#other anatomy knowledge...!

[skunkes]

how did you learn to draw and feel comfortable drawing bodies and figures? I was curious to your own experience, since theres an overwhelming amount of ways to go about learning.

just by doing ! i collect lots of ref images and also use my own body as ref for poses (then mentally edit the body to fit the character im drawing)

though there's something to be said about. 1. the Becoming Obsessed With Something method in my experience, and 2. Finding a balance between motivating self to start, and waiting until its you Feel ready to do so ^_^

i learned to draw and feel comfortable drawing the human body by going section by section (was fixated on drawing isolated arms and hands for some time in high school, in between still trying to draw whatever (full bodies) i wanted as usual. i barely started really learning to draw legs last year. i didnt feel Ready or Motivated to focus on them before then, and now I can actually piece all of that together, and draw in a more Informed way than before) as well as just actually having genuine fascination and fixation on the human body to drive this. I love the body! I want to depict it well!

[herrscherofmagic]

i've spent nearly 47 hours over the last ten days drawing nothing but kiana (and hov)

yeah.

anyways, since I've had about enough of drawing Kiana for the rest of my life (/hj) I'm gonna put a pause on this project; but I'll turn it from a sprint into a marathon and try and work on it occasionally instead of all at once

I want to draw other things again x-x

Close-ups of the drawings below, as well as the reference image set, and some other misc. thoughts

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Portraits drawn from imagination

Started the process by trying to draw Kiana's head from imagination; then after each drawing I'd pause, look at some references, see what mistakes I made, then put away the references and drew from imagination (and referring to previous drawings) again. I also took breaks at two points to practice drawing eyes & hair before going back to drawing Kiana

For the last 4 portraits, I'd draw a head from imagination as a warm-up to a drawing session, and then do another head much later on instead of doing it immediately. Around halfway through this "phase" I started the other phases at random points, and finished this portion of the process in the first ~10-15 hours of drawing time. The rest of the time was split across the other exercises

Also I gave her an angry expression because I felt it was the easiest for me to do from memory since I've drawn HoV more than just "Kiana" herself. I also used a boring level 3/4 view without much perspective because it forced me to really make sure I was doing everything accurately and with care.

Basically my thinking was that if I could make a boring level 3/4 portrait look good enough, then I'd have no trouble getting it to look good in other perspectives. That seemed to be true when I got to the stage where I was doing expression practice and had to deal with more head tilt and other perspectives, lol

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Studies of still images from screenshots of gameplay, character art, and stills from animated shorts

Did rough sketches first, then drew with solid color over the sketches on a separate layer. not much else to say here, lol

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Full-bodies

Started with an anatomy model loosely based on the proportions of Kiana's in-game model, and then two attempts at doing full-body drawings from imagination before realizing that it's bloody insane to try and do that much detail from imagination and I have much better things to do with my life than that x-x

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Color studies

yaaaay color! yippee!

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Action sketches/"gesture" drawings

"Gesture" is in quotes because I was way too slow with these for it to really count as proper gesture drawing, imo. But the intention was to start with gesture, and I got closer to that as I went on.

It's way too tempting to start adding detail so I had to metaphysically slap myself with a frying pan to keep myself from getting derailed by that >.>

To get references for this, I did screen recording of gameplay on the PC with OBS studios, then used DaVinci Resolve to play back the recordings.

On PC, when using the mouse controls you can hold the camera fairly still when doing an attack sequence, making it awesome for getting unique angles. For instance, when I recorded Void Drifter's attacks, I was able to get at least 4 different PoVs of her attacks: from the left, the right, behind & above, and in front & below.

Unfortunately, though, it was a bit of a hassle to get good recordings because I had to go into an actual combat stage to record it instead of being able to use an empty testing stage.

With DaVinci Resolve I could "split" clips to make cuts in the timeline that let me easily mark the spots where different attack sequences started, and I could also easily play it in .5x speed to help me figure out how the animations were going from one set of frames to another.

Plus if you close the program after saving, when you open it up again it remembers which frame you were last on and takes you straight there, making it easy to continue from one day to another.

I used White Comet, Herrscher of the Void, and Void Drifter attack animations here, but I also did recordings of Knight Moonbeam and Herrscher of Flamescion, and I might give those a try someday.

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Facial expressions practice

Started with the set of rough sketches (first image), then did some expression practice from imagination (second and third images) to try and get used to how the proportions of the face change slightly with movement of the eyebrows/eyelids/jaw, since the shape of the eyes and mouth is especially important when doing stylized faces (like the anime style that HI3rd uses)

Then this morning I started working through the original rough sketches and developing them one-by-one, getting through 8 before I decided to call it quits and wrap up the project for now

So the facial expression practice pretty much the culmination of all my practice. All the practice with proportions, the contours & forms of the hair, monochromatic shading, line quality, shape design, etc.

This was also one of the few times I've ever taken stylized references and actually adapted them to some extent instead of directly copying them!

This is especially noticeable in the hair, where I used a more standard style for the hair, in contrast with the variety of hairstyles and shapes used in the various manga references (i.e. black-and-white Escape from Nagazora Kiana's messy hair vs the neat and solid hair in the colored Gratitude Arc, AE Invasion, and Moon Shadow Kiana)

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Reference images

[dandelion-roots]

Hmm isn't this... kinda gay?

[ID: a digital drawing of Xie Lian sitting on Hua Cheng's chest and putting lipstick on him with a brush. Behind them are red curtains and under them are red sheets. They're lit up by a couple butterflies flying between their faces. End ID]

[cornix-the-void-crow]

Only one character this time, but it allows me to get a little bit in-depth with details

Due to their hollow bones and other anatomical details that I've mentioned before, bird people require nonstandard health care. Yosano is one of few doctors who specialise in treating bird people

She doesn't go clothes shopping in this au. Instead, she buys fabrics and sews her own clothes because that's cheaper and easier and will last longer in her line of work

Oriental storks used to be frequently mistaken for red-crowned cranes in Japan and, therefore, believed to bring good luck and health

After Atsushi tore his first set of clothes during partial tiger transformation, she stared at him, very disappointed, and dragged him to redesign his clothes so they would accomodate his transformation

[rxttenfish]

one of the things that particularly pisses me off about art discussions, either in how nowadays everything has to aim for more and more realism in art styles and even live action to be seen as "real art", and in dismissing more abstract styles of artwork as not "real art" and having no inherent worth, is that they explicitly do not consider realism an art style either. to them, realism is just a given of "good" art, not chosen but rather just default. which i hate, because you CAN pick realism as an intentional style and a purposeful choice to suit a narrative, and all this results in is no one noticing or understanding why you made that choice or why that choice works better than any other possible choice to tell the story you want to tell.

[hwsforeignrelations]

Everybody learns at their own pace everybody learns in their own time everybody everybody learns at the time best for them everybody-

[khytal]

downloaded a bunch of anatomy books idk when I’m gonna read them but now that I have them I won’t be putting it off lmao ~(u<u)~

[godsfavoritescientist]

Tbh? I still feel so out of my depth whenever I try to write Bill. For whatever reason it doesn't come naturally to me like writing Ford does. Every time one of y'all has thoughts on Bill's characterization or writes something Bill-centric I'm mentally taking so many notes

[kjzx]

One day there's gonna be a person online that will take people's requests of any color and draw it in a person's skintone in a convincing way, see: a brown that looks like a light skinned white person's skin in a darker lighting, a green that looks like a healthy person's skin in neon lights, and so on.

And this will be a huge thing for the online art community in the west. I think the thing it lacks right now is this realization that the knowledge that tree trunks are brown and leaves are green are just something observed under the specific conditions of a sunny day, even in these very conditions these very leaves and trunk can look blue and purple and gray and so on if cast in shadow, especially in art

[motherforthefamicom]

i want to work on art rn but i have like three separate drawings In Progress currently and theyre all at different and frustrating in the process so instead im just gonna keep wasting tjme probably

[mars-ipan]

sometimes it’s hard to remove myself from school and remember that i’ve always loved to learn

[saintvampe]

while there are so many things seraphina knows,   and she attempts to keep most of her knowledge active,  one area of knowledge that seraphina will never fall out of practice of is her botanical knowledge:     as woman of the woods,    she essentially watched over and cared for her own  (  as they were often left untouched by others  )   woods and this gave her such an extensive knowledge on the plant life around her.    as new plants were introduced by travelers and the animals,    so her knowledge grew.     

[gemofanenby]

Exactly! people will literally put leashes on their own children, and obviously that's not a sexual thing, you don't need to police that. Therefore, a human wearing a leash is not inherently sexual.

This also applies to the vast majority of other kinks as well. they're things that people happen to find arousing for one reason or another but are not inherently sexual, that's why they're recognized as kinks and not just sex.

Nothing is inherently sexual except for y'know, actual sex. kink is such an incredibly broad category and humans can and will sexualize literally anything they want. there are people who have a kink for pool floaty toys. people who have a kink for plushies. people who have a kink for smoking cigarettes. but you don't object when you see these things in public, just because the person holding them might be horny about it.

So you have to draw the line somewhere, right? after you stop people from wearing leashes and pup hoods and dog ears and leather harnesses, what's next? are you gonna ban people from wearing big stompy leather boots because some people might think about grinding on them? are you gonna stop people from wearing open-toed shoes because some people think feet are sexy? are you gonna ban rich, blonde, white women from buying Wonderbread at high prices bc that one guy finds it hot? are you gonna pull a 2018 tumblr and ban "female-presenting nipples" from showing in public, requiring people to wear pasties?

Are you gonna start worrying that people might secretly wearing discreet sex toys in public and getting off to the exhibitionism and demand that everyone drops trow before entering the local grocery so you can check?

Or are you going to catalogue all the kinks of every single person in your society and ban them specifically from engaging in those particular behaviors?

My point is, any "fixes" for restricting kink in public will result in policies and procedures that are undeniably more invasive, making more "innocents" uncomfortable than there ever would have been if you just let people wear a leash outside sometimes.

If they haven't been exposed to anything like it before, a child isn't going to see someone walking around with a pup hood and immediately feel sexual discomfort and fear. they're gonna say "look look! that person's wearing a silly doggy mask!" and move on with their day.

I feel like walking someone on a leash should be like the perfect example of "kink in public" that can't and shouldn't be banned or controlled like it should be the poster child for free expression of sexuality in public that doesn't hurt anyone but instead it's somehow what ppl seem to rail against the most? doesn't make sense

[ozymoron]

hate when im reminded im actually talented and that most people cant draw the kind of shit i can draw and that its actually kinda incredible i can do what i can do and that im just so used to being in art spaces that i forget its a genuine skill most people dont have

[funshinebf]

last night me n my friend were drawing together for a minute and while i was drawing vash he looked over at me and was like "you dont use the little skeletons with the circles and lines??? you just freehand that shit???" and it made me realize that this is, probably not a normal thing? i feel like almost every art tutorial ive ever seen has said to use the skeletons. and like. i USED to, but with my own art i always feel like when i use a skeleton it always makes the poses look stiff and kinda awkward? so i usually just freehand it, unless i need a specific proprotion or such (ie. the arm length) and just go with the flow. i follow where my pencil takes me. if im struggling with a specific pose though sometimes ill draw a mini skelelton of that pose off to the side and then base the big freehanded sketch off of that as a reference. idk i guess i never thought about how this might not be standard practice before he said that lol

[theamazingannie]

Is there like somewhere online that can connect writers to professionals cuz sometimes in my writing I need very specific information that just isn’t available online and I need to discuss it with someone more knowledgeable in the particular field than I am and also don’t want to concern someone by asking out of context/be put on a watchlist