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It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing...part II
Part 2 of my spontaneous two-part pose and anatomy crit session for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
prettyism. You really want to go read it first to figure out what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. And everyone say "thank you!" to prettyism!
So, to refresh your memory, here'sprettyism's page:
And here's the outlines of the figures. Yes, they're wearing clothes and I drew the outlines ans the clothes told me the shape underneath looked. That may sound a bit odd, but your clothes, even when they're bulky, give hints as to the shape and size of the figure beneath. The places where the body touches the cloth shows in the tension of the fabric, and the wrinkles and folds point to various bits that are thrusting against the material.
*blink* Anyone thinking that - and you know what I mean and I mean YOU - gets ten points taken from their House for having a dirty mind.
So - here's the outline of the bodies again, with the anatomy as the clothes tell me it's shaped:
These bodies are rather amorphous. There's a vague indication of muscle, but it's not really in quite the right position, and the muscles aren't responding to the pose - muscles that are contracted are tighter and bunchier than muscles that are relaxed, and this difference should show. Muscles are also teardrop-shaped, for the most part - they tend to be thicker at one end than the other. Muscles also oppose each other: they occur in pairs on either side of a bone, so it can be pulled one way or the other. And where one of a pair is thicker, the other of the pair is thinner - if a muscle on the left side of a bone is thicker at the top, its opposing partner will be thicker at the bottom, in general.
Muscles also spiral around the bone. It's slight, but it's there, and focusing on that spiral can add movement to a picture.
ON TO THE BOYPARTS!
Here's a lower leg:
You can see the ever-so-slight curve of the shinbone - bones aren't straight, either, they curve a bit. The shinbone also provides a visual up-and-down thrust. The calf muscles bulge out on the upper part of the leg, where they provide power to the lever system that is the leg. If the muscles were thick in the middle or the lower part of the leg, it wouldn't be as strong. Here's a picture I spent LOADS AND LOADS of time on illustrating a lever:
PHEER THE LEVER DRAWING! Anyway, you want the fulcrum - the triangle - near one end for power, not in the middle or the other end. Same with your lower leg and lower arm. The muscles bulge at one end for power.
Note also in the leg picture up there, that the muscles are shaped differently on either side. The one on the inside of the leg is smaller and more compact. The one on the outer side is longer and smoother. The same goes for your lower arm, as you'll see in a bit.
Now ... the thigh.
The thigh is not a cylinder. It tapers - it's thicker at the top than the bottom (remember that power thing?), only not as much as the lower leg. There's also slightly more variation on the inside of the leg than the outside.
Note also: the crotch and the pelvis. *pauses for a bit to allow you private thoughts* Now that you're back, let's get a bit more clinical. Here's something that's note often noted by people who havne't studied much anatomy - the legs do *not* meet in the middle. There is space between the legs where they meet the pelvis. In women this space usually isn't as obvious because their thighs are rounder and have more fat than men's usually do, so the space is disguised, but it's still there. The femurs - thighbones, if English isn't your first language - also attach to the outer edge of the pelvis and the slant in to almost meet at the knee. This is much more exaggerated in women, but is still true to an extent in men. This is why men's pelvises are slightly wider than you think they are - men's waists are thicker, which make sthem *look* like they've got much narrower hips than women.
OK, that last bit isn't quite true, but I'd have to go deep into the anatomy of the pelvis and how it differs in men and women to explain the hows and whys of hip width, so just take it on faith that men's pelvises are a bit wider than you think they are, although not as much as women's. And don't forget that space between the legs at the crotch, independent of anything else in the area that you might be thinking of.
Just note my "Wide Load" icon. It's not *that* much of an exaggeration - the camera angle is tilted and there's a bit of a fisheye effect going on to widen his butt even more, but Sanzo and the other guys are drawn with fairly big pelvises, and thus, big asses.
Shoulders!
Men's shoulders are wide. This is the widest part of their bodies. Even skinny guys have wide shoulders! I see too many artists who havent' studies anatomy make men's shoulders too narrow, and then have to make the hips way too small in comparison. Men's shoulders are wider than their hips, women's hips are wider than their shoulders (yeah, there's always variations, but we're talking generalities here). SKinny guys tend to have slimmer ribcages and torsos hanging off their shoulders, so you get that coatrack effect. When teen boys are growing, their shoulders tend to get bigger faster than their torsos, so you get that effect where they look like they forgot to take the coat hanger out of their shirt, and their shoulder bones poke into their shirt shoulders, while the body of the shirt flaps around the chest and belly. The torso and belly widen up somewhere around college and the post-college years, usually.
I'll also bring up another aspect here: the lines used in drawing the muscles are really more straight than curved. There's some curve in there, but the muscles are really characterized more by straight lines and corners than gentle curves. I usually find it much easier when drawing muscles to do it all in straight lines and corners, then round off the corners a bit. That keeps me from feminizing my male muscles - women are more rounded than men because they have more subcutaneous fat deposits, which soften the outlines.
And now ... ARMS and CHEST!
That might be a wee bit small to see detail, so here's an outline I did over it:
This is what keeps the pose from being static:
See how the spine curves? You can't see the line of the spine itself in the pic, but if you know anatomy, you can tell where it is from the position and angle of the shoulders and hips. There are also no straight lines in this pic - all the different sections point in different directions. This is what artists mean by "thrust" - the direction a line in the picture is pointing.
And when I speak of "line", I'm not talking outlines. I'm talking the invisible lines that the picture is organized around - the lines above. Here it is with is made excruciatingly clear where all the different bits are thrusting:
That is what we artists refer to as "movement" - your eyes follow these lines through the drawing, and that gives it movement. Just adding thsoe little arrowheads makes it look like there's water flowing over it or something, and that gives it motion. You need to train yourslef to mentally add the little arrowheads when you're looking at or drawing a picture, to get the movement happening.
And here it is with several specific points I want to address:
1) Collarbones are not straight. They have gentle S-curves, more apparent when you're looking straight down on them. Straight collarbones make the shoulders look stiff and tight.
2) The widest part of the shoulders is at the edges here. Note how the shoulder muscles then go *in* to meet the arm. Also, note how this is not a gentle, rounded curve. There's a flat plane on the edge of the shoulder there, indicated by that flat section.
3) The ribcage is, in general, wider than the midsection. A lot, in the case of really built guys. Also, the *back* of the ribcage is wider than the *front*, be several inches. If you look down at a cross-section of the torso, it looks like this:
This is something you learn quickly if you're sewing something for a guy. XD Anyway, this means that the side of the body - the ticklish spot along the side of the ribs under the arm - is better thought of as a flat plane that slants in from the back to the front of the torso.
4) Note how muscles are indicated by a line protruding into the body a little way. This gives more of a 3D effect, and is a techique quite commonly used, even in shoujo. It may be very subtle, but it's there. Also note the shape of the muscles of the forearm and how the muscles on top there are bunched up at one end, while they're a bit more gentle on the other side.
5) The other arm. The elbow is not a straight line across - in fact, it tilts up. When the inner arm is turned to face forward, the outer edge of teh elbow is a little bit higher than the inner edge.
6) The wrist has a bump protruding ehre. It's not prominent in everyone, but more so in men than women, and Minekura lives to draw that bump. It serves as a good way to set off the hand, at any rate.
7) Note the tilt of the pelvis. You know from this that he's got his weight on his right leg and that his left leg is probably bent slightly at the knee.
8) Straight lines and corners instead of curves. It's not quite this sharp in real life, but you are not drawing real life. You are drawing manga. Exaggerate!
9) The chest muscles go out and wrap over onto the shoulders, where that big bump on the shoulder is. This and the big shoulders are what gives men that classic V-shape. This means that the lines of the chest do not go straight up and down, but slant outward, and when the torso is slightly turned, like this, it's even more prominently slanted.
These points are pretty much the touchstones of male anatomy. Even if you are drawing an uke character who is deliberately feminized to show the difference between him and the seme character, you will still address these points, just not to quite such an extent. Otherwise, what you'll end up doing is de-ageing the character and making him look like an adolescent child with narrow shoulders and narrow hips and no real defined shape.
And now it's late and I'm sleepy and not bothering to form any real conclusion, just crashing.
prettyism. You really want to go read it first to figure out what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. And everyone say "thank you!" to prettyism!So, to refresh your memory, here's
prettyism's page:And here's the outlines of the figures. Yes, they're wearing clothes and I drew the outlines ans the clothes told me the shape underneath looked. That may sound a bit odd, but your clothes, even when they're bulky, give hints as to the shape and size of the figure beneath. The places where the body touches the cloth shows in the tension of the fabric, and the wrinkles and folds point to various bits that are thrusting against the material.
*blink* Anyone thinking that - and you know what I mean and I mean YOU - gets ten points taken from their House for having a dirty mind.
So - here's the outline of the bodies again, with the anatomy as the clothes tell me it's shaped:
These bodies are rather amorphous. There's a vague indication of muscle, but it's not really in quite the right position, and the muscles aren't responding to the pose - muscles that are contracted are tighter and bunchier than muscles that are relaxed, and this difference should show. Muscles are also teardrop-shaped, for the most part - they tend to be thicker at one end than the other. Muscles also oppose each other: they occur in pairs on either side of a bone, so it can be pulled one way or the other. And where one of a pair is thicker, the other of the pair is thinner - if a muscle on the left side of a bone is thicker at the top, its opposing partner will be thicker at the bottom, in general.
Muscles also spiral around the bone. It's slight, but it's there, and focusing on that spiral can add movement to a picture.
ON TO THE BOYPARTS!
Here's a lower leg:
You can see the ever-so-slight curve of the shinbone - bones aren't straight, either, they curve a bit. The shinbone also provides a visual up-and-down thrust. The calf muscles bulge out on the upper part of the leg, where they provide power to the lever system that is the leg. If the muscles were thick in the middle or the lower part of the leg, it wouldn't be as strong. Here's a picture I spent LOADS AND LOADS of time on illustrating a lever:
PHEER THE LEVER DRAWING! Anyway, you want the fulcrum - the triangle - near one end for power, not in the middle or the other end. Same with your lower leg and lower arm. The muscles bulge at one end for power.
Note also in the leg picture up there, that the muscles are shaped differently on either side. The one on the inside of the leg is smaller and more compact. The one on the outer side is longer and smoother. The same goes for your lower arm, as you'll see in a bit.
Now ... the thigh.
The thigh is not a cylinder. It tapers - it's thicker at the top than the bottom (remember that power thing?), only not as much as the lower leg. There's also slightly more variation on the inside of the leg than the outside.
Note also: the crotch and the pelvis. *pauses for a bit to allow you private thoughts* Now that you're back, let's get a bit more clinical. Here's something that's note often noted by people who havne't studied much anatomy - the legs do *not* meet in the middle. There is space between the legs where they meet the pelvis. In women this space usually isn't as obvious because their thighs are rounder and have more fat than men's usually do, so the space is disguised, but it's still there. The femurs - thighbones, if English isn't your first language - also attach to the outer edge of the pelvis and the slant in to almost meet at the knee. This is much more exaggerated in women, but is still true to an extent in men. This is why men's pelvises are slightly wider than you think they are - men's waists are thicker, which make sthem *look* like they've got much narrower hips than women.
OK, that last bit isn't quite true, but I'd have to go deep into the anatomy of the pelvis and how it differs in men and women to explain the hows and whys of hip width, so just take it on faith that men's pelvises are a bit wider than you think they are, although not as much as women's. And don't forget that space between the legs at the crotch, independent of anything else in the area that you might be thinking of.
Just note my "Wide Load" icon. It's not *that* much of an exaggeration - the camera angle is tilted and there's a bit of a fisheye effect going on to widen his butt even more, but Sanzo and the other guys are drawn with fairly big pelvises, and thus, big asses.
Shoulders!
Men's shoulders are wide. This is the widest part of their bodies. Even skinny guys have wide shoulders! I see too many artists who havent' studies anatomy make men's shoulders too narrow, and then have to make the hips way too small in comparison. Men's shoulders are wider than their hips, women's hips are wider than their shoulders (yeah, there's always variations, but we're talking generalities here). SKinny guys tend to have slimmer ribcages and torsos hanging off their shoulders, so you get that coatrack effect. When teen boys are growing, their shoulders tend to get bigger faster than their torsos, so you get that effect where they look like they forgot to take the coat hanger out of their shirt, and their shoulder bones poke into their shirt shoulders, while the body of the shirt flaps around the chest and belly. The torso and belly widen up somewhere around college and the post-college years, usually.
I'll also bring up another aspect here: the lines used in drawing the muscles are really more straight than curved. There's some curve in there, but the muscles are really characterized more by straight lines and corners than gentle curves. I usually find it much easier when drawing muscles to do it all in straight lines and corners, then round off the corners a bit. That keeps me from feminizing my male muscles - women are more rounded than men because they have more subcutaneous fat deposits, which soften the outlines.
And now ... ARMS and CHEST!
That might be a wee bit small to see detail, so here's an outline I did over it:
This is what keeps the pose from being static:
See how the spine curves? You can't see the line of the spine itself in the pic, but if you know anatomy, you can tell where it is from the position and angle of the shoulders and hips. There are also no straight lines in this pic - all the different sections point in different directions. This is what artists mean by "thrust" - the direction a line in the picture is pointing.
And when I speak of "line", I'm not talking outlines. I'm talking the invisible lines that the picture is organized around - the lines above. Here it is with is made excruciatingly clear where all the different bits are thrusting:
That is what we artists refer to as "movement" - your eyes follow these lines through the drawing, and that gives it movement. Just adding thsoe little arrowheads makes it look like there's water flowing over it or something, and that gives it motion. You need to train yourslef to mentally add the little arrowheads when you're looking at or drawing a picture, to get the movement happening.
And here it is with several specific points I want to address:
1) Collarbones are not straight. They have gentle S-curves, more apparent when you're looking straight down on them. Straight collarbones make the shoulders look stiff and tight.
2) The widest part of the shoulders is at the edges here. Note how the shoulder muscles then go *in* to meet the arm. Also, note how this is not a gentle, rounded curve. There's a flat plane on the edge of the shoulder there, indicated by that flat section.
3) The ribcage is, in general, wider than the midsection. A lot, in the case of really built guys. Also, the *back* of the ribcage is wider than the *front*, be several inches. If you look down at a cross-section of the torso, it looks like this:
This is something you learn quickly if you're sewing something for a guy. XD Anyway, this means that the side of the body - the ticklish spot along the side of the ribs under the arm - is better thought of as a flat plane that slants in from the back to the front of the torso.
4) Note how muscles are indicated by a line protruding into the body a little way. This gives more of a 3D effect, and is a techique quite commonly used, even in shoujo. It may be very subtle, but it's there. Also note the shape of the muscles of the forearm and how the muscles on top there are bunched up at one end, while they're a bit more gentle on the other side.
5) The other arm. The elbow is not a straight line across - in fact, it tilts up. When the inner arm is turned to face forward, the outer edge of teh elbow is a little bit higher than the inner edge.
6) The wrist has a bump protruding ehre. It's not prominent in everyone, but more so in men than women, and Minekura lives to draw that bump. It serves as a good way to set off the hand, at any rate.
7) Note the tilt of the pelvis. You know from this that he's got his weight on his right leg and that his left leg is probably bent slightly at the knee.
8) Straight lines and corners instead of curves. It's not quite this sharp in real life, but you are not drawing real life. You are drawing manga. Exaggerate!
9) The chest muscles go out and wrap over onto the shoulders, where that big bump on the shoulder is. This and the big shoulders are what gives men that classic V-shape. This means that the lines of the chest do not go straight up and down, but slant outward, and when the torso is slightly turned, like this, it's even more prominently slanted.
These points are pretty much the touchstones of male anatomy. Even if you are drawing an uke character who is deliberately feminized to show the difference between him and the seme character, you will still address these points, just not to quite such an extent. Otherwise, what you'll end up doing is de-ageing the character and making him look like an adolescent child with narrow shoulders and narrow hips and no real defined shape.
And now it's late and I'm sleepy and not bothering to form any real conclusion, just crashing.