Most of the art I see here at myOtaku is character based, so knowing some simple anatomy and proportion formulas is necessary if you want your characters to seem more believable. Anime and manga characters are highly stylized, but still represent a reality. The human body has bones and joints and muscles and skin. This effects how we look and how we move. It helps to have a few different ways of analyzing what you see(especially when you get stuck)so I am starting with some basic things to know and look for when drawing a human being.
I will cover specific anatomical issues in depth by body part later. That means I will do a whole issue on the head, the hands, the feet, etc. This is just something to get you going. I will also list some books that would be beneficial to have and will make a whole issue just for them so these don‘t get too long. A few of these books were written by teachers I actually had in art school or studied under independently. I own many books and will use scans from them to illustrate my ideas with. (Where I use my own art, it will be noted. All ref material will be included at the end of the post.) This will take some time, so please be patient. I’m still learning Photoshop Elements 4 and how to use my tablet.. I will try to keep each installment as short as possible.
Here goes:
For those of you who might be wondering what all this has to do with anime or manga drawing, I give you this pic of Kakashi. It’s a perfect example of the use of the principles I just outlined and well, it’s nice to look at. Can you figure out which shoulder is higher, where the weight is, what his posture is, which foot is in front of the other? Is this a 3/4 pose or straight on? I have just given you the tools to analyze this pic and figure out how it was drawn.
* Big thank you to TomieHarley for sending me this hot Kakashi pic.*
* The male model pics used for this portion of art tips came from scans of a book I own called The Human Figure-A Photographic Reference for Artists by Erik A. Ruby. All the words used to explain the concepts illustrated above are mine and written by me and cannot be used or reproduced without my permission. 