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Come up with poses for you drawings?

Me and my sis are going to be doing Roxis vs. Roxas picture.

Roxas from Kingdom Hearts: http://i539.photobucket.com/albums/ff351/Shadow-37/Cartoon Anime and Videogame Characters/Roxaswithkeyblade.jpg
Roxis from Mana khemia: http://i539.photobucket.com/albums/ff351/Shadow-37/Cartoon Anime and Videogame Characters/Roxaswithkeyblade.jpg

(Im doing Kingdom Hearts Roxas and looking to try and do some sort of attack pose)


I've been having trouble deciding/coming up with a pose I'm satisfied with.
Ive looked through some pictures on photobucket already.

Just kinda wondering how yous decide what pose your doing.

On this pose ^^
http://i539.photobucket.com/albums/ff351/Shadow-37/AE070001.jpg

Posing has honestly never been one of my strong points. It's something I've been trying forever to improve with frustratingly little progress. Like Mayrin I have a collection of men and women in different poses, and focusing on different aspects of the body.

Also I find that learning a bit about the human body itself (Musculature, bone structure, basically the limitations of how every thing can move, is also helpful in learning how to pose a character.

I remember seeing that reference sheet pop up. :3

Sometimes its hard for me to settle on poses too. Especially when I cant get it to look the way I envision, or as epic as i'd hoped for it to.

First off, it's going to be important that you really like the pose you are drawing, because some can be really hard to draw. If you don't like it, you're going to hate all the time it may take you to get it right.

one thing that helps me think of an exciting pose is just to imagine a bit of a story with it. If you're looking for an attack pose, I would try to imagine at least a small part of a battle scene between your two characters. If you can imagine it vividly enough, then you can choose from the most intense parts of the scene to find your pose. things that come to my mind right off the bat are: Roxas glancing intensely over his shoulder after being knocked away, holding out his key blade as a guard and trying and anticipate his opponents next move; or something like whipping the blood or mud away from his eyes, maybe standing a little more limply while he thinks of what to do next.

Anyway, the important thing to think about is his facial expression and how his body language complements it. If he's looking beat up, then you'll want his body to look more bent/curved and have your angle looking down on him a little. If he's looking powerful, have him look more ridged (but not stiff) and have your angle looking a little up.

When it comes to finding a reference to help you, see what you can do by looking at your own body. That will give you much better practice and you can get exactly what you want. use a mirror or get a friend to take pictures of you need it. You can also search from pictures in photobucket or on DA and google images. If you do that, try to find specific parts you need help on. It's very unlikely that you will find exactly what you want for your whole picture in one referance, and it's much better for you as an artist if you can learn what you need from many references rather then just copying what you see in one or two.

Sorry I'm long winded. One other thing...

If you find you're having trouble getting your pose to look as epic or dramatic as you imagine it to be, try making some changes with the more key parts of the body. More dramatic turns and angles in places like, the spine, hips, shoulders and head/neck area can really help you to achieve a dramatic pose. Also, remember that hips and shoulders always point opposite of each other.

The bummer about dramatic poses is that they require fore-shorting. and that can be a beast.



















<--------------- don't forget that when you bend the hips, the legs have to bend accordingly.



p.s. sorry if I'm just telling you crap you already know. I haven't seen your art before you I don't know. sweatdrop

no prob. good luck on your piece. you should post it in here when you get something stated. 3nodding

Most I act out myself. But every once in a while (usally for males) I go on DA and find reference stock poses to help me out. Even if I just use a hand as a reference I credit the stock art.

yea as the others said, I have a stash of 'stock' photos, basically of backgrounds or people in different, even very strange poses that I keep on my hard drive if I ever need to look from something. All of them are real life so I know how the body actually looks doing what it is doing, too. If I dont have what I am looking for i'll just google random images and view a bunch o ifferent things until I think I know what i'm going to do, then I just kind of bust it up from there.

often times I wil make a skeleton of a pose first, which is basically a stick figure that has more joints than normal (all the joints a real person has), and then I add circles or boxes to give it human shape xD