[Music]
Hey everybody, welcome to Proko!
Getting the gesture and story in a pose is really important to draw awesome dynamic figures.
So, I thought I'd bring back Mike Mattesi to show us how he uses his FORCE method.
Mike wrote the FORCE books which are all really good and used widely in the animation industry.
He teaches it at drawingforce.com.
Okay Mike, take it away.
Mike: All right, so here is our first model photograph.
Let's take a look at this through the idea of function.
So, here's a ground plane.
I want to keep in mind this idea of gravity, right?
So I'm gonna put actually a letter G here with a circle and this arrow, I want to keep this in mind.
I try to understand that that's something I had to keep considering.
So what is she doing?
Well, I see her whole body is like sweeping up like this, and what's causing it to sweep up like this?
She has this very strong arm that is sweeping into her shoulder and then that's going down
on a slight angle like so to her hand.
So that's like the support, right, so this and from that, you can see how her body is
doing its best to try to be a long plank, like this way.
So let's go for that and then I'm gonna show you some subtlety that's actually in that.
So she's like this, she's holding up the weight of her body, pushing into this shoulder, we've
got this stretching that's happening on the other side with her ribcage like so and you
can see her other shoulder is here.
Just get this arm here really quick.
Now, what's also really crucial here is this other leg.
This other leg is really important because it's also supporting a lot of her weight.
Now, this happens to be the template for this happens to be outside thigh, inside knee,
outside calf and that's gonna get us to her foot like so.
And then her other leg, her right leg right, is sweeping out this way and then it reverses
and it goes like this and it's going to get us to her other foot which is about right here.
I'm gonna raise this ground line a little bit.
And then we have the strength of her sternocleidomastoid muscles, right?
Like holding up her head because our head has all this weight.
So this is sort of like the - the guts of it.
What I hope you see here is I'm drawing towards the idea.
I want to understand the strength of this arm is holding up all of her weight, at least
from about here to the right, you see?
So everything from here over for the most part, this whole region is being held up by
this arm and then from about here over, it's by her legs.
Now, there's other subtle things in here which are important like you know, her legs coming
out at us, right?
And so, I might want to think about the form of her leg and you could see that her shorts,
that the ellipse is going this way so that tells us the force is going that way, right?
Her other leg is going the other way, so that legs going back in space, it's shooting out
this knee and then it's going through a reverse and making its way down to the foot which
is on an angle like that actually and then we get down here to the other foot.
So, that's the general idea.
Now, the subtle thing I wanted to show you is, sure, she's - she's really like trying
to sweep over this way and she's trying to keep her body stiff over here, right?
Her oblique is not the muscular sure here is really working hard to do that.
But you'll notice, even with all that going on, there is a subtle S moment in here of
trying to sweep and fall into here.
You could see in our belly button, right?
Her belly button is like a really great indicator of this diagonal movement.
I want a little bit of that in there you know, I want the subtlety of that in there.
I can see her stomach is pulling this way, so, like her pelvis but I would consider this
like secondary and the primary idea is to get her whole upper body held up by this main
structure that we call her arm.
All right, so that's one, right?
Just to show you, "look I'm drawing to represent ideas".
I'm using the force line, right?
And so that's my language to represent these ideas cuz I'm drawing forces and it's all
to make me try to represent the ideas I have as to how things work, okay?
All right, let's try um, let's try one more.
All right, so here's another image.
Again, notice the play that gravity has in all this.
Put the G with the arrow, gravity.
I'm trying to draw functions and like wow!
This one, her chest wants to fall down, get pulled down by gravity, but it's sweeping
up into her hip.
So it's like hanging, right?
The strength here is in her pelvis, right?
Because we go from one side of her pelvis to the other side and right here you could
see, man, her leg, her leg here is like a pillar like so and that leg is doing all the
work, all the work, it hooks up to the rest of the pelvis and it's going from front - it's
going outside, inside, outside, right?
So, outside thigh, I call this outside, inside, outside.
Inside knee, this is how the forces are flowing and then it goes to outside calf and then
that'll get us to the - to her foot, okay?
So there it is, right?
It's very straight, right?
It's trying to sweep under the body.
This is a moment - this the fulcrum ba - basically of balance, okay?
From there, you know, she's got her leg on this side of the teeter-totter and this goes
from outside to inside and then back outside, she's pulling this way.
That's a really important moment if you think about it, right?
Because the tension that's gonna be created here between her leg and her foot to her upper
body and arm is helping her center herself over this leg.
Remember, the reason we're doing this video in the first place is your drawings are only
as good as your ideas, right?
And so, I'm trying to show you um, how I think, right?
Like this is the kind of stuff I think about when I'm drawing, where I'm like "oh my god
look at that!
Look how awesome it is that she's balanced like this and force is pushing up into her
pelvis and this is sweeping over here like this and I just got this really strong shoulder
over here that's shooting down".
This is what I would call a hyper extended elbow, she's pushing into her elbow and that
force sweeps back out and she's got her hand and her wrist over here and that's - that's
grabbing onto her foot.
I probably won't have time to get into her foot and hand in like super details but here's
sort of a very simple hand and foot you know, and she's leaning her way down, right?
As if she's like - as if she's falling over here, right?
This is like this and her arm is like this and I'm looking at my drawing, the way I assess
my drawing is is this feel successful from here to here, I don't think so.
I think - I think she feels a little big, right?
A little long, I'm gonna shorten this up.
That feels better already.
So, and that's what I can do by the way is I can kind of keep looking at my own drawing
to see, does it feel like it's working?
And a good judge of that is to look at your work and say you know, what is this model
actually standing?
Do I - do I buy it?
Do I buy into the idea that there's standing going on here?
That already feels better.
Abstractly what I'm looking at in this pose is this...
It's like here's the fulcrum, she has weight over here, she has weight over here, do they
equal each other, right?
Is it going to work?
Now, keeping in mind by the way, if I tried to do this as male, I would fall over because
my center of gravity is higher in my body which means any guy would fall down, but because
she's a female, most of her weight is over here, so it's sitting over the leg.
So, she really can play with this.
For me, no way, I would be on my face.
Alright, so there's a second one.
Again, I'm not going into details here, I want you to see how I think and how the drawings
show up from that, all right?
Let's do one last quick one.
I like this last pose.
All right, so here she's seated, again, we got to think about force, you know gravity
pushing down, the body's forces come from that, right?
I like all the thrust in this one that's going into the shoulder.
A lot of rotation, this is what I would call an "ass", because she's going like this and
then from that she's sweeping this way, you see?
So, the pose starts to appear based off of me thinking about the functions, oh my god!
That shoulders pushing in that way, she's driving down to her arm like this, to her
elbow, it's coming down to her fore arm into a wrist over the top of her hand, right?
And then she's like crushing her hand down there, almost like she's squashed a spider
or something, right?
And you can see how it's like squashed down there and then all this is happening.
So, I want to be aware of all this weight and see the other side of her shoulder there,
it's like this and the back is about right here.
You can see - let's see, her breasts and her ribcage kind of appear out of - behind her
arm about here.
Now, you know, I can push for accuracy, I want to do that but I don't want to make that
the sole purpose I'm drawing.
That's just kind of a given, I'm trying to get the proportion and all that other fun stuff, right?
That's not the reason I draw, right?
Imagine me sitting here and drawing to say "well, let me see if this measurement is right
or let me see this measurements right".
There's just so much more going on that I want to accomplish than the measuring.
The measuring is just a very small part of the figure drawing.
So, you know, here I am, I'm flowing over here, I hit this hard knee of hers and then
her calf and she sweeps down like this, and you can see her foot like that and then her
rear end is like that.
Got that nice fluidity up there and like this and her leg comes out from behind there.
I'm trusting my eyes, right?
Like it's so weird to think her calf touches her rear end right there, right?
But I'm like "Oh, that's - that's what I see", so that's me allowing my brain to trust my eyes.
Remember the equation that we talked about earlier.
So, something like that.
Again, I'm not gonna have the time to go into a more sort of complete drawing, but I'm hoping
that you guys see how I'm drawing for ideas.
So, this whole idea is this arm is helping support the fact that she's leaning forward,
her face is about right here.
Let's see, where does it come out?
It comes out of her shoulder with her neck and then it goes back down into her shoulder
like that and then she has this like pony tail here.
So, there you have it.
What I hope that you leave this video with is a sense of, you know what, wait a minute,
my drawing doesn't have to be about copying, it can be about way more than that.
Things that are way more exciting.
I can actually try to draw my ideas and my ideas are about how the model is working and
that's really beautiful, the idea of how the model is working is extremely dramatic.
That's where you're starting to draw forces and your line can represent that, the weight
of your line can represent that, the fluidity or roundness or angularity of your line can represent that.
There's lots of great things that come out of than trying to draw the figure with - with
force and try and understand how the models are working.
All right, so there you go.
Hopefully you enjoyed this video, I hope to see you at drawingforce.com.
I want to thank Stan again for hosting me on his amazing YouTube channel, try drawing
with force, take care.
Stan: Awesome! Thanks Mike for the demo.
If you guys liked this video, Mike has part two over on his channel.
Just click that link in the description to check it out.
And if you're liking this year's 12 Days of Proko, come back tomorrow for more good stuff.
See you then.