how to draw female comic characters (according to Wizard)...

[ratcreature]

brown_betty asked for examples "to illustrate the exactly how and why female comic characters are illustrated differently than the male." And I thought, really, what's better to illustrate these things than the books teaching the style in the first place?

A while ago I posted some scans from Wizard How To Draw series on drawing female superheroes (here and here), and I thought I'd post a bunch more from the first book of the series on "How To Draw: Heroic Anatomy".


As everything, it starts with the basics, i.e. proportions. First the male superhero


The female example is similar, but slightly different, notice how he stands firm and straight, wheras she stands with her hips cocked a little and the leg thrust forward?


Also notice in the direct torso comparison below, how the male one is ramrod straight, but she curves and leans just a little bit in the same pose?


Now onwards to the chapter "Sultry Women". It even cautions you against overposing! Yes, it's not as if Wizard wasn't aware of the problems! (Their definition and mine of which poses are already overposed might differ slightly though, heh.)





Next, Michael Turner explains "Sex Appeal". (Or what he thinks sex appeal is.) Incidentally it also illustrates the meaning of "overposed" that was brought up in the previous chapter very effectively...





Finally for compare and contrast purpuses the chapters on "Superheroic Men" and "Superheroic Women". For the male superhero it is all about more or less ridiculously enlarged muscles as we learn:





Female superheroes don't have it that easy, they need to worry about tilting their shoulder, nipple and pubic lines attractively at all times, not to mention legs, breast size, eye make-up and hair:

Comments

[bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com]

You know, I read this post years ago and ended up having such a rage blackout over some of the comments to it that I could barely breathe.

It never would have occurred to me that four fucking years later people would still be commenting to it saying that there's nothing wrong with any of this and that women are man-haters and stupid for being offended. I just, really? Part of me is seriously hoping that you've attracted one actually mentally ill person who can't stop commenting.

In any case, I wanted to throw my two cents into the arena: thank you for posting this. I recently got back into comics (*shakes fist at Adventure Comics and Red Robin*) and have been devouring back issues of Birds of Prey and Catwoman. It's utterly sickening to me that even in these titles with awesome, well rounded characters who happen to be women, they're still all about the ballon-boobs, pouty lips, and cookie-cutter faces. I've had to walk away from more than one issue because I just couldn't stand to see one more panel drawn like that.

This shit matters. Thank you for posting.

[ratcreature]

Unfortunately I think it is really many people. I get emails every now and then too. And actually as I screen anon comments to deal with trolls and spam there were some that I haven't unscreened. Though the worst IMO are the ones with complete reading comprehension fail, who thank me for posting such great tutorials that "helped" them draw women.

[bunnymcfoo.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I am so, so, so, so totally and completely sorry. *twitches*