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Well it seems we have inadvertently covered a large proportion of anatomy in the last article. My original aim was to give it its own large section before deviating off onto individual body parts. As it turns out, it seems that when I rant, points get covered without my say-so, so it’s times to move onto the next part of the series.
And that’s people’s chests.
When stated previously in the last article, I made a point of stating that when designing your character, the chest (and that is, the core of the body) should be the first stage of your barebone structure, and the primary reason for this is because it’s the part of the body that’s the least dependant on all the other parts. It’s also going to take a large chunk of your picture depending on the size of the character. If your character is big and up front, you’re not going to be allowed to get away with a bad chest without feeling the wrath of a million, million fanboys. It’s easier to make mistakes with the rest of the body and get it pass screening than it is with the chest (I’m not saying you should ever be willing to fudge an arm or a leg, but the eyes are more likely to blank out an arm that’s twisted the wrong way or a badly drawn background hand than they are a warped chest.
Okay, last time I’m using this as an example of bad art now guys.On the other side of things, when your character’s a tiny background piece, the body is going to be your first priority on keeping that blurry assortment of shapes in the background recognizable as the creature you want it to be.
The only problem that lies with the chest going first is that when it comes to someone actually deigning to grace your art with their sight, the first thing the eyes will hover to is that face thing that’s connected to the bulb that sits in its own little egg holder on the chest (again this is why people can get away with drawing misshapen limbs to the casual viewer). As such, the novice’s instinct is to get to drawing the head before everything else. And despite all I have just spent pages saying, this is completely true and you should so totally do that. But in sketch form only.
When building the body, the head comes last, even after the fingers (the reason for this particular example is that it’s easy to draw the hand dramatically pointing towards the screen but off just a little and then have the head looking in that same direction than it is the other way round). The chest comes first.
So let’s get to the chest.
Your barebones from the last article should have us two balloons at this point. One for chest and one for hips. Please note that this part of the tutorial does not cover clothes. Our characters are going to end this particular article naked and possibly with nipples.
The chest and the hips are an interesting pair since humans can be very different on what part has dominant control in movement. The majority of people see their own little psychological homunculus as their head. When this is the case, the chest usually takes precedent over the hips. For others, those who are naturally athletic and the like, tend to live from their hips. This is all irrelevant when it comes to art really, but know that usually one will take over the other as the dominant starting piece, rather than just getting in the habit of starting with the chest each time.
When starting these I usually like to draw a line connecting them. If the flowline goes through the body, then this usually follows it to a point. Learn how the two work with each other through constant practice, how they tilt based on body position, how one counter balances the other, etc…
An important point to note at the balloon stage is that when it comes to perspective, you can expect one to disappear into the other (during a bird’s eye view of the character for instance.)
A final point to pick up on before we get to drawing our body are the arm and leg join-uppers, aka, the shoulders and buttocks. These are just four extra balloons each (with the buttocks essentially overwriting the hips. Include these now and incorporate them into the ‘core’ (that is, chest and hips) part of the design rather than the following arms and legs section, since the chest isn’t entirely an independent entity from the rest of the body, and you’re going to need to know now just how those pectorals work.
Genitalia
This wouldn’t be a renaissance level tutorial (EVER) if I didn’t include those parts of the body that weren’t associated with reproduction. Unless you’re catering to certain demographics the parts ‘down there’ (THEY’RE CALLED PENIS AND VAGINA) can usually be straight out ignored during your character design. If you’re practicing your anatomy though I wouldn’t recommend cutting them out. The hips of men and woman are different for those very items listed in caps in the above sentence and it’ll learn you good to know why. For these guys, practice is necessary (but not too much practice). For the men out there, I would suggest sketching away a few dongs for yourself, if only to get rid of your squeamishness, and perhaps also the assumption of how penis size usually works.
Breasts are a whole other story. Now I know what you’re all thinking ‘heh hehehe heheheheheheeh….boobies’ And yes, I’m thinking it too. For the woman and overweight male (I’ll presume you were all thinking about the latter half of these), extra balloons are usually required. Width depth and perkiness are all something to consider. Bounce factor isn’t exactly necessary but probably will be something you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Contour lines are required if you don’t want them to look freaky… just go look at diagrams already!
Now we begin the fleshing out section- literally. With the chests and hips, the important muscle groups are the pectorals, abdominals, gluteus (the ass) and latissimus dorsi (back), with the trapezius (neck) and deltoids (shoulders) following up. Understand that from this point in your own style should be keeping in, so I can’t really tell your how to draw them. The basics are the same across genres, as you can see below. I can include pictures (as below), but what’s important here is your own ability to observe the naked, sweaty chests of many people. And this isn’t just the ones you want to look at. Be they full of muscle or full of flab, between slim and sexy to slim and nerdy, voluptuous breasts or saggy ones. You are going to need to understand them all if you are going to create people out of nothing like your god complex secretly (or very openly) wants you to do.
Beyond that, you’re going to need to understand the sub types. There’s a difference between athletes that are built for boxing to those built for bodybuilding to those built for running. There is short and petit sexy and there’s Amazon sexy.
Below follows a lot of basic types, drawn without arms for those who think the side views look very weird. This is no where near a comprehensive list.
Muscular male: The Superman. This is usually the most generic of the super hero types used and the one every Burne Hogarth student will be familiar with. Every muscle group is heavily defined and in perfect proportion. Here you simply have the world’s most perfectly developed man. Note now how the pectoral(chest) muscles overlap to where the shoulder balloons are. They’re connected here folks, and they’ll change considerably when that arm gets raised. Be careful not all your characters end up looking like this.
Heavily muscular man: The Hulk. Now take the perfect development of above and exaggerate. Every muscle group is bigger, usually but not always at the expense of body parts that can’t be bigger (the head for example). Height doesn’t necessary have to be affected here but width will be. More muscles mean broader shoulders and even larger back muscles. For a stockier effect, reduce the distance between chest and hips.
Lightly muscular man: The Spiderman. Usually seen as toned/with definition, but missing the bulk. Everything is usually cut down a bit. The abs in particular don’t look like they’re trying to escape from under the rib cage. Shoulders have a lot less broad to them and the traps don’t look like they’re trying to take over the neck like the heavy guy above does.
Fat man: In comic characters there’s rarely a man who is just a little overweight. It usually jumps straight into fat territory. Muscle is still important here but the layers of fat are coming on. The MIGHTY SIX PACK is usually obscured by this point by several layers and the pecs start to droop a little. Any sign of the back muscles usually disappear from sight. This continues in several stages that I won’t bother describing until your get to…
Obese man: By this point muscle has disappeared and what’s left is hidden by too many layers of fat. The neck gets hidden by the chin, breasts have started to form far too eagerly and the circumference is now an issue much more than it was before. The muscles that don’t get hidden by the layers of extra tissue are usually about the level of the lightly muscled man.
Sumo man: This is a fun combination. A diet on excess, but without muscular entropy. The man keeps the broad shoulders but gets the beer belly too. The pectorals are still firm but carry droopage at the end (this can vary to pure sagginess). The ass is awesomely huge and can be terrifyingly fun to draw.
Average Joe man: Harder than you would expect since the average joe is usually considered a mix of muscle and fat but on the opposite end of the spectrum to Sumo man, often with one in no great proportion to the other. It can also end up disproportionate, with one having broad shoulders but a bit of a beer belly to being skinny but, again, having a bit of a beer belly.
Teenage man (may also be seen as shoujo man): At this stage we have someone who usually hasn’t started to develop that much muscle but would be hard to consider that skinner. Usually ends up looking a little smaller than Average joe man. Please note this is not to say that teenagers cannot be heavily muscular or obese (or indeed Spiderman type). This style is usually on the path to cartoon simple style and as such the important of muscular definition starts to fade.
Cartoon man – does not care about the difference between such antiquated, nonsensical, real, notions as chest or hips(these type of people may even go so far as to ask what lips are with confusion in their voices). These people usually go from upper body to trousers as they sit on the simplistic side of the sliding scale of realistic to cartoon.
Stick man – It’s just a line. You’ve already drawn it!
The great thing about this whole section is, once you’ve got the barebones down on your creation and set up the muscular structure, it will feel like these things just start to draw themselves. Diligent practice is what’s needed here folks. Draw the muscles over and over again to get used to them. Once these are set in stone you can work towards the fun stuff (not that this ain’t fun) working your own style into the mix.
Until then, we go onto the next stage. Legs!
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Now we’re going to move to that magical, wonderful stage of putting a piece of graphite onto a piece of processed dead tree bark and hoping it sticks. I know you’ve all been very excited and patient in your desire to rape the deceased with your putrid designs and I am not one to disappoint. Well I am, but how I disappoint you is itself at least kind of interesting to look at, so kind of interesting I shall be.
So by now you should be aware of exactly what it is you want to draw. You’ll have character design, composition and all that jazz that was in the last section down <include link to last section>. So all that should be left in drawing the silly little scribble that you hope the people on deviant art will love you for, right?
Wrong! I mean sorta… I mean…
Well, in an odd way drawing can’t be that simple. Great works even after planning aren’t usually spat out. They need to be built upon, set up, and generally roughed out so we know we’ve got everything sorted in our head. In other words, we need a rough sketch!
So let’s make a thumbnail.
You’ve heard of thumbnails I’m sure. For this you’re going to need to get a pair of pliers and rip yours right off so fast that the blood shoots out and hopefully starts pouring down the face of your widowed aunt who, if you’ve been paying attention, should already have been placed into a position where the crimson tide can blind her from the travesty you are about to create. After you’ve healed you’ll move onto another type of thumbnail, the small tiny one that is usually used by deviant art and those porn sites that are always relinking me to their credit card page.
Each one is a sex link of sexiness hidden behind deceptive plant potsThese are designed to be small and quick. A thumbnail should be taking you no more than five minutes to draw out if you’re spectacularly good at art. For everyone who doesn’t have an instant affinity with anatomy, perspective and the mystical flow that I shall talk about later, expect to spend a good half hour getting this right unless you’re lucky.
Understand now that the thumbnail is the fundamental framework of your drawing. As abstract and foundational and somewhat shitty as it looks, a lot of effort should go into this. This is because this s the time where you can see if your layout looks so horribly bad you can feeling the universe trying to tear a hole out of itself just so it can make you leave politely. The thumbnail/loose sketch/rough is where you get everything right without being two hours into your design of offshoot Naruto characters with ten tails that woos Sakura and Hinata with ease and is soooo not based off yourself and then suddenly realising that Taruno’s arm isn’t foreshortened right and you’re going to have to use Mr. putty eraser to fix everything.
Remember the possibly old adage of failing to plan = planning to fail
Like the rest of the Internet, i will now try to include this image in each and every one of my articlesNow the thumbnail I’ll admit doesn’t guarantee a great piece of artwork. You can have a nice looking piece of artwork without all this planning. A lot of people get on fine with just bypassing this step. However these people, I shall warn you now, are doing one of the following:
1) They’re using design techniques to either bypass the need for design or, like above, just plain hiding it.
Shortcuts are everywhere in art, especially eyes
Take in note that this isn’t always a bad thing. I always kind of liked how Mr. Liefeld did the legs of his hookers2) They’re able to design it all perfectly in their heads and then essentially transmit it to the paper. This is because their observation techniques are awesome.
This second one can come from both practice and skill that’s been built up around keen observation and an excellent imagination (like hell am I gonna admit it’s some kind of invisible talent installed at birth. If you can’t do it and yet want it, you’re going to have to practice the crap out of your hand and eyes and come to understand just how one can draw without any setup beforehand. I know I’m not there yet. I can usually draw realistic looking faces from scratch without framework but a full battlefield with ten shoulders half of which no longer have faces what with all those bullets flying into them… is still out of my own grasp.
But anyway…yeah; thumbnail is key to gud art.
Now let’s go over how to do one:
Sketching out your stickmen
You’ve probably seen one of these before somewhere:
This is the body work for every humanoid character you will ever draw. They are also completely useless in my humble opinion to ever consider rebuying once the hands have rusted off. Too imposable, and parts snap back into place when you don’t want them too.
What you will want from the doll though is his (or her!) basic shape. Torso, hips, shoulder balls, arms, legs and head. We use these to make slightly more retarded stickmen to make the base of our picture people.
But before we do that, i’m gonna need to talk to y’all ‘bout flow.
Flow is one of those notions that you would see a lot of people stalling when trying to explain, saying it’s something you’ll only really get with practice and that it’s hard to describe. I’m gonna bypass all that right now and state that Flow is what makes pictures awesome and dynamic.
A picture with flow makes you feel the warrior charging up to the enemy as his opponent recoils in terror, the blade of his… blade swinging so wildly that oh my god your hand got sliced off. A picture without flow makes it look like you got your mother to act out a scene of her standing in line at a supermarket and told her to act surprised when you came in dressed like a clown because you though it would be oh so funny. Then she tries and it just looks wrong because she keeps eyeing the goddamn camera and is standing stock still all the time.
An absence of flow can also occur where the artist forgets that his (or her!) 3D picture is supposed to look 3D despite being on a two dimension world living on a three dimensional piece of paper.
Anyway, how do we make flow?
Why, like this~!
Don’cha just love the proof that i’m an amazing artist?It’s a start okay.
Have some more lines.
Take special note of the arrows. The flow will usually make sense only to yourself in the early stagesI’m possibly losing you, so let’s use some x-men to give you some perspective.
X-men make everything make senseUnderstanding me now? Good. Flow goes the direction you want your character to go. If your character is in mid jump, the arched back leading up the arms and going down the legs is the flow line. If the character is punching her opponent’s jaw, the flow line is the arm. If the manga girl’s wavy waves of hair all unrealistically into the background, that’s a flowline. If the person is just standing there at attention the flow line becomes a Y. Every picture you should draw ever should have a flow line with its characters, even those standing stock still.
Flow within foreshortening
I haven’t spoken a word about foreshortening yet (I don’t think anyway… I have been pretty ranty), so you might wanna go look that up until I do. But still, what foreshortening means is that sometimes your flowline is gonna look like this.
One day i lan to have all these lines in an art gallery AND PEOPLE WILL PAY ME!And the reason for that is this
Remember the flowline is always solely an aid to help show the dynamic direction of your picture. It shouldn’t be in your final piece.So the best thing you can do to help you understand this a little better is to use varying shapes to define levels
Perspective lines help if you’re a beginner, but poses like this can be quite difficult unless they have their own tutorial dedicated to them.Bigger squares equal closer to the front of the picture. Small squares the exact opposite. You can even use other squares for a sort of mid way point.
When drawing these pictures though, it does help to have a stock picture on standby, just to help you get the pose right whilst everything else is hidden
Not so necessary with such a boring pose as this, but when the character’s flailing teir arms, feet and tail, it’ll prove handyAnd that’s flow line.
So, now I’ve spent around fifteen pages getting you to a stage where you have one single line on your piece of paper, let’s shape the character up and get some drawing done
I’m just going to take this moment first though to just blindly sidestep perspective. There is a lot to perspective and it’s a whole other tutorial in itself with reference to one point/two point/ birds eye view, blind spots, circular perspective and dynamic manga perspective. It’s all gonna be quite long winded and worthy of its own section. One which I will hopefully get around too.
For now though, we’re gonna do the balloons of anatomy.
Remember your mannequin? Don’t go get him! We don’t need that damn thing.
What we do need is for me to show you how to draw that thing properly. Yes, even the retarded mannequin will need drawing correctly to get your picture absolutely amazing and precise. Gee, aren’t you glad you started reading this tutorial and have to witness me stretch every little part out? I know I am.
here, have some basic height diagrams to make you feel you’re learning something
The Burne Hogarth School of making bodies has a great way of doing this and it goes like this in its simplicity of the order in which to draw things that make up your little dancing corpse:
Chest
Hips
Torso
Buttock
Legs (going down)
Shoulders
Arms
Hands and feet
Neck
Head
You’re possibly going to notice one big problem here but let’s sidestep that for the explanation a moment. The reason why this is simply the Best way to sketch up a body is because this one’s on the sliding scale of least-to-most dependent body parts to other body parts. To explain more competently, the chest position is not dependent on the arms as the arms are to the body. To explain in a way you’ll get, stand up, go to a mirror and rotate your chest right now, keeping your hips in place. Note how even in keeping your hips in place every part of your body has moved a fraction. Your neck is now in a different position from a second ago and even your ankles will be tense at an ever so slightly lifted angle. If you had to draw your body as it showed in that mirror as a before and after shot, you’d be drawing two very different versions of your self and not just in the way you’ve inexplicitly put on fifteen pounds.
Contrast that with an image of yourself standing stock still in the mirror as before and one in which you’ve lifted your left arm. This will have barely affected anything. Your legs don’t have to shift to compensate, your neck will only move a fraction and even your other arm has remained exactly where you left it. Your chest may tilt but it’s hardly the same effect that moving your chest had on your arm.
Do you get it? You couldn’t get away with drawing the arms first and then try to fit the body around it. On the contrary, you need to draw the core of your body first as that dictates where your hips, legs arms and head are all gonna end up.
This is the bit you’ll want to practice loads of. Luckily there’s a very nifty site you can use to test with lots of different posesOf course this does all lead up to the problem you may have noted earlier and that’s the head.
Heads show up a lot (oddly enough). And adding the face to them is something you’re going to want to be ready for. A novice drawing the whole first may end up making the head too small during framework construction. Prevent this early by sketching a little face above it roughly the size you want.Now Mr. (or Mrs.) head being drawn last is gonna hit most professional scribblers out there hard. From the dawn of picture making we as an entire human race have always been used to drawing the head first. It’s the most interesting piece of the body. The flashy center of our homoclulied existence. You can make a foot in all its articulated glory and it still ain’t gonna express the anger a face will make when said foot gets trodden on. So leaving this section out too late may end up presenting a bit of a problem, namely you ain’t gonna want to draw up an entire picture only to realise too late that the face is too small/at the wrong angle/in the wrong perspective and you can’t fit the face where you want it no more, especially when that emotion can be key to the drawing and especially when the head is the focus of the entire picture.
So once you’ve got to the stage of drawing the head out you’re gonna want to fudge the process a bit and take this opportunity to make sure you’ve got the expression mapped out
Now again, making expressions is a whole other tutorial in itself, one which I will be making later in all its high references glory. For now I’m gonna move onto suggesting you go get Scott McCloud’s Making Comics book. There are three pages in there that are worth more than the rest of the book combined (and it is an awesome book) and they’re all on making emotions. Regardless for now, put your emotion in here. Sketch it out flat and then try to apply a basic form to the head position you’ve currently sketched up. Make sure you get it right. That is why you’re wasting time sketching up this thumbnail isn’t it? Getting the basics right now means you don’t have to waste time redoing large sections of your picture later.
Now, what you’ve done for this one character, do for all your other characters in the picture WITH JUST AS MUCH ATTENTION TO EFFORT AND DETAIL AS BEFORE! Go on, I’ll wait.
Done? Good. Now is the time to sketch out your scenery. Remember your events work from the previous chapter and build it up from there. If you have good perspective this should just flow right out.
Don’t worry, a tutorial on perspectives will show up eventually. If i were to suggest one, it would be this one. For character poses, they know want they’re doing.
Now you should be done with your basic thumbnail. If you’ve got any all important, all encompassing effects you want to add, now is the time to add them but all the same you should be ready to move on
Finishing your thumbnail.
There’s one particularly hatable evil about your thumbnail, you usually have to transfer everything you’ve just done to another sheet of paper. This can be because the sketch is now so sketchy and inerasable that you could damage the paper in trying to get rid of that arm you didn’t like the look of. Maybe it’s because you wanted to have the sketch done on 400gsm card and didn’t want to risk losing it in advance. Maybe you did it on scrap paper. Regardless, you either gonna have to do a lot of eraser cleanup that hopefully doesn’t destroy the base work you’ve set up, or start a new using your thumbnail as a reference.
Have fun with that, but bask in the knowledge that you now know what you’re drawing.
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