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

[ravenrogue.livejournal.com]

:D I hope they die.

Honestly, part of me thinks this is more hilarious than insulting simply because I think these guys are lonely virgins who have built up, in their minds, this ridiculous expectation of how awesome sex will be if/when they get it, and the female they picture this with has progressively become more insane looking.

This is why I like Joshua Middleton... some of the covers look posed and such, but the comics, like NYX? They don't always look "feminine" as these guys put it. Kiden isn't that ridiculous image of grace when she attacks a classmate. At least Middleton, in the sequential art in NYX anyways, realized that just because it was a comic didn't mean that all women were sexy, the same shape, or wore make up. Hell, he had women looking frumpy, girls with baggy clothes even though they surely could have been wearing "sulty" painted on clothes, girls fighting and not looking like princesses as they did so, girls doing drugs, and boys who were considered attractive and NOT the size of a damned semi!

This just suddenly makes me realize how much I appreciate it when a man can draw a woman who slumps her shoulders and doesn't wear mascara heavily enough to pull her to the bottom of a pool should she fall in.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, it would be nice to see many different bodies in more comics, for both men and women. Frankly it would make it also easier to recognize characters, especially out of costume, if they didn't all look like standard mannequin doll with different haircolors...