I find it very interesting, how the human body moves. Within the last year its become a very important part in presenting my characters to the world. As a writer by heart, it’s very freeing being able to do this.
Learning how to pose characters
Posing is key to illustrating my characters and the worlds they live in. I’ve been paying very close attention to how my body moves, how other people’s bodies move, how body weight is distributed depending on how you stand, sit, bend, twist, turn, how our different parts lead and support each other, etc…
The hardest thing I find with posing is making it look natural. When I first started, my characters often looked stiff and robotic, bending, twisting, and turning at odd angles. I think the most difficult are facial expressions. The face is so complex. The brows, eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, and tongue move in so many different ways it can seem daunting at times.
What I’ve learned to do with the body, in posing, is learn what body parts lead other parts to strike a pose. Something as simple as turning a door knob is very complex using the fingers, hand, wrist, forearm, and even the upper arm. Like in turning your palm from up to down. I look at what point, from my hand rotating, does my forearm become engage in the movement. And from the hand and arm turning the door knob, you have to ask yourself, what is the rest of the body doing? Then it gets really interesting because you have to get into the characters mood and how they are turning the knob. Are they angry, happy, sad? Those emotions effect how we move, how we do things.
So, as I said earlier it is all very interesting and I’m learning a lot and getting better at it everyday, pushing myself to do more extreme poses.
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