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

[lord-dingsi.livejournal.com]

they are in the chapter titled "Vixens" (which funnily enough despite its title features examples of the smallest breasts I have seen in Wizard and the "vixen" is fully clothed with no skin showing anywhere but in the lower half of the face ...

Okay, I had to look up the term "vixen" on urbandictionary.com, and apparently vixens aren't just sexy women, but also a little bit on the "evil" side, like... femme fatales, maybe? And in this context it really disturbs me that it's them who get the most sensible clothes and proportions, as if being a "good girl" meant you are always willing to show the readers some T&A (in a cute and bubbly way, of course *rolls eyes*). I know that's probably not... directly related... but from my viewpoint the association is there, and I don't like it.

P.S.:

Incidentally the only clearly black character in the whole book is in the "Brutes" chapter as well, right next to the gorilla villains...

OUCH >_

[ratcreature]

OUCH

Yeah. I'm actually waffling between thinking that they should have included more variety in the character's ethnicities and being grateful that they didn't because undoubtedly it would have been really awful at least half the time.