Snafflewyrm: Black Cat Redraw
Snafflewyrm: Black Cat Redraw
For everyone who doesn’t know what the Esher Girls tumblr is (http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/) - it’s a fantastic little blog where the anatomy of female characters in comic books, which LOOKS right at first glance, is broken down to show its crazy (usually spine breaking) ridiculousness.
This is the original image I chose to redraw:
Here are the two main physical impossibilities in the pose:
I took some reference photos of myself doing this pose so I could work out how close of an imitation was possible. I’m not the most flexible, or the most physically strong individual, so someone else probably could have gotten closer. But I feel like it did teach me a few things about the pose.
One: it’s hard to feel sexy when you’re in a pose that uncomfortable and painful.
Two: Black Cat’s front arm is relaxed. Her weight is being mostly supported on the other arm, and pushing your upper body up that far is extremely difficult with a bent arm.
This is what my arms looked like when I pushed my torso into a similiar position:
When I relaxed my front arm into a bent position, my entire torso came down, like so:
Of course, no matter what I did, I could not twist enough to show any more than one breast while my butt was facing the camera. It was boobs OR butt, and I went with butt. Also, unlike the original, no part of my stomach was able to lie flat on the ground (or the couch, in my case) which is what might have allowed me to push my butt into the almost perfect globes on the original image. (Plus…no perfect ballerina feet. It was too painful and awkward to imitate, damnit! So I slacked off here.)
I chose the second pose because I felt it was a bit truer to the original artwork.
And then I went ahead and noobed all the shadows. Bad lighting aside, I’m really really pleased the final image didn’t have too much of a “Yes, I traced this from a photo” look.
Also, props to the original artist for making her really dated hairstyle look good. I didn’t realise how boofy her hair was until I came to draw it!
This is honestly one of the best redraws I’ve seen yet. It’s still sexy and seductive, and yet not… frightening. Really well done.