TRSE: How To Draw Tutorials:
Some Pointers on Various Poses
It may be easier to just "copy/trace" someone else's
artworks showing the characters in various poses, but by taking this way,
they may wouldn't not be able to understand how the poses are structured
especially since using as many different poses as possible may be quite
essential in the making of animated shows and graphic novels (comic/manga).
By understanding how a pose is structured, the artists would be able to
create their own original poses in their artworks. It would be boring to
see a character doing nothing but just standing there after all. Some poses
would even reflect some characters' personalities such as specific body
languages and stances for examples. There are some tools that may
help the artists work with many different types of poses including complicated
ones such as combat poses, and one example is as shown below:
This is a posable doll I picked up from some Anime store
and it can be adjusted to get many (but not all) poses to help with the
drawings. The wooden ones can be found in many art supplies store and even
some Walmart superstores. You also can pose in front of a mirror to see
how your limbs and body are positioned when taking on a pose and you can
even explore which pose is possible or impossible. That is how many
animators used real actors as models to make sure that the animated moves
are as realistic as possible (Shrek movies, Ghost in Shell, Polar Express,
etc). Speaking of that, you can ask anyone to pose for you. There are some
computer programs that are designed to help wtih drawing the characters
by creating and printing the poses for the artists to draw on. But what
good will those tools do if you don't have a basic understanding of the
makeup of the poses?
As you may have known, everything is made up in
imaginery patterns such as circles, squares, triangles etc, but this time
when it comes to drawing the characters in different poses, some of us
go with "bubbles/beans" which are 3D shapes such as spheres (balls), cones,
boxes. "beans" and cylinders and it happens that the concept of 3D is very
interweaved with drawing different poses of the characters. See the picture
to get an idea of what I mean by "bubbles".
You can see how the "bubbles" are drawn in many different
shapes to make up the body parts of a character in various poses and some
people use "stick-people" method to help with the drawings. The bubbles
can be adjusted to produce different dimensions of the body and limbs to
form the poses and give them a 3D look. You can play with your sketches
to discover what works best for you. I used the concept of "bubbles" to
quick-sketch Energeia in this pose as shown below: My pencil sketches are
always bit messy and please excuse me for that. ^_^;
There are thousands of possble poses and I can't cover
all of them due to time and geology jobs, so I will give some pointers
and the examples of how the "bubbles" are arranged to form a character's
poses and as a part of your training to be an artist, it's up to you to
use your brains to figure them out (that's how I learned to draw on my
own). You can even try sketching what I have sketched if you want.
Let's move to the next page
