thoughts on a "finished piece" (C+C)

[32]

Not bad, the balance and pose are good. Immediately the issues that stand out are the shoulders and the hips. The shoulders on a woman should generally be narrower than the hips. And the hips should be much taller.

But more importantly I though I'd talk about the process of constructing a pose. My first issue with what you're doing is you're thinking of it as "drawing an outline." The human body does not have an outline, an outline is all of the contours of the bodies structure that happen to sit at the edge from this viewpoint. You also seem to really stick to the outline once you start colouring. When I work the outline is just a reference I keep underneath, you should always expect that it is incorrect in some way or another and additional time spent with the piece colouring and shading should make those mistakes clear.

So what makes a pose?:



The most important thing, and the line you should ALWAYS start with is what I've drawn in black. This is called the "line of action" and it represents the balance of the pose and the direction in which the weight shifts as we travel through the figure. With some practice this should be easy to observe.

Secondly you want to place the shoulders and the hips as I've done in purple. Generally speaking the shoulders and the hips mirror each other, this is called "contrapposto." My life drawing teacher often told us to imagine the torso as an accordion, one side stretches, the other side compresses.

Thirdly are the "thrusts" of the body parts. These are represented in red (you can add more to other body parts like the head, hands, feet, torso, hips etc. if you need to.) This is essentially the direction that a part is pointing. You need to imagine a straight line going from one end of the part straight through the centre to the other end, in 3d space. This helps get the angle of the body part correct and is also useful in foreshortening. If you're finding it hard to imagine think of it like the "bones," or as my life drawing teacher gruesomely put it, a skewer stabbed through the centre of the body part.

With these things you can create what is essentially a stick figure that accurately represents the proportion of the human body. The next step is a bit different for everyone but what you want to do is hang the masses of the body onto that stick figure. This is where you can put the skull, ribcage and pelvis in, which inform where most of the rest of the muscle/ fat etc. should go. There's no really simple method of explaining all of the different masses other than through extensive observation. Learning what the bones and muscles are helps you to decide where the lumps and bumps need to be. You should always be thinking of the internal structure of the figure, what we see is merely a representation of this. Also mostly I just wanted to talk about process so my drawing is very rough and has plenty of anatomy issues of it's own, don't follow it too closely

[Friend]

I get it :] !
This is really cool stuff and super helpful. Thanks    And you totally brought the sass on the demonstration pose as well

[32]

Glad it helps

Cause I see that you're still working on it here's a very quick edit on general anatomy. I don't think the skin tones work as a highlight, I gave her a boob window though . Definitely go back a bit, make sure your basic volumes and lighting are solid before you move into the fine pixel work.



Edit: Also I put her breasts into a more natural position. I realise that the catsuit would probably provide some support but for the sake of learning anatomy it's going to get in the way of learning how they would normally work. For similar reasons I wouldn't go super shiny for now, it's just confusing the more basic issues.

[Friend]

Those hips 

Do most women really have wider hope than shoulders? 

Your edit is so clean and flawless and visually harmonious.   I like how you get a lot out of big fat clusters. When my clusters are big and fat, it doesn't look suitable. Gotta work on that too eventually.

But for now, I need to understand better fundamentals. Sorry I didn't wait and instead jumped right in. I couldn't help myself

[32]

Wellllll strictly speaking no. There are a great many body types out there, some women do have hips wider than their shoulders but it's not necessarily the norm. Proportionally speaking though a woman will generally have wider hips and narrower shoulders than a man. Remember a baby has to be able to fit through the pelvis so it is considerably wider. And men just generally have much larger shoulders and upper bodies to support larger muscles. The lower bodies of a man and a woman are roughly the same strength but a man has something like twice the upper body strength.

Haha I certainly wouldn't call it flawless but thank you. Big clusters look pleasing when they describe shapes that we recognise as being accurate. The fundamentals are really the most important thing here. I understand the desire to jump ahead, it's a pain when our skills don't quite match up to our vision

[Friend]

Interesting. I guess it's not necessarily about being exact, but more about being what's understood

 From my own observations, men and women have equal or very close to equal shoulder width to height ratio, despite the notion that men have much broader shoulders. I believe men have thicker shoulders but not necessarily wider.  But it's more frequent that a women has noticeably thin shoulders. Just my observations.
 I also read that female leg upper thigh bones are at a sharper angle : O interesting. Makes them more prone to injuries. I also can't find conclusive evidence that men and women have equal lower body strength.  I'm curious to know the real answer, as such an idea can have quite an impact on art. 

[Ryumaru]

Comparing shoulder width to height isn't that useful of a guide as height probably varies more so than shoulder to waist and hip width measurements. The outermost point of men's shoulders are often wider than their waist ( and with males, the hips are rarely much wider than the waist, creating that "boxy" feel). Where as with females, the shoulder width is equal to or sometimes even lesser than the hips, with the waist being thinner than the hips. ( 7:10 waist to hip ratio and beyond is seen to be more attractive/ feminine)

Yep, the thigh bones are at a sharper angle, necessarily so due to the wider hips. From what I've read, women have on average 50% upper body muscle mass and 75% lower body muscle mass as males.

Also, 32's edit doesn't have hips wider than ( but rather, roughly equal to) the width of her shoulders, as it's always the outermost points that are measured and not the idea of where the joint may be located inside.

[32]

Ryu's right to touch on the waist. Very important along with the shoulders and hips.

It is definitely true that men generally have literally wider bones in the upper body, as well as more muscle mass, of course the reality is that the difference can be subtle and quite hard to spot, especially when you mostly see clothed people. The main thing to learn is that there are no rules in human anatomy. You will find men and women of every conceivable shape and size. It's your job as an artist to decide which proportions suit what you want to communicate with the character. These ratios are really just useful as a short hand to say what looks feminine or masculine, the actual gender of a character is not necessarily relevant.

I really don't recall where I heard those statistics, no idea how accurate they are.

[Friend]

Ugh, I could not sleep last night    Anyway, I finished, I think.  There are still some errors, and I didn't change the anatomy as much as I should have based on ryumaru and 32's information, but I think it is better, so thanks ^_^



I'll keep cracking away 

edit- went back and tampered with the hips and shoulders and more one final time

[Friend]

went back and further tweaked everything, anatomy and colors. 

I did a little color theory reading today, and so I thought it was perhaps apt to get c+c on my new color choices as well.  After a bit of rethinking, I realized I could go much sharper with the blues to achieve a smarter look, while still keeping it balanced based on the tones I mixed.   

On the man, I did tweaking to try to make him look more natural.  Ryumaru's edit made me realize I could harness much visual interest in his long sleeves, and of course, while playing the game with him, is one reason why he is so fun.  His sleeves flow as does his combat style. It's not cleaned up yet, but I think he is improved 

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also, from now on i will try to start out with wire frames and skeleton and not outlines