Hello there! I hope you will accept this post. It’s not my best work - I didn’t spend enough time with it as I should’ve have. Long story short: the outfits on the original picture were simply ridiculous (see here), I had to re-do them! Yes, “Freesia“‘s anatomy is doomed but it would take a complete re-draw to fix, and I was mainly focused on the outfits here. (But I did fix Uni’s and Socie’s waists - not Harmonys’ because I was lazy and I can just pretend that obi is extremely tight.)
I don’t believe you have to cover up absolutely everything to make a outfit seem okay - but dressing them like that… it’s just no. Their outfits doesn’t tell me anything. Nothing but FANSERVICE all over the place. Nothing about the story or their characters - just - HEY, boobs, butts, legs and crotches! I mean god damn - what was that material out of? And why wouldn’t they wear underwear - really? And BUTT CLEAVAGE? Again - I personally don’t mind when they show some skin - just… don’t make it ridiculous. Just don’t.
I also have nothing against shorts - although they were extremely tiny on Freesia - but I found it annoying that all three girls had thigh-high socks.
But yeah. I hope you like it!
I do!
Sorry I didn’t get to post this earlier. You did a really good job here and I should have posted this way before but I got so completely trampled with life and storyboards… anyway.
Your costume redesigns have turned these girls from sexualised back into sexy (except for that last contortionist pose, no amount of fixed clothing will save that pose from sexualisation) because they now look like they’re wearing actual clothes instead of carefully applied tape (heck, that first one should have areola showing) and carefully applied tape like this is usually a design created to make men horny, not for women to feel sexy.
(That said, I’ve seen some seriously sexy and well-owned “carefully applied tape” cosplay and burlesque, and wow. What a difference attitude makes.)
Thanks for submitting!
So there’s been a lot of talk about the ridiculous Catwoman zero cover. I doubt DC put much thought into this, so I made a parody.
This was sent to me a while back by castlecloudcat— I’m trying to catch up with my backlog. Enjoy! It certainly amused me!
It’s CK/virtualcara again!
I don’t even know where to start with this cover (Suicide Squad #1, cover by Ryan Benjamin), there is just too much wrong with the way Harley is shown here. So I’ll try and point out the things that aren’t.
- You can see that her shoulders and hips are on a different angle from each other. This is correct, it happens when a person walks. The forward leg’s hip will rise while the shoulder on the same side dips to maintain balance.
- Her boobs seem to be obeying gravity, which is normally a rare thing to see in comics. HOWEVER in this context, she’s wearing a laced corset top which has no support to stay on aside from how tight the lacings are. Unless it’s using tape or spirit gum on the underside I’d expect to see more breast distortion there (this is roughly half of what corsets were designed to do, during a time when small breasts were considered more attractive - the other half is to distort the ribs & waist to make hips appear wider and more childbirth-y).
- Line of action (red line) - the composition doesn’t have any unfortunate implications that would lead the viewer’s eye to stay on T or A, instead it goes right up and into the logo space.
What I changed:
I added more definition and weight to Harley’s torso, giving her a pelvis and I gave her breasts a bit more support - though even while they look more less implausible they still look a bit unnatural (see: corset). I also brought out her right arm so it was visible and made her raised arm slightly shorter so it wasn’t as exaggerated with the other changes.
What would make this even better:
A different costume. In Batman Beyond, Harley’s granddaughters pulled off a great halter/hotpants outfit while appearing practical and comfortable. This one is incredibly busy and doesn’t seem nearly as economical as the DeeDees.
Submission from evalilith:
Inspired by the previous post recommending titles, I realized this blog would be a great place to share one of the most inclusive and least sexist how-to-draw books I’ve ever seen. After all, we’ve spent a lot of time commenting on awful ones, so let’s have a good example!
Now, the title will sound ridiculous, but bear with me. It’s called Shojo Fashion Manga Art School: Year 2. Despite the title, the style is actually more East/West fusion than anything- the cover is a good example of the style, and you can look inside on Amazon, which is where that link up there leads.
If you do “look inside”, you’ll see the first example of why the book is so excellent. One of the very first notes after the introductory pages is an instruction to avoid pocket boobs!
You can see that the first several pages also include a brief discussion of different body shapes and use an elderly woman as an example for a concept that doesn’t require her to be elderly.
Highlights further on in the book include:
- Examples of women’s shoes that are not heels.
- Two-page spread on maternity wear.
- Two-page spread on plus-sized characters and how they are underrepresented.
- Recurring use of varying body types for example figures, including a larger girl on the swimsuit page.
- Recurring use of older women (and elderly people in general) as example figures.
- Use of a young woman for the example on the ‘confident pose’ page- and it’s actually a real confident pose! My scanner isn’t working right now or I’d show the image, but she honestly does just look like she’s calling someone out on their BS or similar.
- The woman on the ‘camouflage’ page is in full fatigues just like her male counterparts.
- Explicit discussion of a variety of athletic body types.
- And the closest thing to a T&A pose is a pose with a POV that is from below a cheerleader because she is actually physically being hoisted up in the air.
It’s also just a really good reference book for clothing styles, including things like how to tie a tie (in case you need to draw someone doing that), different necklines and silhouettes of standard dress types, how to draw a skirt sitting down, how suspenders work, different sleeve types- just a lot of useful things to help give variety to clothing you draw. The other books in the series don’t focus just on clothes, and since they are by the same people, I assume they are as awesomely representative. So if you’re looking for a GOOD reference book and can stomach looking between all the Chris Hart in the HtD section of your local bookstore, keep an eye out for this one!
Evalilith contacted me afterwards and said she meant that post to reply to a pretty frequent question in Eschergirls, but I will post this because this recommendation she makes and the Look Inside! link on Amazon include all the things that we want to see in comics. I know I’m going to look for that book in Deserres when I go replenish my marker stock. Please share!
This is what I mean by “get up and strike the pose you want to draw so you can feel it”. Thanks so much for this tutorial, dunstable!Submitted by dunstable.
Thanks for doing this. :) And also thanks for including all the detail, including noting the change in your stance to be able to pull off the last pose.
ghostarin submitted:
And I’m back! (I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself)
A redraw of this picture. I have never read these comics so I might have failed on their looks, but I’m more here to make a point (and to fix their anatomy/give them organs/etc lol.)
I’m really, really tired of seeing the same body types on female characters. It’s like saying; if you don’t have this figure, you’re not sexy, therefor you can’t be a superhero. Therefor you aren’t important. So to make a point that this is bullshit, I gave them different body types to show that all body types are damn beautiful. You don’t have to have the perfect hourglass to be beautiful (note that I’m not saying hourglass are ugly either, I just wish they could accept other kinds of body types as well)
For the white haired girl (dunno their names, sorry!) You know, I barely changed anything about her. Really. I just fixed her waist and made the breasts look less like balloons, and fixed her leg a bit. That’s about it. See, your waist doesn’t have to be super tiny (that barely holds up your breasts) to look good and strong.
For the girl next to her, I thought she looked a bit more thin, so I shrunk her breasts, and bam, she turned out a bit pear shaped. But even thin people doesn’t have painfully thin waist like that.
And the sitting girl, well, I mainly fixed her anatomy (or tried). Poor girl probably broke some bones in the original.
Also, when will they stop drawing girls with uniforms doesn’t squeeze their crotches? They should try it out themselves. I have tried. Uncomfortable as hell.
Anyway. I hope you like it, and that I didn’t do anything too wrong!
Actually, without knowing the characters, I think you did a really good job giving them bodies that fit how they should look. I also agree with you about having different body types, I mean even in terms of fit, thin women, there are all sorts of proportions and differences. Too often, artists in video games, comics, etc seem to have just slight variations on the same body type, where you might get a thicker, taller woman, but the breast proportions are still the same, or a thin slender woman, but still, the same breasts, etc… I’m a girl with a body much like the way you drew Rainmaker (the girl with long black hair) and it is really nice to see a body type like mine in your re-draw (and I am already quite privileged to have a build much like what society desires, but in terms of video games, comics, etc, everybody with my build tends to have really large breasts too). And again, like you said, this doesn’t mean there’s anything WRONG with the body type artists keep drawing, or that thin, athletic women can’t have big breasts, but it’s about diversity. :)
I think this redraw by Ghostarin is excellent. I’d like to note the treatment of the breasts, that are pulled apart and not squished together for cleavagetastic purposes, because the shoulders and arms are thrown back on all the characters! Artists, please pay attention to that fact! The ribs are a convex surface and unless the arms are going forward or clothing is designed to squish boobs together like a corset, breasts will hang and point outwards from each other, not towards each other.
Also moving the woman on the left’s foot up means that she’s no longer on the same plane as kneeling girl, and thus isn’t sitting her crotch on kneeling girl’s head. Talk about unfortunate tangent…
ghostarin submitted:
Fixed this picture a bit. Small improvement I hope?
I unbroke Sonja’s back and gave her organs, and made her breasts more, uh, possible? Also made their legs somewhat better..
Again, I’m not the best artist out there, but I couldn’t help myself.
The thing that bothered me the most though was their faces, or can I say, THE FACE. Seriously, if they aren’t supposed to be identical twins, stop it. Now, if it’s supposed to be that they’re alike, I still made some minor changes. Like, making Sonja’s face “sharper” and Sara’s rounder. Not much, but perhaps enough to see that they’re different people. :I
Nice! I think you did a good job differentiating the two (I don’t know either character good enough to tell you if that’s what they “should” look like though) and showing that you can have 2 beautiful women and still have simple differences in the face that make them both look very different. One of the big issues for me and others about comic art is that there doesn’t seem to be any consistent idea of what characters look like, and this is especially true with female characters where you have artists who seem to be able to draw only one female face and often, one female body type. (I also blame a lack of internal art direction for this.) Rather than going “okay Supergirl has a longer nose than Huntress” they seem to go “I’m going to draw a woman, so here’s what a sexy female face looks like” and that’s it, the only differences are hair, eye and skin color. And as you just showed, it doesn’t take that much to make small changes that make a big difference.
Ghostarin, why am I not following you yet? I need to follow you. You’re awesome.
Reblogged for excellent demonstration of both anatomy and different facial features on women!
morangopagen submitted:
I was browsing around my picture folder and I found this picture. It’s one of the few comic books I actually purchased, and what got my attention was how nice was the cover (this picture). The nice coloring, the folding, lightning… but then, seeing this picture today… I realised something that made me say “oh NO”
The BUTTS AND BOOBS POSE!!!
And oh gosh this one. This one is extremely painful, Jesus Christ.
Someone please redraws this for the glory of love.
AUGH! There are pictures that are submitted to me where I just go “OMFG” and make an actual noise in real life when I see it (usually “AHH!”) and this is one of them. Good lord, that’s EGREGIOUS. I grew up as a huge Rogue/Gambit fangirl, but this really overrides any sense of “awwwww” I have, it’s so distracting (to say the least.)
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
First, skeleton and analysis:
Next, fleshing it out:
Third, how Gambit’s arm should now be:
Because if it weren’t for that, this would be a beautiful illustration indeed. But yes, the snapped spine (especially bisected by the cloak to make it more painfully obvious) is utterly distracting from the beauty of this piece.
(also the fabric doesn’t work right between her breasts and her butt crack goes up way too high, but I’m nitpicking)
foervraengd submitted:
Oh poor Harley…
I’ll just begin with how the overall body looks like when you roughly trace it:
Now, this drawing can be changed in two different ways, since the scene is supposed to be dynamic and that she’s “apparently” doing a quick movement, it will always be a butt-n-boob-pose.
I like this one the most, because it retain a lot of the original pose, doesn’t break hear spine AND we still get our lovely tit’s n ass. We are capable of turning our torso on some level. And this feels like the most natural one, but still keeps it dynamic.
However, if we really wanna keep the butt in the same pose, we can change the upper body instead. Although that requires some more redrawin’:
Here, her torso is turned the other way, and to keep the pose looking good. I switched the gun to the other hand. However, this pose is not as dynamic as the first one. So here comes the THIRD example:
On this one, the upper body is turned more into profile view. Although this was porrly done by me since I accidentally made the ass appear bigger than supposed. But at least now she has a working spine ;w;
And this is my first redraw btw! Was a fun way to kill time and test your anatomy-knowledge/skills.
That was a lot of fun to read too! And I love the little things you threw in to each redraw. WITH THE POWER OF LOVE I FIX YOUR SPINE!
This is a brilliant analysis and redraw. *nodnod*
Oh, and for what it’s worth, I’d started redrawing this one too so I might as well still add it.
tinyskyvillage submitted:
Quick (and first ^^) attempt at un-escherizing… the arms position is still awkward, feels like there is a body building device missing ^^;
I love it! And that quickly drawn face still looks very determined and heroic. :)
In one fell swoop of simple, straightforward and confident linework, the anatomy, perspective and expression of this character were fixed brilliantly. Bravo!
About Less Tits n' Ass, More Kickin' Ass
