My recent project has been an attempt to study how human anatomy works in the shoujo anime style. I did 3 revisions of a skeleton, was pretty happy with the third and attempted to draw muscles on it, discovered that this resulted in a horribly ugly character, and decided to go back to the drawing board by this time starting with an attractive silhouette, drawing the skeleton to fit in the silhouette, and then trying once more to add the muscles. Here are the silhouette skeletons (of a slender small-boned male). Anyone have any specific changes to suggest before I attempt once more to draw the muscles on? I was wondering about the arms, whether the upper arm might me too long or the forearm too short or what. Also the fibulas (calf bones) are inconsistent between the front and back views - which is correct? If you're curious, here is the previous version showing how it turned out ugly: real skeleton, anime skeleton attempt, and example anime character skeleton with muscles added Note: if you don't like anime style or you have nothing to say beyond "Go study realistic anatomy!" please do not bother to respond.

For an anime character I would think the eyes would be bigger, though that's dependant on which artist's style you use I suppose. You might make the arms a little less buff, since shoujo characters always seem to be a bit androgynous. You realize of course, that most cartoon characters have pretty bizarre anatomy (look at Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes) so this exercise might not have very aesthetic results.

Quote: Original post by Horatius83
For an anime character I would think the eyes would be bigger, though that's dependant on which artist's style you use I suppose. You might make the arms a little less buff, since shoujo characters always seem to be a bit androgynous. You realize of course, that most cartoon characters have pretty bizarre anatomy (look at Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes) so this exercise might not have very aesthetic results.

Adult males have pretty small eyes in most of the styles, it's usually only females and children who have the larger eyes. I think you might be right about the shoulders.

Getting aesthetic results was why I decided to start with a silhouette I already considered attractive this time - it still might result in an ugly character, but I'm hoping it will result in a pretty one. The readon for me doing this project in the first place is that my drawings of anime characters look attractive to me but other people often think they have bad anatomy. Since I don't see the problems they see, I can only try to understand anatomy better.

On second look you might also round out the butt a little, and the front view of the fibulas (fibuli?) look more correct (to me anyway). My understanding of anatomy is that in males the humerus will be longer than the forearm, and the reverse is true for females, so your proportions seem to be correct as far as length is concerned.

You're improving quite a bit, I see a better flow there with the studied anatomy, do make the ribcage a bit longer, it goes outwards and down, and is easily felt beneath the skin on ones sides, like how the hipbones are.


For that pretty look you're after I think you should study both regular and anime-prettyboy faces more from now on, or just switch between the different areas.

Flow, volume, linewidth variation and the realization of how anime-noses are actually drawn!


keep improving!

S@S:

in my opinion, your getting into a style that requires alot more traditional skill than you possess. Im wondering if all you practice is the anime style?

The problem with not learning traditional skills is that the distorted look of anime does not lend itself to learning perspectives, and people who only draw anime tend to begin to think of a head as a set of views, to be drawn in an almost mechanical way.

I could be totally wrong here, but maybe you can try this excercize for me, actually, I would be glad if anyone could do this or show there attempts (in keeping with the theme of this thread).

Draw views of an anime head, starting straight on and progressing to a 90 degree angle (right or left), using intervals of 11.25 degrees (thats what, 8 views).

Really I just want to see who can do it, I cant (but I can with a human head).

The point is to figure out wether your approching this project (of developing an anime skeleton) in a manner designed to produce something you just find pretty, or to help you actualize the anatomy and structure of the anime style, which would help your drawings, if not in style then in composition.

slowpid, that's a problem with _most_ people learning how to draw via anime, they see things the wrong way, take the noses for example, here sunandshadow has the regular way of drawing an L or a triangle shaped nose, even in frontview.


When in fact the anime-nose is just like the human nose, only with smaller proportions, and usually with less noticable ridge.

might be slightly offtopic, BUT, I rarely draw nowdays, so this is some rare help coming from my side.



1. Our regular animestyle actually, it's all depending on how detailed you want to get, but most noses and mouths are drawn this way, either with just a few lines of varying depth, or full shading

2. This is the case where the face is a bit shaded, so the noseridge(do you call it that?) has a darker shade, where there's light coming from two direction of the face, it is usually seen badly as an L, or to the left, where it actually is an L, but it is, when the head rotates, still a nose, and should be drawn as one, not as an L that instantly flips direction somewhere in the frontal-view.
result: we get the L nose on the face.

3. The example of the triangle-nose I see so much. In this case the shading under the nose has been drawn quickly, which is done alot, which just a few lines, and it's mistaken as a triangle, so many beginners end up drawing a triangle as a nose, at always, using varying linewidth and being AWARE of the form of the nose you can do this correctly.


4. Here I did a quick frontal of a face, and all I've done is drawn the shading that is formed under the nose, that's it!



Take my words with a grain of salt, I'm not educated to educate :), nor are my skills up to date.

Its the exact point im getting at. Drawing, when learning via anime, becomes mechanical. Its obvious from S@S's drawings that this is whats happening, "well lets see, if my nose starts here then I put the 'L' (or 'V') here. Simply depending on the viewpoint (and really, she only draws in two views, side and front.

I also wanted to hear what she had to say about it though, because the purpose of this project is to map an anime skeleton, which doesn't require art skills, but does require some perception skills. I was just wondering if she had any ability at that or not, which is why I want to see her draw the head from different sides. Otherwise, there is no point in doing this because the skeleton will be different depending on the view, and that is usefull to no-one.

I'm not sure how much help/interest this holds for you but here's a look at the skeleton proportions (and a neat idle pose) for our standard human male characters. We didn't want to go full on anime but it looks quite similar to the skeleton you have drawn.



Anyhow, If it suits your cause then you can have a copy, might save some time!