how to exaggerate poses how to make poses feel more fluid when we're first taught anatomy and
figures we are taught to work with geometry you're going to use like trapezoidal forms for like the
upper torso or like cylindrical forms for your arms or whatever all that fun jazz right there's
a lot of like shapes a lot of forms you can use to build up the body but a heavy reliance on geometry
leads to stiffness right a lot of the times when we are drawing bodies drawing anything like that
we tend to always always always draw those shapes in right you'll see a lot of beginner artists do
this right it's like perfect head if they're an anime artist then it's like the teardrop shape
and then you probably have a very stiff neck very stiff trapezoid here circle circle rectangle
right this crazy stiff crazy crazy stiff you can do that for the first few times you draw like
that's what you learn to do and then you get more used to doing forms right so maybe then you start
to think of this as a sphere and then you start to think of the neck as a cylinder but you're still
drawing them really heavily like these boxes and cylinders and this is a sphere and this is
a cylinder right this is also stiff right crazy crazy stiff if we rely too too heavily on those
forms they become very very stiff you need to know how to add the muscles back in and then
you need to know how to almost quote unquote unlearn them for your dynamism if you rely too
too heavily on those forms it leads to stiffness your poses will become really really stiff it's
almost like you know those like wooden posing dolls that you see first of all i hate those
those wooden dolls they are not fluid enough right when you're trying to get with a pose like
they help with foreshortening but not so much with posing so you kind of need to unlearn your forms
to get dynamic so your over exaggeration means that you're forgetting your forms all right if you
really really want to exaggerate your poses your forms your geometry will suddenly not really apply
it's now you're working in just organics but the thing is is that doing this takes
a lot of practice right you need to have your forms memorized in order to forget them again
this is definitely a more advanced lesson so if you have your geometry memorized you have
your measurements memorized you have all that memorized and you can like mostly work without
reference in terms of that then yes you can like you know start to forget it quote on quote
the thing is that you're not really forgetting you just have it memorized to the point where you
don't need them anymore a dynamic pose is a pose that has movement within it movement is not always
literal all poses still ones included have movement so you could have like a very very
literal movement right if you have somebody jumping over something whole body is vaulting
this has movement this is literal movement the person is actually moving
they are jumping they are vaulting over a thing here but even like
somebody standing still this also has movement so non-literal this person is standing still this
pose still has movement the reason is because of the line of action your line of action
moves throughout the entire body this one has a very funky line of action it's very much like that
right you can even argue that there's like a line of action here and then a line of action here
but this one's very funky most dynamic poses do have foreshortening that's the thing
is that most dynamic poses won't ever not have foreshortening 99% of the time they will like even
the smallest bit like this foot is foreshortened this thigh is foreshortened it's like they'll
always have a bit of foreshortening in there this forearm is foreshortened that kind of vibe
this is about movement so this is movement so literal movement is the person's actually moving
non-literal movement is the person's not actually moving they're just standing still but they will
always have movement within them you need to find that curve you need to find that line of action
because your line of action will determine whether something is moving or not most of the time your
line of action should never be perfectly straight up and down and should never be horizontal even if
the person is lying down they will have some kind of movement to them there's still a curve to that
every pose should have some kind of movement to it it doesn't matter whether they're standing
still or not this isn't even exaggeration this is just what your poses should look like you know
you should have some kind of movement to them so these are for dynamic poses but exaggerated poses
those are always either an action or a response never the in between let's see if we have a person
standing here i'm reading something on their phone there's a wall here somebody sneaking around so
this is still dynamic say if the person jumps out this person's like oh my gosh this person's coming
out spooking them they're like blah this is now exaggerated this is an action this is a reaction
so the exaggerated pose is either an action or a response to an action right so it is either
the action itself or it is the reaction or it's both right that's when you want to exaggerate
your poses never the in between so this is like your dynamic poses beforehand and you're
exaggerated or those when you do all exaggerated poses you need to think like you're an animator
it's anticipation and follow through so this applies to comics and sequential art when you are
doing any kind of action within a comic you need to make sure that you are drawing the anticipation
and the follow through what does that mean so say if we have somebody who's jumping let's
say we start with somebody running right they're running they're about to make a big jump if you'd
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the frame that you'd want to draw is them coming down they're charging up so this pose this is the
anticipation right it's the anticipation for them to jump and then they do jump but you'd want to
exaggerate this too right so maybe they got like a giant like whoa right the peak of the jump but
let's say that they don't land too great so what you do is they land on their face and it's right
at the peak as their body kind of skids and their legs fall up like they fell down and now they're
like petering skidding on the ground their legs are pushing backwards their arms are completely
fully extended right they're like sliding down there so just in these four illustrations of stick
figures you get the idea of what this action is you need to think like an animator the in-betweens
of these the person kind of jumping like this this is unnecessary of them coming off the ground
it feels stiff the person who's a little bit afterwards where they're completely flat on the
ground this is also stiff there's no movement in this they're perfectly flat on the ground right
this feels more fun it feels more exaggerated so those kind of like after poses while these are a
lot easier to draw they're not dynamic and they're not exaggerated right you want to be able to
have that sense of exaggeration within your work so my main tip for any kind of exaggerated pose is
to think like what you would see within that action let's do another pose like let's say
that somebody's reeling back to punch somebody that's the popular one when you're doing poses
as well don't be afraid to cut off limbs right you can't always see every single aspect of the limb
i'm not going to be able to see this bicep right it's going to be behind the body
see the whole body's twisting their pelvis is facing forwards but this upper side of the body
is twisting so you notice that this movement is going throughout the entire body look at the angle
of the hips look at the angle of the shoulders they're opposite this arm is reeling backwards
before they punch right this is the anticipation and then you don't just draw the person punching
that's the big thing the biggest misconception becomes action poses is people always draw the
second pose as the action happening no you draw the action after it's happened you draw
the follow through so you draw what happens afterwards right you'll see a lot of beginner
artists will go like oh yes i'm going to draw the punch and the arm is straight forward no no
no that's stiff it's actually very stiff what you want to do is draw the follow through so
the whole body is arced forwards this shoulder is back now they've reeled back this arm is now
swung and notice me ignoring forearms a bit right does a forearm bend like this no does it matter
not really right we're here to exaggerate we're here to make it look a lot stronger and to do
that you're gonna have to forget your forms a little bit am i forgetting them entirely
no i'm still thinking about them but i'm not using geometry but now you have this crazy
twist in the whole body is this form correct in terms of how he's punching no but that's okay
we're not thinking about that right now so this is the anticipation
and follow-through so that's kind of what we want to think of when we go with exaggeration
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