to kind of get that idea down and then, you know, modify it from there. So again, these these ah initial poses don't have to be perfection. They just have to convey a message on drily to yourself. So whenever you're designing these, you just want to be able to see into it and go, OK, I think I know where I'm going with this. Unless you're showing it to a client, then maybe you want to define it a different way. But I always look at it like, Can I see where the ideas are? Does this inspire me to take it to the next step? If it doesn't, then I got to reevaluate and figure out what's not right about it. Can I salvage the sketch, or do I just start right over? Because sometimes you can turn a bad sketch into a good one. So you gotta gotta really make that that decision for yourself. So now, as I get in here and refine a little bit more, I'll just throw in some basic shapes just to kind of again check the work and see if this is a good sketch or not. It's kind of potential with women. I generally will make the, ah the anatomy a little bit less defined, so not as muscular anyways and use larger hands by comparison and larger shoulders. I think that has kind of a cool look to it. Ah, longer slender neck and generally a more rounded head. But also you don't remember Teoh make the head larger at the top. You know, it's pretty evident most not every person, I guess, for stylization choices. You could do whatever you prefer there as well, but it's just something I tend to dio the. The elbows generally line up to the naval. You see. There's a little bit of a relationship there with the arms up, obviously. But ah, when you start to stretch out the limbs, a lot of this Congar oh, in various ways. So that's generally rule. It's definitely rule with realistic drawing, but with, um, animated styles, it can vary greatly. So I have a tough time explaining this stuff and saying, You know, this is a rule. That's a role. There's just no money, there's no money, there's just no rules. There's just too many variables. And when it comes to style choices and and, uh, the body in general, I mean, you think about the fact that we're also different from one another, even in reality. So then you add style and, ah, an interpretation into that. And it's like good luck. There's just millions and millions of possibilities there, So yes, so with this, just go with what you think looks cool. Get your own feeling, Teoh. You know, that's obviously got to still read as something that you know is the female body or whatever. But, uh, you know, do things to try to make it your own. Because I'll tell you, with comics, I tend to see that the thing that makes the most sense with comics is being an individual. Um, I think that's where it thrives. That's where people seem to do really well. And, uh, always noticed that if I adduce piece of artwork that it just seems a bit mundane and a bit like everybody's done that one. It will only go so far. But then, if I do something that I really feel is just creative and my own thing, it tends to get noticed more. So that's just my ah, you know, my depiction or interpretation on that, But a little bit of hair here now, I'm not gonna get too far into this one. I'll just do some crazy looking fingers there, and now we'll get into doing some other poses. But what I want to basically illustrate here for you is that you can still take just a basic polls. It's not, you know, this is nothing special, just a girl kind of stand there. Six. Actually hold myself in your ear or something and then hand on the hip one like out, so really simple but exaggerated and, you know, not from any references from the mind. So that's where you can do this stuff and really come up with some mom, some interesting looking poses, and you got to still make the boring poses look interesting. So I guess that's the main thing with this. It's like, you know, could it be a lot? Could be a lot more dynamic of, of course, but you also need those basic poses where they're just kind of standing around. But they're not just straight up and down there, not just lifeless. And that's hopefully what I conveyed there. So now let's try something that's, ah, lot more dynamic in, Ah, you know, kind of action and movement 5. Drawing Female Poses Second Example: Okay, so now this one actually want to explain what I'm gonna draw before, And the reason being is because if I just time lapse me drawing, you could, you know, see the process. And I think that's still good food for thought. But at the same time, you could probably make the argument that like, Well, you're just scribbling and sometimes you get it. Sometimes you don't. A lot of times you have to challenge yourself to go into a concept, knowing exactly what you're gonna draw a reason being when you work commercially, someone's gonna give you a script. And if you don't develop that ability to read the script and then draw what you see, then good luck work with clients and even commissions are gonna become pretty tricky. So what we need to do is first painting narrative, just easy narrative. But, uh, we'll say, a character swinging on a rope. It's like a bad girl type thing or whatever, but she's swinging on ah, rope or whatever and kind of kicking her legs out towards camera. We'll do it a slight tilt away from cameras, so it's not too tricky. I want to start a little bit more basic and work up to anything more complex. So that doesn't, you know, send you astray if you're not ready for that. So that's the narrative. And where's the camera? Will say the camera angle is a little bit low. Um, so we're kind of looking up with the characters just a little bit. So what we do there is we'd first establish our our line of sight. OK, that's a horribly not straight line. It doesn't have to be anyways, but that's my best. Attempted a straight line. So our line of sites up there, which means that we're looking Wait a second. We'd be looking down with the character, My bad goodness, mistakes to people. All right, so now we're looking up at the character. So just so you know, if there was a vanishing point, we're looking up. It's stuff, right? So she's flying through the air, stun a slight angle. Let's get the main masses of the body. And so let's do. Let's figure out where torso is. She's swinging on a rope so her torso is gonna be angled away from us a little bit. There's the middle section of the torso Here's that rib cage. Just basic shapes. Just get started. Arms are gonna be up. I would say they're relatively even because she's holding onto a rope. Maybe. Maybe now I guess it depends on how should hold onto the rope. Let's get those shoulders in place. We're gonna see one shoulder so they always get cut off like that, and then they're probably going to come together. Her elbows are probably gonna kind of come together for balance. Something like that and the arms are going to come up and attached to the rope. Okay, so the clavicles, their collar bones are gonna be way up here. And we got to think about the Ark of the back, the legs coming out towards camera. So let's put extreme mark in the back like this. Let's get that Ah pelvis shape in there. And let's tilt that differently than the upper body. Because, you know, obviously the ark that's gonna tell back now like this okay. And then the legs coming out towards camera like that, that's actually a little bit further away. Let me do this. And this is where it's kind of funny. Withy stick person effect. You got to try to visualize depth with two dots and a line. But it does work. You get better at it over time. So let's have one leg kind of out more and then the I like that downward Turn on the foot will put that in there and I will bring the other leg back. OK, and then what we'll do for the head. See if if we do this, we can either bring the head up forward like she's kind of looking through her her arms, which I don't know. It might be a little bit forced or we could bring the arms up further and then tilt the head off to the side and then you just kind of get the eyes peeking over just a little bit . I think that looks a touch more natural, so we're gonna probably go with that. So let's let's try to refine this a little bit more and I probably should have started with Rope is well, just because you want that kind of feeling that there's that everything works together and it's attached, you know, you don't want to get in the habit of like with this girl over here just drawn on a blank white campus. It could be fun, but, you know, if you don't get used to attaching them to some kind of background or, you know, uh, um, Prop will say for lack of a better term, then you're not going to get a real solid feel to your characters. They always work better when they're in some kind of scenario and attached to again a problem. So let's take this. Now let's try to refine it with some basic shapes. So circle for the shoulder cylinder for the arm. We're not going to really see this shoulder. We gotta remember. The shoulder comes up. The collarbone kind of attach is like this. We get that rib cage in there. It's a muscle on the side here in the bag, and I probably need to bring that and more and bring the hip out pretty far. Since this leg is off to the side, Bring that out now. That's where it gets tricky to on these angles because, as I started out of the knee way up here, well, you could see if I put her knee appear. It almost works because of foreshortening, but it all. It might make the legs look to Ah, stocky. So what I'm gonna dio has kind of keep an eye on that because, like I said, it may or may not work in front of the lake from this angle will probably look relatively straight. The foot will have this downturn kind of pointer foot out something like that. Feet are always tricky, So probably slaughter that for a minute and come back. You see what I do? Yeah, And then that was kind of my fear. The upper leg just looks too stocky, and I ended up making the bottom portion of leg to large. Let's go back here a little. Let's extend this down. And that's really why I like the combination of establishing the links and then adding the forms and still not being committed to that decision until I render the anatomy overtop because I don't always pick the right lengths with the Stick man or Stick Woman representation that ideo. So it's really just Ah, um a process of getting closer and closer step by step. No, this leg. I don't like making it look like they're both the same direction. I think it'll look better. Hopefully if I have one tucked back a little more and then this is always tricky getting the leg toe look right as it recedes into space. But notice I'm trying to use that that perspective line that we have to kind of guide me. So the body in perspective is ah, could be very helpful of the perspective lines What? The body can be very helpful, and we're gonna talk more about that as well. So So I will say something like that. We're gonna keep it basic just to get this this thing done. So we got to figure out where the elbows would be else. Say, somewhere on here. And this is the other kind of neat thing. Like once you've got one arm in place, this there's your information for the other arm, right? So if we know that when you bring your arms together, elbows end up in basically the same spot eso itt's kind of need. It's almost like another perspective. It's our for help to have four shortening basically. And I'm seeing the heads too far back. Peace don't where it's currently at school. Me. You see if we can make this work. Yeah, I think it still works. It's a little strange looking, but that's fine. Be the first person to draw something strange in a comic. So yes, so there's there's our basic pose now. The only thing is she just kind of looks like she's running. But I think that's partly because of this prize in line that I have. So we have to maybe embellish it a little bit more. I think if we tell that this leg versus straight out or even slanted the body even more, you'll see me constantly tweak and tilt things. Ah, and probably even mawr, um, art to the back, I thinks. Let me try that because it just looks like she's not really overextending herself as much as she would be if she was swinging in action. Now the thing is, too, is it? If you can find some great reference of, you know, a person doing this, that's awesome, you know. But it's always I look at it like it's so tricky to find great reference like that. You really want to develop your ability Teoh to edit the work and come up with it. But you know don't discount it. If you can get lucky and find something like that, use it. Learn from it, committed to memory in any way that you can and keep on pressing forward. Now, other things that help obviously with comics when you're doing this is the fact that you know you can add a cape and you know you can add other dynamics that really help sell it. Eso that's that's what's nice about comics. It's like you don't just have to draw the character like that. You know you at her hair and her hair is flowing in the wind or whatever. It's all of a sudden it looks like she has a lot more movement than she did a moment ago. So props again are really important for, you know, selling that action and that feeling of movement. And I think as well if we get rid of this line, it won't read. So uh, so much like she's on the ground now. Obviously, another thing would be, you know, if we were doing a full scene, which I won't get too far into this. But we could add buildings at another perspective with some of these perspective lines and show that she's, you know, not flying in the air. And that's really gonna help push it. So, you know, clouds going up like this. Couple of birds, you know, the the whole story there. So So that's how you do. I mean, that's just another another scene. I'll do some or that I'm gonna time lapse through. But I wanted to at least give you an idea of, like how I would try to approach something if somebody gave me a script. And then, you know, it's not to say it. The first sketch comes out the best, and that's always why you want to keep these rough sketches very quick, very loose, very energetic s so that you can show him the clients. I go, Yeah, I like it or no, let's change this. Change that change as much as you can hear. You'll be glad you did, but yeah, So let's move on to some or examples and these ones, like I said, I will time lapse and try to get some more variety going here for us. So let's do it 6. Drawing the Mannequin and Refining the Pose: So now we want to do is draw some more poses. But we're gonna take these level further and kind of tournament a manikins. So after you've got the base initial line work put down for your links and you know, you figured out your polls in the most rudimentary way, you want to start adding forms over top, and this is a nice way to start checking the perspective and see if the pose is actually gonna work. Eso you'll see me redrawn softer race a few times, but I basically throw in some, you know, cylinder shapes and some organic lines just to kind of connect them all together on Really see if the polls that I was envisioning works out while or not so still trying toe, hold yourself to accountable and critique yourself too harshly at this stage. But this definitely an area where you start to check it mawr and fine tune it to see if it's really gonna work out for combat pose. Although we're gonna focus more on structure, we're still going to start with that had torso, pelvis, kind of starting point and then attached the limbs again. This is just a way to simplify the process so that you don't get too confused with the more complex polls right away. But notice that I'm still making interval changes, moving things around, checking the work as I go. I do this because I feel like it helps me not back to myself in a corner and maybe not stop a sketch that could otherwise be saved. So again, if you're able to itemize those parts of the body, think of the legs independently of the late three arms, independently things of that nature, then you're gonna be able to keep moving forward and hopefully get the most out of the polls. But there's definitely times when areas of the body or just incorrect and they'd be redrawn . But I try to think about all the twisting and the contorting that different parts of the body can dio and, you know, really, the sockets and the joints of how the shoulders work in the hips. There's just a lot of range of movement for those areas of the body, so often times you can kind of just maneuver him around, re change some shapes and try to come at it from a different angle. It's another reason why I like to do breakdowns of certain components of the body feel like it gives me a little bit more food for thought when doing portions like this. Now, when working in perspective, throwing in a basic shape like that could be so helpful. It just kind of reminds you of where the forms might be placed. It's not a definitive guide, but it definitely helps. Then, you know, drawn, opposed like this from just imagination on a blank white canvas can get a little bit confusing at times. So even that basic, primitive shape can really make it a bit easier to envision where this character might be in ah three d space. Foreshortening is pretty complex by itself, so we're gonna cover that in a series of lessons as well. But the main thing is to remember to study from photos, take some of your own photos, really pay attention to the overlapping shapes and the way that they lose prominence in the shop. Based upon how close they are to the camera and how far away they are and blocked by the parts of the body, you're not gonna memorize it all overnight. Just be ready to do lots of studies, and obviously you're gonna embellish that. Create your own stylized versions as well. But just be ready to do lots of studies so that you do start to pick up on certain things and you know the way they look coming out towards camera. I think a big part of getting proficient at comics is really learning to take what is really there based on your own photos or your own reference, but adding just the right amount of style and creativeness to make it not look like anything like a photo. Because obviously, if you just took photos and redrum, they're just gonna lack a certain element of creativeness and expression. Eso You have to utilize your own ability to jump past that and see through that and make something. It's more dynamic, so none of these have actually required any photo reference at all. But I practice a lot of times with reference and with my own photos toe have an idea of where some of these shapes might reside. And then again, I use style choices to embellish upon it. And that's why if you really studied the pictures, you're going to see that there's some inconsistencies from what a real body would look like . But again, that's me choosing style over actual function or even, you know, reality. Now, another thing that you want to practice and be aware of is recycling poses. So what you want to get used to doing is looking at your poses and going okay, this one jumping out towards camera look pretty cool. But what if arms were on a different polls? What if I combined oppose from another sketch that I recognize that works well with this, and I hybrid the two together? That's going to save you a lot of time. It's going to get you to start thinking about your characters in a different way where again you're not searching for just the right look. You're not trying to find just the right reference, which can just be a ridiculous pursuit at times, but instead utilizing your own work almost like a sort of clip art. But since the jurors that you can do whatever you want with it and again, recycling your work is a very efficient way to work. So for this last polls, I want to use perspective again, and I also wanted to do a bit of an upshot. Reason being up shots are actually more difficult for me. So they're actually one of my weaker links in my chain and have to make sure to address that. So what I do is I'll generally warm up with some other poses, and then I'll do some things a bit harder for me to accomplish, to see if I'm starting to see the shapes a bit better and being able to turn things on the page. But again, just make sure not to shy away from the things that are more complex or hard for you, Maybe the weak links in the chain. You have to really try to develop your plethora of poses in a sense, you know, getting a nice range of what you can accomplish. Don't get in that bad habit of just drawing what you're good at, because that's kind of when you'll stagnate and you won't grow as much. Eso the best way to approach that again is warm up, build some confidence and then go for that tough pose, so that will complete these lessons. If you'd like to complete the project file, draw five different poses using the techniques you've seen here. And I'd love to see we come up with. So thanks very much for watching this class more on the way world soon.