Help. I beg of you.

Post finished and unfinished work here for critique and appraisal.
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Mac
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Help. I beg of you.

Post by Mac »

OK, I'm almost embarassed to post my art here 'cause it sucks so bad. But I've hit a dead end and need some help. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v413/ ... ketch2.jpg

( I'm adding the neck thing and wings later, by the way)

That's my darigan eyrie, Xenthir. My plan for this picture was to have his front right leg (his right) in mid-step, with him looking back and an angelic light shinging down on him.

Unfortunately, things aren't going as planned. The only thing I'm happy with in the whole picture is the head. I hate the way the legs/body/hindquarters look.

So I really need some help. How should I fix it?
thelonetiel
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Post by thelonetiel »

Ah, I say find a good picture of a lion and examine it. I find it extremely helpful for me to sketch the circle for the head, chest, and hindquarters, and a circle at each joint. If you can get a lion skeleton picture, or any four legged animal like that (dog, cat, etc.) you can see better how the legs work. Better yet, if you have a dog or cat, follow them around and watch their front legs work.

Even if you end up going for a more cartoonish rather than realistic piece, anatomy will make or break a picture.

The bottom of the feet should be reletively flat, and right now he is walking on tip toes. I think his chest also extends farther out than it should. And I love huge tails, so I think his tail is too short.

But, bottom line, sketching the very basic frame of the body is very helpful. It makes it a lot easier to fix the pose until you have it perfect, so you don't have to keep redrawing the detailed outline. I know I hated doing the circle thing when I first started sketching, but they are invaluable now.

It is a good start though, I like the idea of the post and everything. ^_^
Mac
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Post by Mac »

Thanks, your advice is really helping. ^^

How *do* cats walk? I've been trying to watch my cats but they move to fast. Is it right set forward, left set forward, or, like right front left back, left front, right back? *confused*
Hawk
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Post by Hawk »

Cats step with both left legs, then both right legs when they walk or run.
Found this on a website :D
jeti
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Post by jeti »

Ok, I would like to start out by saying that I know very little "actual" stuff about anatomy, especially that of cats/cat-like creatures. Everything I "know" is based off of what I know about humans... so any and all information I give you is only for drawing purposes.

Also, I don't like showing people "how to draw", I only like explaining how things are formed so that people can understand it themselves... I find that to be a lot more helpful in the long run than just red-lining a picture.

To start, it's important to know the basic bone structure, just so you know how the leg is formed... I'm a lazy bum who doesn't feel like drawing out the skeleton (though it's crazy fun, lemme tell you!) so I just did some lines:

Image

A front leg, a bent front leg and a back leg. I'll start out with the back leg because I want to. :3

I believe it's helpful to compare the back leg to your own. Some people refer to the back part as the knee, only backwards, which I think is stupid and kind've a difficult concept to get at. Instead, the top is the hip bone, the part which juts forward is the knee, the part which juts backwards is the heel, and the part the animal walks on is the ball and toe of the foot. If you look at your own legs, or try to crouch in order to walk on all fours, you can see quite well how all that works... I think that'll help you in improving the shape of your eyrie's legs.

The front legs, then, correspond to human arms. They bend back because that would be the elbow. Also, when animals hold their paws like that they tend to have it hang down sorta limply from the wrist, which I can see you're starting to do already, which is good. *nods*

Addin' some meat onto the bones reveal the forms you want to be drawing:

Image

You can see now where the musculature goes (roughly). Really, I thin you'll see a 100% improvement if you exagerrate the muscles of his legs. It just makes drawings a lot more lifelike and believable. Even if you don't really know much about muscles, if you look at yourself you can see where they are... just make those parts of the form "bulge" a little, for lack of a more pleasant word. A curve in front of the shoulder, a curve on that part of your upper arm you flex, a curve at the front of the lower arm... I think you can look at the drawing and see what I'm talking about.

The back leg is formed rather simply, but I find it always turns out better once you know how the bones are floatin' inside there.

Now the paw itself is mostly just the toes... I consider myself to be notorious for making the paws hugehugehuge, but this is a cartoony style after all and I think it adds a little character. Plus, I think it gives the characters some more believability to have larger paws if you're not drawing it realistically... makes it seem like they have some nice sturdy feet to stand on. Because the animal is really placing all of its weight onto its toes, they look pressed awful flat to the ground... it's usually unnecessary to draw in the spot between the toes and the ball of the foot which would arch up. Makes it look a bit weird. Try to give the toes some slope when you draw them, because if you draw them too "rounded" it looks like there's no real bottom of the foot, just some weird... rounded... thing.

Also, for cats (and therefore eyries, which have sort've catlike bodies) it usually looks nice to draw the toes are ovals. Not sure why, but it works. The legs I drew look a lot more doglike than catlike because of the paws, I think. n_n; Heh. I kind've suck at cats. You can see a detail of a lifted paw with the rounded toes on the far left. Also, there're where you'd place the claws, assuming you want 'em.

You can also see the extra toe cats have, slightly up the leg. The two front legs are right legs so you can see a little nubby toe around the wrist area, the back leg is a left leg so it's blocked. I believe that's a dewclaw, unless I'm mixing that up with something else. You can choose to add it or not, but it should be there and it's a nice detail that can often make it seem like you know what you're doing.

Ok, now onto how these legs work on the full body:

<a href="http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/9083 ... .jpg"><img src="http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/9083/bosdr1xf.th.jpg" border="0"></a>

Click the thumbnail for that one, I didn't want to stretch anyone's screen unnessecarily.

It's good to start out a drawing with a general line that goes through the full pose, this would be the curve of the spine. Having that set out makes the body flow and seem whole, sometimes if you don't have this idea down the body and its parts may seem disjointed. It's especially helpful in the drawing of tailed creatures because the tail is merely an extension of the spine, the spine and tail forming a continuous curve. The spine curves in slightly around the lower back. The back legs attach at the hip, about the same level as the top of the back. Usually just before the spine swoops down into the tail. The ribcage ends just before the downward curve in the back. It should be defined as a lot larger than the lower body area because of all the organs stuffed into it. Unfortunately, my drawing there is kind've wonky because I mostly draw greyhounds and they're a lot thinner there than more animals, but there still is a bit of a thinning in that part of the body. Just not as pronounced as what I put there.

The legs are obviously formed how I've already told you... I don't think I really need to repeat myself. I'll just note that it's usually a good idea to sketch "through" the body-- that is, even if you can't see most of the right front leg or whatever because the body's blocking it, still sketch out what's going on there because otherwise what you -can- see shows up really deformed. Happens all the time to what could have otherwise been a very good picture. People tend to do this with skirts, for instance. They just draw the skirt and then add the feet on at the bottom. This is a big no-no because then the feet are positioned wrong and make the legs you assume to be there to be horribly mutated. Just a quick draw-through can save you a lot of icky. n_~

Image

Also, here's just a close up of a tailspade... the tail goes through it, kind've. Putting the tailspade into perspective (that is, not just looking at it head-on) makes it much more three-dimensional. Y'know... sort've smaller on the side farthest from us.

Now here are some quick notes about the wings and the ruff (and also the head, I suppose), just to think about before you add them.

Image

Head's sort've round, of course. Adding definition to the roundness of the cheeks helps it take form. An eyrie's cheeks are a little tufty at the ends. The top of the beak is a lot larger than the bottom of the beak, and there's this funny... lumpy line bit on top of it (I'm worse at bird anatomy than at cats, forgive me). Ears are ears. (That sentence was so weird to type...! O_o; ) They are pockets rather than flat triangles, and have tufty hair at the base, creeping inside on the side of the ear closest to the center of the head.

The ruff, it's important to remember, does not sit -below- the eyrie's head... it wraps around behind it. And that's all I really wanted to say about it. e_e; Oh, but it's also nice to have the ruff ride up the shoulder a little, so you can see where the leg attaches to the body so it's not just swimming in fur. Since the wings attach inside the shoulder blades, their bases are usually obscured by the ruff.

Your wing is pretty much your basic human arm:

Image

Wing shoulders between real shoulders... the elbow dips down, then that thing sticking out of the top is the thumb. The lines coming out of the top are the fingers. Kinda creepy, actually. e_e; The feathers are short and dense where they cover the arm structure, and are longer and more pronounced as individual feathers in the parts where the fingers are.

Image

Here I slapped on the head, ruff and a wing for general placement. Wing's waaa~y too small, now that I look at it... head's not that great, either. e_e; Well, you get the general idea, anyway.

... My god, I just realised how disgustingly long this post is. x_x I think I've been writing this for an hour now, on and off... Well, hopefully it helps you, anyway. e_e;
Dead Webby
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Post by Dead Webby »

Jees, you shouldn't be embarressed 'cos thats pretty good so far. The thing that I think looks odd though is how the legs are so straight, but by the looks of things jeti has already gone over that.

Well done!
Image
Thanks VanillaCoke for the Set.
Mac
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Joined: 18 Jan 2006 11:21 pm
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Post by Mac »

Woah, Jeti gets an award for that post. Like, a really big award. No, a huge award. xD

Thanks for the advice - I feel like I've really learned a lot about anotomy, heh. I'll post here with the picture after I finish the legs. ^^
Shado
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Joined: 18 Feb 2006 01:07 am

Post by Shado »

Whoo. I learned more about anatomy in 5 minutes than I would in a lifetime.

Jeti DOES deserve an award. -nod nod-

Well, can't wait to see the picture! :D
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