#also the difference in their arm and width sizes is especially haunting

[omegalerc]

seriously all im paying attention to here is the chass and their size difference. not feeling very classy today

[dogtoling]

oh tumblr user dogtoling, blease, impart unto us your wisdom of drawing really good fat cephalopods

I think i've answered this exact question before and it's kind of a tall ask... the best advice I can always give is to just study how to draw fat people first (granted, easier said than done in regards to finding references). Once you have a hang on how that works and how fat sits on the body and how it usually accumulates, that basic knowledge goes a pretty long way when drawing non-human characters too. for people who are completely new to drawing fat, the best off-the-top-of-my-head tips i can give are:

1. don't just draw A Circle. you won't get very far with that most of the time. if you really want to start with a shape, i'd recommend a rectangle and working out the shapes from there (more balanced than a circle + you're less likely to mess up in the gravity part)

2. fat =/= JUST the belly. I think this is pretty commonly talked about but a lot of people that are new to trying to draw fat people will just try to add a belly to an otherwise thin frame. And don't get me wrong, that IS also a body type that exists, but especially when you go higher in weight it's about filling out the whole body. add some width. study which areas accumulate more fat and which don't!

3. DO NOT BE AFRAID OF THE DOUBLE CHIN. Skinny Face on Fat Body is pretty common to see and again while you can also have a body type like that, it just seems like a lot of people are scared to draw double chins or not sure how they work. Don't be afraid to give fat characters fat faces, it makes a huge difference!! (though, also pay attention to not go overboard with this part, because it can also end up looking really off.)

4. remember that fat has weight, so if you think you've done everything correctly but the drawing still looks off, it's often because the GRAVITY is off. Fat Has Weight. So while you draw, try to visualize where that weight rests organically. (also this specific step will come back to haunt you every single time you draw a fat character sitting down or in any non-standing position)

5. Fat can change shape in different positions (for example rolls can appear or disappear depending on how the torso is bent). consider this when doing different positions - but don't go overboard here. Fat still usually has a general shape, it's not some kind of freely shape-shifting jello with the consistency of some goop. And again, body type matters here, some people are more firm than others.

6. At bigger sizes, pay attention to subtle differences in positions and posture that both the weight and the space it takes up might cause. For example, with bigger bodies you'll often see the arms angled slightly to the side rather than straight down the sides (collision with chest/upper body fat = arms Cannot just go straight down). you probably get the point. The keyword most of the time is SUBTLE, but also if you skip this part, the results might look strange and again you have no idea why.

this list is Not comprehensive because as i've added a disclaimer in like every part, there is a huge variety of body types. So the best way you can learn in the end is, unsurprisingly, just seeing and drawing different body types! but i tried to think of and include a lot of common pitfalls that people (including me) tend to fall into when learning and how to Skip the extremely frustrating "why does this look Wrong" part to at least some degree instead of having to stare at the art for 5 hours and just try to work it out.

anyway NOW TO THE CEPHALOPODS PART - if you draw Inklings with human anatomy you're basically done already. Just, doubly study real-life fat people in that case. But in the case you don't, practicing on real fat bodies is still useful because as I said before, understanding the basic rules is widely applicable even for other creatures! My approach to inkfish is that they're generally pretty human-shaped, but because they have no joints or bones, I try to avoid rigid segments in most areas and thus make them generally more smooth. that means less rolls (pretty much none until actually larger sizes) and more just, idk, smoothness.

This is more or less the mental map i work off of:

While you'll usually look at the inkfish torso and view it as mostly A Singular Cylinder, it becomes more obviously segmented with more weight. The arms, legs or tentacles don't have any shape other than Noodle, so they just get thicker overall for the most part. Go above a certain weight threshold and you start seeing more texture and rolls. In humans you would definitely have to consider stretch marks, but I omit those from Inkfish because that's scarring that I feel wouldn't occur in a species that's got flexible enough skin to drastically stretch and change form unscathed all the time anyway.

I have to point out that fat tentacles are a game changer in my opinion! They're a part of the body too, so as a very inkfish-specific tip, just add weight to the tentacles if you have a fat character. It adds a significant amount of immersion and just looks more sensible I guess. I'll use Engel's old hairstyle as an example because he's a very good example of this specific aspect...

yeah i feel like that illustrates my point.

(This isn't really relevant to DRAWING fat inklings, but someone is probably going to wonder about it so I'll answer it: i'm ignoring the logistics of a fat inkling being able to stand or walk without any kind of internal support structure. It's definitely notably difficult for them because as opposed to humans with skeletons, they have to support the weight mostly using JUST muscle. However from a realism standpoint, inklings being able to stand or walk at their size EVEN WHEN NOT FAT wouldn't work in the first place, and Splatoon is full of creatures like Cohozuna or the Great Zapfish, or even Mr. Coco, which would crush themselves and suffocate and die under their mass if they came out of the water... and they're constantly out of the water, so TL;DR no one in Splatoon gives a shit about the laws of physics anyway. If you can have the suspension of disbelief to accept Crusty Sean walking on two legs as a whole ass bipedal giant prawn, that should be able to extend to a fat inkling.)

I don't really know what else to write so hopefully this helped somebody. Lol