How to Draw Various Body Types and Proportions for Comics

1. Introduction Video: Hello, everyone. My name is Robert Mars. Hello and welcome to my class. Drawing various body types and proportions for comics In this class, I walk into my process for developing different style characters with different body types . This could be a great exercise to break out of the habit we all seem to fall into from time to time during the same boring characters over and over again. Well, we practice and drawn the body and poor very different ways. Well drawn, overweight character, a skinny character, a curvy female and a muscle balm broke. This will lie to really stretch your imagination and ultimately help you to tell a better story in your comics. In this class, you're gonna learn about the difference between organic and angular lines, proportions, gesture, opposing the character and refining the polls. I hope you find these lessons would be fun and informative. And I can't wait to see we come up with, as always, keep drawn, keep bond and bye for now, 2. L1 Basic Gesture and Proportions: all right, so to draw a different character types of things I want to focus on first is really the gesture in the polls. So we'll draw out four different characters and will really focus on just getting in the broad choke. So it's gonna be gesture a little bit on proportions because we're going to establish the lengths of the forms and the body parts as we do this. So what? The first character I want somebody that's, ah, pretty plump and bit overweight. So characters like this could be fun. And, you know, you just really want experiment with the torso and in the shape that you get here so you could use ovals like a noble for the upper part of the body, a big oval for the Bali. You could also think about a little bit of a being shape. So it's kind of what I think about here with the torso, and then you want to vary up those those proportions of each. So, for instance, you might make the upper chest area bit smaller. By comparison, you might extend the belly lower things like that, and then with the gesture of it, makes you move this head back a little bit. I want to think about kind of, ah, center line toward the body is facing. So I like to draw this little center line, and that gives me a bit more of an idea of direction, of the torso and for the arms. I'll just kind of attach these kind of stick man arms, hands on the hips, something like that, our side of the belly, something like that. And for the legs. I want to make sure that the legs are pretty squatty and smaller by comparison. I think we'll add to the you know, the look of the character being very, very big in the midsection. So I'm gonna purposely make these legs short, kind of stumpy and notice that I'm getting in a Ford Bend in a back bend. So that's just a quick representation of the way the anatomy goes. So just like that, we pretty much have our gesture. Ah, and again kind of proportions and lengths there. So the other thing I want to do is take and really keep the head pretty low to the body. So maybe even just kind of said it right on top of the chest there just because, you know, as people gain weight, I tend to see less of the bones and the net gets smaller. In fact, larger get them or the neck just kind of blends into the shoulders. So we want to get a little bit of that. And there's while maybe not to ultra blended in or whatever, but just a little bit of that going on so I could jump in here and throw in some basic forms. And just like that, we've got our first kind of representation anyways, of the character we're gonna draw. Okay, so let's go and move this over here and let's work on our next one now. So for this next character, I want somebody that's very tall and skinny, you know? Nice. A nice contrast from what we just did. Contrast is so important for storytelling and, you know, really making sure that you don't draw these same characters over and over again. We're all guilty of that because we basically it comfortable with what we know and what we're confident at. So then that shows through in our work because we just kind of repeat that comfort level in comfort zone that we're at so tried to really play around with these ideas. And so what I'm gonna do first is I'm gonna think about how the the head of this character could be tall and skinny as well. So that's that's kind of the basis for most character layouts. Is the head high the head shape? Even so, eso we'll do here is kind of work down and you know, one of the rules or I don't know if it's a rule, but it's something that's known is Ah, forehead down gives you the lower pelvis area. I think it's even foreheads down is like the pelvic bone or something like that. But but in this case, we're actually going to shy away from what we know. They're what we think we know about that and really allow it to be more so. What I want to do is is really a long gait. The characters midsection and noticed him using a little bit are quite a bit more angular lines already to describe this character's form because it's, you know, it's kind of about shape languages. Well, you know, you have somebody that's moral bees there's gonna be more ovals and more rounded shapes. And then somebody that skinny and more muscular is gonna tend to have more angular lines and things like that. Not that you can't mix and mingle those concepts together, of course, but for the most part, you're gonna kind of think that way. So again, I can establish this four. Ben and back. Ben, I'm gonna actually keep this from being less curved. Notice over here that I really kind of over exemplified over Illustrated That board been a Batman? Where? Here it's gonna be mawr elongated unless pronounced again. It's It's all of that that will kind of factor. End of this character looking very tall and narrow and less curvy. And things like best will attach the feet to the ground. Uh, what? This character will just put one arm down by their side so you can do a four bend back, been here as well. Maybe even bring that hand in front of lay. Little things like that will tend to make the polls look a little bit more interesting. And to make the arm look excessively long and a torso look shorter. Generally, the wrist lines up to lower portion of the pelvis, but in this case, I'm actually gonna purposely bring that down further. So again, no. Make the character Phil and look very lanky, just having doing a bit of a gesture. So, like, raise the hand up, maybe a thumbs up or something like that, Just so it's a bit different again. I want to think in terms of contrast as I create these character concepts, uh, probably stretched this character out even further because I just really want this tall, skinny kind of character, and I think it'll be fun. So just drop in some basic forms. Can thinking a little bit more angular about these than I was with the previous character. Some like that and just like that would get our second representation of the character. We can also put a center line to the angle of the phase. So if we have this character looking forward with, this character is looking off to the side a little bit and again. Something as simple as that adds a little bit mawr, um, of a concept to the character and then also, you know, just a size difference. So once they're all done overly paid more attention to this. But I definitely want this character a lot taller in that first character. Okay, so now for this next one, I want to draw a female character, and I'm gonna go with something a lot more curvy. I'm gonna probably start with a bit of an s curve, so sometimes you can draw through or not. Sometimes pretty much all the time. You can draw through your character and you can think about, Ah, a bit of a flow in the inaction line. Really? Eso with this one. It'll be a bit more of a NASCAR. Probably a little more elongated, but I'll show you what I mean here. So just with establishing something like this, I can potentially get a bit more of a flow going to the stance of the character. Also, just like I mentioned with the first character. I'm gonna use a bit more curves in this character unless angular lines, because I want her to appear that she's got, um, you know, a bit more of essential curvy body, not so angular and so rigid. Eso Here's how I would bring out a bit of the S curve. So we want to get ah, a bit of an hourglass shape going on here. And there's there's the curve that you see there. So, uh, the upper body kind of comes out back, and if I was to get the center line to the body So we get this hourglass shape and I'm gonna give her longer legs, I think that will make it look more more interesting. Bring her up like this. And again, I'm gonna use, like, flowing, sweeping lines. As I do this, I took one leg back. Just give her a little bit more of a, you know, different posture than the other characters. And I will just bring the arms down. So here's that Ford Ben back bend a bit of a lightning bolt, Really? And then this arm will be tucked behind the body a little bit. Is that lightning bolt again? Its basic forms for the arms and with leg Here, don't bring this back foot right here in this leg. Remember to draw through if you have overlaps. It was kind of hide this leg back here for the breast, tryto drum round at the bottom and then point upwards towards the collar bones a little bit . I don't have to go all the way to the middle of a collarbone, but you often see these little pyramids in alignment marks and character designs. And that's because it's just easier to fight the urge to put two big circles right there. You want to think more like teardrops and again rounded bottoms, but then soften up the tops trying not to be too angular like that. Your bottom leg just kind of Bring this back, bring the foot out a little bit, use a bit of, ah, diamond shape for the foot, you see a little bit. It's like back here. So just like that, we have our next gesture and pose. Obviously, we're gonna have to adjust things as we go as faras up. You know, subtle proportion differences. Maybe not so subtle. But the head looks pretty small right there, so we'll just adjust that up We go. So if you're working traditionally, just gonna soft, erase and redraw that service a little bit easier for digital to just maneuver. So just like that would get that next one. So now for the final one, I want to draw something far from the norm. So you could pretty much say that these air relatively normal characters, you know, within reason, I guess. And then this next one, I want to draw this big, hulking brute. So what I want to do here is I'm gonna start with a large hat, but I'm gonna change the posture quite significantly. I would have them leaning over this kind of lumber. Cem, Uh, gesture. So the spine would be way back here. I'm gonna really stack Thea. Stack the form. So there's the torso. And as it comes down here and it meets the pelvis, the pelvis is gonna be kind of hidden a bit. Uh, I have one arm coming out this way. Maybe if arm coming out towards cameras, we get a little bit of some four shortening going on here. The alarm coming out this way. Legs kind of ah, protruding outward. And then back, You know, So again, they're kind of hunched over, so you won't even see that in the legs just like that. We've got our next one and again we can throw on some basic forms. But we won't also allow this to be energetic and, uh, lose to interpretation at this point somewhat so that we can still explore ideas like, I definitely want this character's shoulders to be really, really wide. So even though I have established a little bit of the proportions here, it's not carved into stone by any means. And there you just like that we have our base gestures in place will now head over to the next lesson and continue to refine these. So with that, let's move on. 3. L2 Drawing Overweight Characters: all right, so now we're going to refine this character first. We gotta really establish a bit more of, Ah description to him as well. So we've got this base gesture in place, but we need to refine the forms and give him some anatomy or lease some hints to anatomy. So what I like to do with the character like this is fight the urge, really to sculpt the anatomy or muscles. I get, you know, in such a habit by drawing superheroes that it's really easy for me to want to go like this and start drawing in biceps and triceps and all this definition. And although that's not necessarily always a bad idea, so you could definitely have characters that look like they're more plump. But they have some definition their arms. You'll see out. I actually want to give this character more defined, legs left to find arms and talk a little bit about that. So there's definitely, you know, people that have definition in certain parts, their body and like and others. We hold our weight in different ways, so men are notorious for holding weight in their bellies and even on their bags and women are can be known to hold weight on their legs and their thighs, so they don't want to say there's always a rule. I think there's hardly ever a rule, but there's definitely, um, some instances where you can pay attention to it and it's, you know, maybe common or people can recognize it will say that because again I have a hard time saying Hey, thanks to common with the human body because there's so much variation that you see from person to person and you know what? Our goals are physically things like that. So there's just so many differences. But in this case, what I want to do is really forgo the definition in the arms so they draw through this, even feel like that's a bit too angular for the elbow and I've got a little bit too much definition from the shoulder to the tricep. So what I want to do is just really play around with the concept of rounding over this information. Now it will tend to make it look a bit more cartoony, but I think that's a good thing is well, like, I think that that kind of expressiveness might be kind of fun for this type of character. So again, I'm gonna play around with these things. But overall, I'm gonna try to avoid a za many angles. Not that I won't have any angles in this character, but I'm gonna try to cut back on those because the angles generally will make something look mawr muscular, more masculine on. I guess not that this character could appear masking, but I really want that softness and feel, you know, angles make something look more rigid. So we're gonna soften that. Uh and I kind of like that Look better. I'm also gonna draw through a little bit like this and leave some of that in place. The reason why is I like to kind of paint this picture with my mannequin drawings. That there's dimensional is possible. So by drawing these little rings and the wider parts of the arm in the form the divide of the farm in the upper arm and even these ovals for the shoulders, even though again, I'm not going to show this much definition when I refined the character, it's still very helpful for me to visualize this more as a three dimensional object on the page and not as a as a flat drawing. You know, that's that's ultimately what we're all after. We're trying to think mawr dimensionally about our two dimensional artwork. It's a ah, it's a bit of trickery, in a sense, So you want Teoh play around with this, But I think I got this from my three d days. So when I did three D design, you're always staring at wire frames, and but I think it's great because it it makes you think mawr dimensionally. And then that kind of shows through in your your two D drawings. So what? The trip? Easiest up here, the shoulders. I'm gonna have that come up and kind of flow right into the shape of the head. The other thing that tends to happen with a character like this is there won't be a skinny or neck coming down so that the net can be as wide as the face. So that is why it is the head I should say. So just like that will even kind of place where the ear might be on the side of the face. But again, the main thing is, I want to show the head going right down into the shoulders in their being almost a bit more of a flowing line that connects all that versus, you know, the angles. You might see her. The angles will definitely see in the next character. So for the legs, I want the legs to be a lot more well, more defined than I did the arms because one of things I tend to see with characters or people but the characters I design and the people I pay attention to in life, I guess I have definitely seen people that were overweight, but they had really powerful looking legs. It kind of makes sense anyways, because, you know, again, you hold your weight in different places. I'm not just gesture early, but also just your body naturally stores it in different places. So, uh, but if you don't store as much of that weight in your legs and your you're still hauling all this weight around, it makes sense that you could have some pretty powerful looking legs. And like I said, I have actually noticed that on people that I worked with and things like that that did, Ah, jobs, where they still managed to, you know, be overweight. But they had labor intensive jobs, like climbing ladders or something like that. And so they still had these big, strong calf muscles. But they were, you know, move bigger on the belly from drinking too many beverages off, you know, whatever. So just keep that in mind that again. You can really play around with these concepts, but it is actually evident in the world around you. So part of it is paying attention, and then the other part is stretching your imagination and making your own variation to these proportions. But again, I'm going to get in here and kind of show a little bit more, uh, angles here and ah, you know, So you probably see that the leg here. I think I'm gonna make this foot a lot larger as well. But the leg here has this, you know, more has more definition in it than the arms do up there. And that's okay. It doesn't need to all be entirely consistent. I think there's a lot to be said for consistency in your work, but I think with stuff like this, you really have to play around with these different variables. It just gives you more. You know, things that you can really work with as you designed these characters. Eso, for instance. I think I even want to see what it looks like if I make these legs even squat here. So I'm going to try to stretch these upward. And so, by comparison, it's just gonna make the character look even bigger in the middle. And I think I like that. It's it's a bit kind of cartoony, but, you know, fun in a sense, and I think I like that. We've been widened out the tops of legs here again. I can throw in these little rings and really think about each area of the body more dimensionally. It's like that, and I like the larger foot coming out towards camera. I feel like it helps with that idea for shortening, because even though this is a basic mannequin and pose, I really want there to still feel. I wanted to feel like the characters coming off the page. So little bits of foreshortening can do a lot for that. There we go. So just like that, we've got our necks while our first character refined a bet and looking, Ah, a bit more ready for the next stage, which would be drawing a character concept over top. But this is how I work through my manikins, and I would probably clean this up one more time. But again, it gives me what I need to to start designing character more efficiently. Eso with that, let's head over to the next lesson and refined the next character. 4. L3 Drawing the Skinny Character: Okay, so now for this next character again, we're going to really think about the elongated form. So tall, slender, even a skinny head, uh, more angles. As we draw the anatomy, more defined anatomy. All these things will go into ah, and to play with this character. So first I'll start with the head and work my way down and again a very tall, lanky, kind of head shape. Likewise, you know, elongated skinny Mac and lots of angles. Let's of, ah, segmentation to the anatomy. So I don't have to hold back here from showing definition Ana on the muscles because generally when somebody's pretty skinny, they're pretty defined so I can get in here and draw tricep bicep Pretty defined pictorial muscles. And I tend to find that drawing with angles. Uh, at first makes things a bit easier for me anyways, but I actually plan on leaving a lot of that. So where I might go through with another type of character and really refined those angles and ah, at in a lot more organic shapes with this character, I'll leave a lot of it because I think it just kind of matches the design that I'm thinking of. So let's see the rib cage. I'd be pretty to find on this character as well. And even the abdomen. I'm probably not gonna go through and draw every single muscle. I can relate some of this in volume and forms like this. So, for instance, just the shape can mean the abdomen, muscles or stomach muscles. I don't need Teoh illustrate everyone I don't need. Teoh draw every Saray tous interior muscle or anything like that. I can just kind of go through and get the major for major volume major forms. And I think that's really important, especially as you're still explaining. The character is still trying to ultimately this designer character. If you jump into every bit of detail to early on, it kind of hinder the process. It can kind of mess up your design process, basically So right here we just want to get the volumes. So again, this this hand is way lower. Then, um, then it would be on a normal character, almost touching his knee, which is really elongated, but that's that's fine, it's ah, again, we're really going for contrast here again, really stretching out these limbs one foot to the side. One towards camera again makes the stance just a little bit more interesting. And we can also put in those little rings and lines to define the the wider parts or again , just kind of gives us that sense of of dimensional feel to the character. And I think this is a little more in tune with the way that I draw most characters, so it's probably noticed it was even a bit faster. But I do tend to feel like I said that angles will help you pinpoint most of the design, and then you can go back through and really sculpt it, you know, one or two times whatever it takes you to get to you and result in ADM or of a balance of organic and angular shapes. So just like that, we've got our next character refined and are ready to move on to the next. So with that, let's head over to our next lesson 5. L4 Drawing the Female Character: Okay, So now what? This character I want to think about more. Ah, more curves, more long, gated, stretched out like see curves. And I want to show you here as I do this. So what I want to do is extend the lines like this and connect in that way. I don't want to want to do a little bit less of the kind of start and stop like that. You still get the same kind of line, but generally you're going to get a little bit more energy to a line if you try to throw it even if you throw it and then connect it to another thrown line like that, you're gonna lose a little bit of accuracy. But the line's gonna have more energy. So when I think about that again, I want these to be flowing lines. I want them to be curves. Ah, a lot less angular lines going on this, uh, this design of this character. So I find this to be a bit trickier to get just right. But it's just a different style of ah, rendering the character that ultimately makes it feel a bit more like a feminine design like a woman Where if I was to use more angles is that that I couldn't draw a woman with the angular, um, layout angular line work it would still read is a woman if I get the right proportions and , you know, labeled the anatomy of such and things like that. But it's gonna feel a bit more elegant if I use fluid lines. And again, I'm kind of throwing the lines a little bit more than I would on a male character. And I could just be the way that I create. I don't know that it's exactly that way for everybody, but, uh, you know, I'll still use, um, angler lines on things like the hands, you know, because you're gonna get a bit more of a rigidness because you're in the hands of tendency of the bony landmarks. So you know the knuckles, things like that. So you're going to get a bit more of a rigidness with hands, so might use a little bit of angular line work like that. But for the rest of the body, you know the brass. I'm obviously going to use more curves there, and then the collar bones, I could say that those could be more angular because again, they're bony landmarks. But collarbones actually curve. Ah, great deal. So even that you want a little bit of rigidness to him. But you also want a curve because they collarbones come up from the middle. They go more like this. They have, ah, pretty significant bend as they come up to the shoulder. So eso it's kind of a mixed there. You want that little bit of rigidness from the bony landmarks? But then you want that feeling of a flow because they're not straight on this and through the tricky thing about drawing bodies in general because pretty much nothing is straight. So, um, but then when we stylized our characters, we start to throw in all this, you know, let's straight anatomy all the straight kind of, um, line work because we're really trying to, um, you know, implement perspective into the work. I think that's generally why we tend to make things more angular or, you know, we just really go with rigid lines because we're trying to make something appear and feel more solid. So what? This arm back here actually gonna move that line over and then I want to get to see him. Actually, moving the arm over altogether just was too far over. And then the hand pose. Probably just something I'm easy for now. Simple. I'm like, Damn so not a very natural looking hand polls. But she kind of looks like she's a little bit too at attention. Not not So relax. Try that one more time. If I just curl the fingers inward, it might look like a little bit more of a relaxed pose. Yeah, I think that's a little better now. This one looks very un relaxed, so let's bring them all these fears in here. And I could probably widen out the face a bit more, but I'll end up going through each one of these with one more level of refinement. But I just want to show you how it worked through these and get the ultimate the design of the body that I'm looking for. I feel like the foot Sabet, where it's all adjust that as well. Again, we could throw in our little dimensional rings here, line down the middle line down the middle of pace, and just like that, we've got our next pose. You don't see the back of a foot here. But maybe not. Yes. So just like that, we've got our next poles into place. Let's go in and work on our final pose, and so we come up with. So with that, let's move on to our next lesson. 6. L5 Drawing the Brute: Okay, so now for the big, hulking Bahamas, big brutes And these air, probably actually my favorite wants to draw. But, you know, teach their own all the different character types. Offer some fun and you need uniqueness and opportunity to explore. But I would say this one actually can combine really both of what we've talked about. So we've been talking about angular and organic shapes and forms. I think this connection of both So, um, you could definitely go with just all one of the other as well. So it's it's kind of a cross cross platform because with all these muscles, you want some angular effects to the anatomy. It's what again makes it kind of rigid and solid and things like that. But then also, you want a little bit of that bubbly kind of curvature going on as well. Eso that it looks like you know, the round over that you get from big muscles and things like that. So it's kind of kind of tricky, because again, I think you could really go either way with it. Now, with uh, very stylistic interpretations of this, then you may get like a very, you know angular approach has definitely seen that, and it looks pretty neat, Um, but I almost feel like you have to at least have some. So, for instance, if you go with a character like this, it's too overly bubbly. I can't think of a better term, but I will say bubbly is the term. Then it's It softens them up a bit. But not only that, it really makes it look kind of strange. Like if all these Muslim groups are all rounded over, it just takes something away. You almost have to introduce at least some angles, too. Make it feel more solid. Now that's just my interpretation. Obviously, mileage can vary greatly from different art styles and what our imagination depicts or what we're trying to, you know, implement on the page from our imagination. But I just really feel like you need at least have some strong angles. Eso with this, I'm trying to really get the effect that the characters leaning over that's why have the head so low. So the trapezius air just really high up. I'm also gonna give the character a smaller head because that makes the rest of the body look bigger. and, uh, yeah, again, Really Trying Dio bring in that low, low hanging head in comparison to the big upper body, the big shoulders, and also make the hands really large. So for that kind of hulking brute. And I think that it's good to have, like, big, overly large hands basically. And I'll do the same with the feet. My dad getting getting some of this anatomy, showing good separation to the muscle groups, my Pam. And then also, since he's leaned over so much, this goes back to the posture. But you know it. Also, I want to say posture, gesture, but also storytelling, like I feel like all this is part of the story. So a lot of times I imagine you know what this character is doing. Why there, you know, leaned over like this. Obviously, the gesture of the poles and the proportions of the character can say while they're leaned over like that because they're just so top heavy. You know, the proportions just kind of dictated their anatomy dictates it. But also I like to think past that and even think of the story and say, Well, this characters, you know, big, tough guy, Big meanie, whatever. And so he his stance even kind of shows that So your old you're also getting the narrative in there as as you do this. So hopefully your you're always thinking of that story line as you create your characters. Imagine that's pretty much what we all do. But I just want to explain my thought process. A lot of times when I'm doing this, I'm thinking of all those things thinking of you know what this character might mean, What type of character. He isn't in the story. And, um, you know, so on and so forth. So I'm just really trying to paint that picture as I As I draw these little elements, it makes it, ah, bit more interesting for me, then, rather just saying, Well, I'm just gonna try to draw this big muscle bone character. Uh, that's not enough for me. Like to to keep thinking of ideas and keep experimenting. I have to, I think, more into the narrative than just a muscle balm brew. So really trying to get the leaned over effect. So if I was to draw this leg by itself and thinking of the curve out the knee and the curved back. Even though it's coming towards camera, I have to really think about those bends in those curves or else it'll come out flat. So I have to try to overlap these muscles in a way where it depicts that. And so then I picture the late coming back meeting at the ankle here and then this foot coming out towards camera. And then it's gotta look relatively flat against the you know, the canvas here, the page and just like that, we got most of our next one, our final character for this set of lessons. But we'll also go back through and refine this a bit more. So eso no, the way that I've got the anatomy here, this kind of signifies that the poem is facing up so we could do another clenched fist again. Canvas. Overly large hand. Actually, I don't like that. Let's go ahead and change the anatomy. So whenever you rotate the farm, the anatomy changes. The bicep kind of stays relatively in the same place, but then the form shifts quick, significantly more of the anatomy kind of coming this way. Spring the thumb up. I feel like that forms is too long. Something pushed this information back. So the pad of the thumb here can kind of move this anatomy over. Let's have the hand kind of cop to the fingers going back. It's softer race. We drill that one more time. Hands. I always have to. If I'm not doing a basic kind of fist pose, generally have to draw those at least once or twice. Get him right. Still, like this anatomies a bit off. So just that as well. On these bigger characters, I tend to make the the fingers thicker as well. Let's shoot this finger over with hands. I will start blocky black, your than normal and then so kind of back to that anger. Think again. It's really repetitive process in the way that I construct us. And then I will just, uh, you know, at some organic shapes in there because his hands are obviously very organic, but but angles will help me pinpoint the direction and hopefully the accuracy of what I'm going for. And then I will just kind of keep working on it. But let's let's move these fairs back a little bit more. Rotating a tiny bit. Yeah, You know, like I said, I'm gonna put another pass to each one of these. Another level of refinement like this foot could be a little bit lower as well. But just like that, we have the proportions and the the overall feeling of this big kind of Bahamas. And I could really play around with this a lot. I could make the arms even longer and bigger and disproportionate. He's already pretty disproportionate. But that's the fun in it. You just really want experiment with this. Like I could take the upper body here and say, Let's just go right through here to make this large. Remember, if you are working traditionally, just this just means the part where you break out the light table, play around with the tilt of the body. You just really want to try. You know, as many things as possible with what you have here is a lot of good information here in front of you. You just have to been creatively about it and be okay with experimentation. Try a bigger hands. Bigger feet smaller had watch, you know, let me show you that real quick because that's probably the neatest thing. It's You don't wanna go too far where it looks like a you know episode from Beetlejuice or something. But, um but, you know, just making the head smaller, that's that's too small. But just making the head smaller makes the body way more massive again that that extra look silly. But But again, you want to play around with these things. I really like making my big brute characters have bigger hands and feet. I just think it it kind of fits to me like they would need that to really propel these. You know, these massive parts or body around. They need these stronger feet and hands again. That's probably preference, but it's something I see. So I'm play about that. And just like that, I think that's about good enough. So what we'll do now as I want to show you another lesson where we're going to refine this even a bit more? I'll go in time Lapses park. So I'm just going to repeat what I've shown you thus far. I'll talk a little bit about that and we will refine these characters. Eso what? That Let's move on to our next lesson 7. L6 Additional Refinement: Okay, so now we'll go through in soft racism, redraw one more time and you'll see I make some small changes. For the most part, I'm just kind of elaborating a little bit more or deciding on the final ideas. And, you know, you could probably look at this. And Cole, why wouldn't you just take thes and draw finished characters right over the top? Or start designing your characters? And you can. But I still like spending the time on these mannequins and really working through them and as much detail as possible. I just feel like it's it's very important to spend time in this area of the work. I don't feel like it's it's lost or it's a waste of time to do this. Um, you see, I'm adding a little bits of line weight and trying to clean up the lines at more line clarity. And although this is majority for you know your your learning experience again, I still spend time doing this in my own studies. I think that one of the great things about kind of retracing your steps is you really built confidence. You really secure this in your mind's eye and essentially, you could do it faster and faster without any reference at all. So it's one of the reasons actually liked Inc. Other artists, his work, uh, even like to trace photos at times. I don't ever use that in my artwork. I don't never use that a finished piece or anything like that, but I I do implement it as an exercise because I'm trying to memorize shapes. I'm trying to commit different patterns to my, you know, to my mind's eye to my memory, so that again I can recall upon those faster. So again, even redrawing over this, I just don't feel like it's a waste of time. But there are times that you also want experiment and take your rough sketches, your rough mannequins and go right to your your character designs as well. I think that you just have to try all sorts of things. You can't take anything off the table because what works for one person may not work for 10 others and vice versa. So you just have to really be open to experimentation. But you could see here I am pretty much just recreating what's in front of us now with a little bit more clarity. I'm trying to you get those lines toe look cleaner and, uh, ultimately deciding on whether or not these air good or bad ideas. It's actually the main reason why I like to rework the mannequin opposed as much as possible, because if I work through the pose every step of the way and I work through the hand expressions, angles of the feet, I twist the you know the leg and try to get it just right. When I go to the part of designing the character, I don't have to think about as much, which makes my character design process that much better. So there's a real difference, Like if you just have a good amount of confidence that what you're looking at, I've seen artists where they can throw in a basic stick figure and then start to render overtop. So again it's gonna very based upon your level of skill and expertise. But I've just ah, you know, I found with my own workflow that by drawing is much into the mannequin stages. I can that you know when I get to the design stage of the character, it just comes out a lot more effortlessly, so again play around with these concepts. So in this particular one, you can see I start toe overlay anatomy a lot more definitively. So I thought this would be a nice break so that I could at least show you where maybe you would jump to the next step and start the Landsman Adami, still not designing a full character by any means, but again, just kind of playing with the anatomy, drawing it in place, giving you something else to work from and hopefully learn from. And hopefully you see what the anatomy is. Well, that I'm still doing a little bit of rounded organic shapes in a mix of angler lines, so little hook lines, little stylized representations. So if you were to compare it against real anatomy, obviously besides the other things that are apparent and that's over segmentation that we tend to do is comic artists and character designers. But the other thing is just again stylized lines. Onda also making sure that the lines don't connect all over the place. That's that's another big one that I don't hear talked about a lot, but I think it's really important that you want to show areas where the lines are connected somewhat, but a lot of thick that then in a lot of line breaks because ultimately, when you trace every muscle group along with showing this overly segmented anatomy, it becomes very kind of strange looking, and it just doesn't read with as much confidence. So hopefully this is giving you some ideas, and high can create these different character types. Let's head over to the next lesson and talk a little bit more about this. 8. L7 Final Thoughts: Okay, so now we've got the characters were fined one more level, and I just wanted to do a recap. So hopefully, you know, just hit a couple of these points home. So, essentially, if you pay close attention to the bigger guy on the left, his lots of ovals, stacked ovals, blended ovals, lots of curved lines that flow around the anatomy. Okay, So very low amount of angles and lots of flowing connected curves. So I just think, you know, lots of ovals, lots of curves with that guy. The next example. A lot more angular segmentation and a lot more definition. But even so, the definition is elongated. It's not condensed in squatty, like the bigger, muscle bound brutes that will get to hear in a moment. So think angular thinks stretched out definition. And, uh, you know, obviously you can define the muscles as much as you want or as little as you want. Not every skinny character needs to be very defined, but I felt like, you know, it was easier to convey this character with more of these angles in these kind of chiseled lines on, remember, angular generally generally not always means masculine and curvature generally means feminine, softer things like that. So what? The female character, Lots of flowing lines. Hopefully, you could even see that as I was trying to create the lines for her, I was throwing them or jetting them across. Okay, and it takes some practice. I'm actually not the greatest added. At times I have toe, you probably saw the line go back and forth because I had to do it a few times. And there's certain lines going sideways. I just can't get actually need to rotate the canvas to get the side curves as accurate as I would like. But to do that, you want to throw the line quickly. You almost want to think about. If you're trying to hit a line from here to here, sometimes you actually just want to shoot past him and then a race back. So that's actually done a lot in cartooning, and it will give you a nice, sweeping flowing line. And generally lines that you throw will always have a bit more energy and fluidity to him. So again, with the female form, try to think you know, the hourglass. Obviously, the S curve. It's a little bit evident. It's actually a really stretched out kind of S curve, but it's their, um and you know, if you noticed each one of them have just that little bit of gestural difference so that it kind of speaks differently to each character. I think that's important to practice. And that way, even when you're doing your stand up characters, they don't look, you know, too boring or too static. Eso again flowing lines, softer curves for the female form and then for the final muscle bone brew. I actually tried to mix everything, and I also displayed a little bit more of the anatomy. So this is my stylistic representation. It's not entirely correct anatomy, but I don't go for entirely correct anatomy. Go for a stylized version, and so here there's Ah lot of curves, but there's a little bit of angles mixed then so and I could have took that a step further . So it's it's basically just paying attention to the direction of the muscles and then kind of over accentuating certain parts. So, for instance, if I want to display the what would this be the fastest media Alice, right? Eso if I want to bring this vast media Alice out on the leg. I can just throw this curve like that. And but if I wanted to, I could really explain the same muscle with something like this. Like I need to be a little bit of a curve and then I could shoot it. Ah, mawr expressive line back. And so a lot of times what I do and hopefully you see it evident work. I'll do these little hook lines actually like these. Ally and I could have brought those out further. It's a more stylized version of trying to represent the anatomy, but it's fun. It makes it a bit more expressive, and that's not hard to do so again with this character you're going more for. Or if you want this type of look, you might mix up more of the organic, big flowing curves with a bit of angular or stylized lines just to really chisel out the anatomy. So again they doesn't come across too bubbly, because even at the state this characters in, I feel like it's right on the verge where it's kind of bubbly. Kind of probably could added up a few more of those angular representational lines to chisel him out a bit more and get away from that overly, you know, bubbly. Look that I don't want to see too much of my own work, so that's it. So hopefully this is really giving you some ideas and how you could make your own character variations. Obviously, there's all sorts of proportion differences length, you know, extend the length, try different variables. The best and I can really recommend is sketch often and play around and experiment. You'll come up with all sorts of new and inventive ideas, so thank you very much for taking these lessons. More content is on the way. I would love to see the work that you come up with and, as always, keep drawn, Keep having fun and bye for now.