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

[glockgal.livejournal.com]

Turner: Full lips are very sexy and that's probably why people get collagen implants

People? PEOPLE???? Because there are soooo many guys out there wandering around with giant tumorous collagen lips, right Mike Turner?

ARRRRGGGG.

And just the mere fact that they got Jim Balent to apparently be their expert on drawing women makes their point stupid and moot. I know once Wizard actually got Terry Moore to do one of these "How to Draw..." It pretty much is exactly the opposite of what these people are saying. Except Kevin Maguire; the stuff he says isn't as bad as the rest.

But thanks for posting this, LUV! It's always fun to rant. *hee*

[ratcreature]

They reprinted Terry Moore's article too, I just had already scanned and linked part of that in a previous entry. Seriously, some of the chapters in the series are really interesting, in particular I liked quite a lot of the third volume on storytelling that has really neat stuff about dramatic tension and pacing (I shared those chapters here and here in case you're interested), and I gleaned some cool things from various chapters about inking... so it's not like it's only rant worthy. It's just there's some really awful stuff too.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I had both the Jim Balent AND the Terry Moore issues. The Terry Moore one cracked me up. Katchoo and Francine were staring in horror at the normal comic book woman.

[glockgal.livejournal.com]

Katchoo and Francine were staring in horror at the normal comic book woman.

For real. They were so cute! *hee*