The anatomy is waaaay off. Her outstretched arm is far too long, her boobs are too high up, her right (our left) boob isn't in perspectie, her waist is too skinny, her hips are waaay too small, and her legs are much, much, much too short.

(Sorry to sound critical; I'm rushed so I can't really go in-depth)


Edited by Pragz - 09 October 2009 at 7:25pm

Warning: HUUUUUUGE post follows. I talk a lot.

I had to basically scrap your skeleton and start over, but before I go any further I want to say that the actual shape of your character's legs is very nice, very appealing. They're in the wrong scale, though, and fail to properly connect to the hip--possibly because your errors start at the shoulders and work downwards. This stinks because it means that the initial mistake trickles down and you make your job harder for yourself than it has to be--so start soundly.

With that in mind: scrapped skeleton, a very loose and hasty form:


(the hip closest to us is not filled in so it looks like it just has a stick jabbed into her pelvis. Ignore that.)

(Also please excuse the dithering/mess; all I had handy that didn't need to be installed/unzipped since I just reformatted was MSPaint nooooo)

I'm going to make a very long post here. Don't look at me; Hatch made me do it.

The biggest things you can remember when trying to accurately render anatomy are proportions and balance.

The first is easy: compare the length of, say, the lower part of a leg to the arm. In some styles of art you'll naturally be exaggerating this, but you want the basic proportions to hold true so you can know what to exaggerate for what effect. I made the assumption you were going for archetypal attractive female and worked from there.

The best way to do this is to 1. study photographs a LOT, especially any you can find that contain poses similar to the one you're drawing (especially if you can find several from different angles) and physically lift up a pencil or tablet stylus to the screen, marking off lengths with your thumb and comparing them to others. 2. Be SURE and lay out the ENTIRE skeleton in a stick figure before you draw your form! That way you won't spend all that time on making beautiful legs and find out they're too small to use. I tweaked your proportions: overall she makes more sense, and her bicep-to-forearm ratio is more even, as is her arm-to-arm.

Balance is tricker, and it's still something I struggle with. I personally find it easier to achieve balance with a four-legged form than a human being (or even a bird).

The biggest thing to remember when you're starting out with human anatomy is that one leg, in almost all standing poses, is taking most of the weight, and that that hip will be higher, and that shoulder will be lower. I doodled in red lines so that you can see what I mean about the shoulder/hip dynamic, although I exaggerated them to make it more obvious.

Putting some conflict of direction into your pieces makes them more believable and interesting, and also heightens the attractiveness of a character. Go and google "hot girl" or "runway model" and you'll see that hip/shoulder action being played up VERY hard: http://www.topnews.in/usa/files/Project-Runway-winner-is-Leanne-Marshall.jpg is a good one; so is: http://frillr.com/files/images/moniquelhullier.jpg The second one is especially good because you can clearly see the straightness in the weight-bearing leg and the loose, dangling action on the other side. Also, it's a better picture because that girl is smokin' hot and that dress is fierce.

Uh.

Anyway: start there. Determine where the weight-bearing leg is. I chose to make it the side opposite the outstretched arm, since this is a more natural movement. For maximum believability and interest with this pose, I'd actually take the dangling arm and rest it on her hip, elbow out: this is the easier way to stand. I actually stood up to test all this and instinctively kept wanting to move my hand either onto my hip or to cradle the invisible object I was holding.

I'd also work on the placement of the breasts relative to the ribcage, and the shape of the torso itself. Try to think of the bulky shapes of the bones under the flesh: ribcage vs. spine vs. pelvic muscle.

Breasts can be extremely tricky. Not that anyone needs excuses to look at pictures of boobs, but totally go look at pictures of boobs. If anyone gives you guff just tell them you're doing artistic research. It's hard to describe how a boob sits on a ribcage, but a good way to visualize it is to think of a round cloth sack filled with sand, with the top half joined to the ribcage: they slope outwards on top and melt into the collarbone area (unless they're fake or contained in a wonderbra, in which case it's like stapling two cantaloupes on), and then the heavy, weighted part of the breast rounds off below. The line of the breast in most poses and perspectives will connect to the tendon on the underarm. Lift up your arm and feel the hard bit connecting it to your chest. Right there. In your picture there is no line connecting the weight of the sack to this tendon: instead, the breast faces us. I'm not gonna lie, my boobs are kinda cock-eyed like that, although not nearly so perky but I doubt that's what you were going for.

This was extremely long. Hatch made me do it.

Don't think that my long post suggests that your work is unsaveable. The fact that you're here looking for advice is enough to suggest that you'll be good to re-work this, and there are several elements (calves!) that are good in isolation but don't work with the whole. Also, man, I am right here learning this with you and I still have a LONG way to go. The legs on my edit don't quite achieve that balance/weight bearing I was talking about... so I feel your pain. Human anatomy is complicated! But it gets easier once you nail a few basic rules, and I'm totally learning as well.

I have some suggestions for the face too but since you asked for anatomy that is what you get :D

Edited by Petrichor - 09 October 2009 at 7:58pm

Yay! I haz help! *goes to fix*

EDIT: Epic first post is epic. ;)


Edited by Pumpkinbot - 09 October 2009 at 9:24pm

The boobs are still way too high.

here's and edit I made.
Basicly, I changed the skin color, the hair color, moved the eyes a little bit, made them smaller, corrected some anatomy issues, and some other stuff. I suck at explaining, so I won't, I hope that by looking at it, it may help you. ^^



Edited by susuwataris - 13 October 2009 at 3:23am

I think I'm done. :D Any last suggestions? 

Edited by Pumpkinbot - 16 October 2009 at 1:37pm

I think this would benefit from no dithering :o

Quick shading/color edit:



I did it a paintover in a higher resolution in the hopes that it would explain the theory rather than suggesting pixel placement.

In a lot of places you're putting a highlight right along the edge, hugging the outline, and doing the same on the other side with shadow. This makes things look flat and beveled.



Remember to dig in deep with your shading, and follow the 3D contours of your shape, not the outline. Your entire 3D form is defined entirely by shading--it's not something you can just add around the edges. For the same reason, you should endeavor to remove all internal outlines. Things in real life don't have outlines, they're defined by shadow and light.

As for your colors. I only messed with the shirt and a little with the skintones. Just basic contrast and hue shifting--move towards warmer colors in light and cooler colors in shadow as a very rough guideline.

I don't think you should be dithering at all. People tend to think that dithering = shading, which is not the case at all. If you have your shading right, you can dither or not and it will look fine. Dithering cannot be used to mask improper shading, or as a replacement for proper shading.

The face definitely needs attention, but it requires a much more fine-grained edit that I didn't really want to take the time for since it sounds like you're getting ready to wrap this piece up. I'll go into detail if you decide to keep working on it.

The colours could still use some work. There's a lot of ramps but little contrast. Try to mix 'em up and hue shift. I'd also recommend not showing the full shape of the boobs. Just do it the way Hatch did, basically ;D

I whipped up a quick edit of the face, try to concentrate on the forms (block out highlights and shadows) rather than just drawing the shapes in line.

Me too. It's the lowered eyebrows+dimples :D