Pushing Poses

I’ve been busy packing and preparing for the courses I’m teaching next quarter (classes start next week at the school I teach at).

One area a lot of students tend to struggle with is posing their character. Most of the time, when I look at character action poses that students create, the character is standing straight up (usually with their hands in their pockets), without any real sense of attitude or emotional context coming through.

Something that I’m trying to become more conscious of within my own work is to push poses when I’m drawing my characters. What does that mean? To me, it means to exaggerate the pose so that the essence of the character’s attitude and personality is conveyed. Why simply copy a pose from a photograph? It’s too boring – too straight-up-and-down, as the pose on the left shows. Take the through-line (line-of-action) and start giving it a more pronounced curvature. Don’t stop with one version, do a few more – each time finding a way to streamline and exaggerate the character’s pose.

Keep in mind clear silhouettes when you are cartooning from a reference – the character’s attitude and emotion should come across from the pose very clearly without it being necessary to see the character’s face.

Give it a try the next time you’re drawing from a reference. Even ‘mundane’ poses can really come alive when you push the pose!

-Krishna

Krishna January 6, 2011