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

[quivo.livejournal.com]

Hey! You've probably got enough comments already, so there's no need to reply to this one. I just needed to say...

Fuck. The. Author. The - the - I'm almost speechless with rage. This is why I will never take comic books very seriously - how can any medium that has such hideous misogyny as part of its templates for portraying women ever hold any interest for me? All this does is just make me want to write that book I've promised myself - the one where the women are the ones with all the power and status, and the men are SLAVES forced to look handsome at every waking moment.

Gah. /rant

[inaurolillium.livejournal.com]

There are a LOT of comics that don't hold to these conventions. Comic books are a medium, not a genre, and they have their own genres. Super hero comics, yes, are pretty consistently horrifying, but there are some truly excellent comics out there that have beautiful, well-drawn women in realistic poses, and that even have good writing and storytelling. Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise has already been mentioned, Neil Gaiman's comic work is generally very well illustrated, there's a whole list. It's even possible to find female-friendly comic shops.

[ratcreature]

Yeah. I mean, I had been a comic fan for two decades before I even started reading superhero comics. (I eventually caved to fan pimping and their soap opera appeal. Also, Nightwing... *g*) and here in Europe superheroes aren't even the "default genre" of comics like they still are in the US. Comics as a medium are awesome. And it's not like tv wasn't sexist or showing off women in ways that are not entirely consistent with the characters.

[ratcreature]

I love comics. The medium is awesome. I love them better than books, better than tv, and I think that some comics are sexist or racist or whatever is no more a reason not to read comics than that some tv is is to watch no tv. I even love superhero comics, but I've read comics for two decades without reading more than half a dozen superhero comics (I then caved to fan pimping *g*), so even if that genre isn't your thing, there's still plenty of comics. Serious comics, funny comics, autobiographical comics. Fantasy, mystery, western, humor...

I have thousands of comics and overall I don't find them any more misogynist than books or tv. I mean, look at your average crime drama and what the female cop or FBI agent is wearing and what the male ones are wearing, or at sf shows.

Also, as you may have noticed, each of these chapters are by a different author. There are more in the book, some which aren't offensive at all, just as some superhero comics aren't offensive.

Hey. . .

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

That's American "traditional" comics and their uneasy dealing with sex and the fanboys versus wanting respectability. It's really odd how, despite some incredibly misogynist manga, Japanese manga is actually fairly ahead here in that there are female mangaka and mangaka who manage to have strong, intelligent, somewhat equal women in even the most woman-unfriendly of fictional worlds. (There's even a misandry corner if you'd consider what some yaoi writers do to their poor bishounen, so it is a bit more equal in representation.) While you really do have the extremes of misogyny in manga, at least it's not an entirely closed system and most of the Japanese "Michael Turner" types do get shunted off to the extreme misogynist hentai side, where they can be avoided by someone who doesn't want to read tentacle rape or guro or whatever.