elkian: This post has been stuck in my
elkian submitted:
This post has been stuck in my mind for a while. I’m attempting to stay true to the pose, but not the….”anatomy”.
(I’d like to point out that I am nowhere near professional right now, so this is just a rough correction.)
The trace:
The first thing I noticed with this is that her torso is really, really long. The abdomen between her ribs and “pelvis” should be about half that. Also note that her ribcage is facing almost towards us while her stretch-domen is in profile. That’s not humanly possible, right?
Oh, and I should mention that I had to put her “spine” trace on a different layer because it was so confusing. I still can’t figure out where everything goes - I’ve yet to locate her pelvis, so there’s no indicator of where the coccyx should be.
(I admit it’s quite possible for me to have just missed certain anatomic points, but to this degree…?)
Her shoulders also gave me a bit of trouble - I can’t pinpoint WHAT exactly is wrong there, but something is. I think it’s the muscle between her neck and left shoulder, but I’m not sure.
Her head is the only body part I didn’t really have an issue with, although the cheek line and expression are a bit weird.
Her right knee appears to be dislocated, and let’s not even ask where her hips are supposed to be….
Moving on.
Standing tall:
Too tall - our snakelady appears to be nearly 9 heads tall. Probably more if I had managed to straighten out her ribcage and abdomen properly.
If you can look past the messiness you’ll notice that her shoulders had to be widened to accommodate her ribcage, not to mention boobs. And I know it’s supposed to be foreshortening on her arms, but it’s happening in places foreshortening isn’t supposed to happen and is executed far too dramatically. Hence the unevenness. (Note that perspective is one of my weaker subjects, so sorry if this flops)
The fix:
I kind of regret not being able to integrate her head (the one good point) in, but I was attempting to stay true to the pose itself. A profile of her in a similar pose was the best I could manage.
Her legs are actually spread to balance, and luckily she has a staff to lean on. I still couldn’t figure out how to make her top work , but at least there’s less collarboob.
I’m sure somebody else could do a much better version, I just HAD to do something about this.
That’s not a bad redraw considering that it’s rough. :) I see you decided to keep her bent as the main focus of her pose and then adapt the rest of her to that (hence why she’s bracing on the staff) and I find that interesting. If anybody else wants to redraw this scene I’d like to see what other interpretations are to what her pose should be. For me, my first instinct would be to keep her holding the staff across her body and having her stand in a logical position for that.
I think it’s cuz her body seems to be a mishmash of different things going on that there’s many interpretations of what she can look like depending on what part of her you use as the starting point.
Anyway, thanks for doing a breakdown and reminding us just how snakey the original is. :)