Bonus short hair version! Fixed her left
Bonus short hair version!
Fixed her left hand here
My first ever Escher Girls redraw! Been following the blog for years, big fan, and for a long while I’ve wanted to redraw something from this blog, but couldn’t decide on what drawing to start with. There’s just so much to choose from. While looking through it a few times I came across this pic. At first I had another drawing in mind, and wasn’t sure about this one since it was kinda small, but I thought since it was small that it’d make for a good start and be simple enough.
I was wrong.
(FYI, I enlarged the original to see it better) You can see in the first two steps that all the awfulness of it and everything that was wrong just bombarded me. I wasn’t even sure where to start with it at first. I knew it was bad, but after outlining it, it slowly came to me just what a complete fucking enigma the whole thing is! I mean, you just look at her back and how her body’s twisted and you think “Ow!”. There were just so many questions going through my head while looking at it. Why is she flying around in her underwear? Is that even underwear? It barely even covers her ass! Why’s her cape 15 feet long? How is it even attached to her? By that flimsy little choker? Which we can’t see clearly, since her hair blends into that part of her cape. And the one that just bothered me the most, what the fuck are those oval things on her gloves?!
The more I analyzed this cover, the more I kept asking about it, along with it pissing me off! It’s such a lazy ass cover that tells you nothing about the title or anything! It just makes you ask questions. “Oh look, there’s this big chested woman I don’t know flying over a city in her underwear wearing a cape and high heels for some reason, that makes me wanna buy this book!” And I know know this is for an anthology comic book, but it still doesn’t explain this cover, or excuse it, other than the artist wanting to draw ass and tits. A good cover, whether it’s for a single issue or anthology, should be able to tell a story, or at least give the audience an idea of what it’s about. And speaking of lazy, just look at that cape. It’s just three lines going off the page! Three! It’s like something an amateur would do. Or maybe her cape really is 20 feet long (which means it’ll end up getting caught on something easily or if she ever walked she’ll trip over it).
When I started sketching the first pose, I had trouble sketching over the original since it was just so beyond saving, I’d basically have to throw it out and start over from scratch. Thankfully after thinking of a clearer pose, I was able to fix it up and get something that looked better than that giant, box chested, twisted up fuckery. Really, the only good thing I could say about it, aside from the background, was that her face looked decent (though even that was messed up). It looked like it was going for some kind of stylization, so I decided to take it in a Bruce Timm-esque style. So I have her body at the side, with a flying pose, extending her hand to the viewer, for some perspective. And of course I had to change her outfit to something practical, that someone flying around might actually wear. While working on this, I didn’t know anything about this comic the cover was from, so I had no idea who this woman was (I did end up looking up the title on Wikipedia, and it sorta was what I expected from the title, though didn’t explain why this lady was flying around a purple city in her underwear). Basically I didn’t have much to go on for recreating her outfit, aside from keeping the red and black color scheme. Eventually decided to go for something more superhero-y, having it be practical while also keeping some sexiness (with the boots and pantyhose), and gave her a better cape. I kept in her gloves having red on the fingers, since it was okay in the original.
I also did a sketch for a second pose, after I nearly rage quitted in frustration during the first sketch, on paper then scanned it in. After taking so long inking the first pose, I just inked it faster and more looser. Changed the coloration in her outfit there, also, since I wanted to see if a different variation would look nice. And it did.
In the original her pose was really awkward and, like everything else, just had me asking more than I should’ve. Mostly with her arms. I see this a lot in a lot of bad or land cheesecake art, where the artist cares only for TnA and has no idea for a pose, namely what the woman they’re drawing should be doing. Someone else talked about this in a vid before, and I’ve seen it done by amateur artists, where they’ll draw someone who just has their arms hanging limply by their sides, or in an awkward way that they don’t have to interact with their own body (and because hands are hard). I’d know it since I’ve been guilty of it in past artwork, but even I was able to put effort into the hands and arms, and hands are something I still have trouble with as an artist.
Anyway, I could go on forever about the original, but I’ll just stop here. I’ve been working on this redraw all week, I’m proud of how it came out, and I’d like to do more of these in the future.
This is by far the most in-depth and comprehensive breakdown and redo I’ve gotten on this blog yet. o_o I really like your analysis, and also that you looked into what the book was about to get inspiration on how the cover could be re-imagined. I also like both your takes on it. I like how by changing the angle so the hand is coming out, it looks like she’s inviting the reader to join her, and I think that’s very cool. I also like your second pose idea too with the sly little look she’s giving. Good job. :)
Edit: I know that the original book is porn, but so many non-porn titles have similar poses and covers that I thought this breakdown was still neat in how it showed different ways to do it. The OP also put in a lot of effort so I wanted to showcase that. (I meant to say this in the original post but I forgot -_- )