Dancing Skeletons! (due Nov. 10)

[armando]

Patxinaki: The balance is okay, since they're moving figures they can be tilted this way or that and still look correct.
Two things I noticed is, with some exceptions, a lack of overlap and no indication of foreshortening.
Introducing overlap is simple on a basic standing figure, if you know the general shapes of the basic anatomical parts: head's an oval, torso's a rectangle, pelvis is a rectangle. It's possible to represent them differently but that's the basic idea. I want to stress that by shape I mean just that, if you wanted you could cut those shapes out of paper then experiment with different poses, don't even need to worry about perspective, and still it's possible to get decent space, foreshortening, and solidity out of it.
Another technique is to use circular cross contours like those found on a cylinder. I noticed that you were dividing the arms and legs with straight lines, but if you divide them with lines of varying amounts of curvature you can indicate different amounts of foreshortening.

[chaosrocks]

http://content.answers.com/main/cont...bein-death.png

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Styx...ubeckdance.jpg

http://www.dodedans.com/Full/est2f.jpg

http://www.dodedans.com/Full/est3f.jpg

inspiration
I found these the other day
while I was looking for something else
thought of you all

chaos

[drivebybaptism]

Hey cool links. Thou the first 2 dont work for me due to sum unknown reason.

[PaTXiNaKi]

armando, thanks very much for the help, i ll try to aply to the desings.

This is my first skeleton pirate, very simple, i dont want him to wear too many clothes because he has been dead for long.

Im so bad drawing clothes >_<

[alesoun]

Snuck another sneaky update in!!! Heh! I'm the first to admit the proportions are excruciating (sorry, folks) but I can be too worried about that a lot of the time. I'm a crap cartoonist, but I'm finding this exercise liberating; especially as I don't have a lot of free time right now.

I promise I will produce at least one "proper" skeleton before next Sunday!

[Colin Pritchard]

Here are my first 2 sketches. I was more focused on drawing the pose than the actual anatomy of a skeleton. Let me know what you think.

[alesoun]

If you're scanning pics your scanner should have an image size option. Try to keep pics about 400 x 600 pixels. I scan at 72 dpi.

[jls191]

after a 25 year break I am back and seem to have lost a lot of skills so am starting over. I lovethis site and look forward to relearning a lot here.

Jeffrey

[Malеk]

I hope it's ok to join in. I've never done this before, so I'm probably missing the whole point of the exercise...
I used the image of a standing skeleton for the reference on the bones structure.

[Seedling]

Holy moley the joint’s jumpin’ in here! Wow, you guys are all awesome! Three cheers for helping each other along!

Stryyf – Aha! Now I can see your image. Thanks. For better images taken with a camera, take the pictures outside either in direct sunlight, or outdoors in the shade. (I would mention that overcast light works well, but I have a feeling you don’t get many murky New England days in Afghanistan.)
It looks like you, too, could benefit by working from photos of people dancing. It’ll help to keep your skeletons from seeming flattened.

Armando – I am fascinated by your thought-process. I think you are going to rock this activity. Go go go!

Miracula – Fantastic! And lol! The bottom left pair are particularly effective. Notice, though, how the slope of the ground seems to change from left to right on the bottom row. Something you could do to combat that would be to take one of the previous figures and trace its lower legs, then build the rest of the skeleton off of those legs. I like the way you have simplified the arms and legs – the ball-joints of the legs, especially. Watch out for the rib-cage getting overly large across the shoulders.

ChaosRocks – those are fantastic. Thanks for the show-and-tell!

PaTX – Now that is a proper decomposing pirate! I see you are studying those bones closely. Great! (Aren’t pelvises the craziest shapes?) I notice that the pose your skeleton looks a bit on the flat side – the arms extend out to one side, and the knee off to the other, and nothing extends towards the camera. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, try the photograph trick. Look for some photos of figure dancing, and look for some that have foreshortened parts. Then either copy the pose in skeleton form, or trace your bones directly over the photo.

Colin Pritchard – hello! Try alesoun’s advice on image-scaling so that your pictures don’t dangle off the edge of the screen. Drawing poses from your imagination requires a visual vocabulary built up from observation. You need to spend some time looking at people before drawing from imagination is going to be easy for you. Try the photograph exercise that I have been suggesting to the others.

Jls191 – welcome back to drawing! It should be just like falling off a bicycle, right? It looks like you could also benefit by studying photographs of people dancing. See if you can get your skeleton a bit more refined as 3D shapes, too.

Malek – if you’re going to use Dr. House as your avatar and the baddie from KOTOR as your handle, you’re going to have to be a lot meaner. Your skeletons are looking good! And the point of the exercise is whatever you want the point to be! Decide what your goal is, and I’ll try to help you reach that goal.


Cheers all!

[Miracula]

Wow, this class rocks indeed!

Thank you Seedling for your comments. I upadatet the pic - just a little scaling and shifting (I saw that nearly all sceletons were different tall when I looked closer... ). Maybe they're still not absolutely correct, but I think they're looking much better now.
And now I'm going to practice the shoulder-part

[Malеk]

Seedling, thank you. I haven't figured what I need exactly, besides, well, the basics... I have a question about Scientific illustration. Obviously I can't just draw a scientifically exact skeleton out of my mind, so I can use a reference, right? Is just changing the pose enough?


To be a lot meaner, I'd have to be as ingenious as Dr. House. So I'd rather make it a 'ten-years-from-now plan', and keep the avatar as a passive reminder.

[PaTXiNaKi]

(Aren’t pelvises the craziest shapes?)

Yup! , really really hard to draw, but was the better part of the skeleton in my opinion.

I find very dificult to represent the bones foreshortened,maybe because im not used. I ll do my best!

[PaTXiNaKi]

The second pirate,I did some quick shadows to give him more depth.

[armando]

I woke up this morning with the idea of a skeleton holding it's head up by the jaw, sort of head banging. I started with the middle pencil sketch to try it out. The idea of two interacting shapes emerged, there's the top one then the bottom one responding to it sort of male and female like.
So I scanned that little pencil sketch at the bottom to try and develop it. The main problem is unity and clarity, only thing holding it together now is the basic composition. I need to figure out ways to pose the heads to get an animated feel out of them, and the raised arms are giving me trouble, the shapes they're making are a mess, and I've got lines flying all over the place.

[alesoun]

Did you ever see Labyrinth? The Jim Henson film? There's a bit in that where heads are tossed around.

Um, maybe if you reduced the numbers and played with it a little it might help you firm up the idea.


Isn't this thread great fun?

[armando]

Yeah I've seen it, multiple times, classic, I have to admit the idea of removing body parts was taken from it.

Reducing the numbers could work.

Yes, it's a good opportunity for practice.

[Kat_Warrior]

Dude - I am so doing this! I'm a sucker for costume design, so a bunch of skeletons prancing around in fancy outfits sounds like a good time.

[Kat_Warrior]

Okay, so the "fancy outfits" didn't quite make it in, but I had fun drawing some goofy poses. You shoulda seen the look my mother was giving me as I drew the guy in the tie.

The two in the second pic were inspired by photos. Was that cheating? ^_^;

[Seedling]

Ah, Monday Monday. So hard to stay focused on a Monday. Good thing it’s Tuesday.


Miracula – I’m the addition of horizontal lines, and the scaling might have helped out a little, but there are still some problems that can only be resolved by redrawing, I’m afraid.

Malek – You should use all the reference you can get your hands on when doing scientific illustration! Heck, you should use all the reference you can get your hands on any time.

PaTX –Wow, this skeleton not only feels 3D, but those flying bracelets and scarf really communicate that he’s in action!

Armando – hahaha! Fantastic! Those goofy doods are falling back into space nicely. I’m eager to see where this takes you.

Kat Warrior – welcome to the party! You’ve got some very strong gestures going on here. Try to get the proportions evened out – the skull is consistently larger than life in your drawings. Keep going!

[Kat_Warrior]

Thanks, Seedling! I decided to give it another try - making the heads smaller. But I didn't get very crazy with the poses this time.

How many times are we allowed to do this, anyway?

[Seedling]

Looking good Kat! You can post as many iterations as you want. I’ll keep giving feedback until the end of Saturday. Then Ilaekae will kick off a week-long class, and then I’ll be back for another class after that, and we’ll keep going until one of us cries uncle.

Good proportions on these! And good job capturing the dramatic curve of the spine. Now maybe try breaking the skeleton up into simple 3D shapes. That’ll help you with foreshortened bits like the feet. And feel free to go crazy with wild dance poses!

[Maledict]

Hello Seedling. I haven't visited CA for a while, I have been busy with Michael Mentler's Bottega program, which I would recomend for anyone else looking to improve themselves in drawing.

Anyway, I decided to join in the fray. Hope I'm not unwelcome.

[AriA]

I think I'm going for the Character/ expressive pose. These are the two that I sketched up, I think it will be interesting to costume either, I actually had a lot of fun with this! </3

[bonaparte_jones]

Here are my skeletons. Skanking-skeleton, hula-skeleton, saturday-night-fever-skeleton and random-pose-skeleton.

Thanks again seedling for teaching this virtual class. I'm sure that I'm not the only one looking forward to what is to come.

[iwantjelly]

I did the 3D.

All my thanks to Seedling and Ilaekae for this classroom, and long life to it !

[Bl@stzone]

yeh id love to join this.. iv looked at your other stuff seedling..i would love your help

[Verastegui]

Hi, I hope I'm not too late to join in. Here's my stuff.

[Seedling]

Hello everyone!

FYI, this classroom will officially finish up end-of-day Saturday. However, my home will be colonized by my in-laws over the weekend, so I will be late with my final round of comments. (And if you really want to sneak in more work on Sunday, that’s fine too.)

Good to see you again RabbiSatan! You’ve got some goofy proportions in some of your skellies, but you’ve also got some nicely dramatic action poses. I like the way you are thinking through that ball-joint on the upper leg bone. You might be making that it a bit longer than it really is (in the martial arts pose in particular) but that’s a good starting point. See how you’ve made that whole bone curved in your drawings? See if you can’t find similar curves in the other long bones. You might also want to try drawing skeletons over photos of humans in dance poses, to get those proportions nailed down. Oh right, I’m forgetting the most important part – what, specifically, do you want to be learning from this exercise? Deciding that is almost as important as the drawing.

Aria – hello! You’ve got a witty simplification of the skeleton going on here. The poses are successfully capturing some expressive dance moves. From here, try getting some poses that involve foreshortening, because it looks as if you were trying to do that, but the bones kept slipping off to a more flattened position. (I know that slippery feeling well!) Also keep an eye on balance. Balance isn’t so important to characters that are essentially in mid-air, but on a precarious pose, like the ballet skeleton on his toe, it becomes important that his center of gravity goes straight down to the tiny point he is balanced on.

Boneapart jones – lol, your handle is perfect for skeletons! You are welcome! These are good, dramatic poses, and this is a simplification of the skeleton that is both simple enough for quick sketches, but detailed enough so that all the major bone masses are there. That’s a good hip-tilt on the Saturday-night-fever-skeleton, and good long-bone shapes on the punk. It looks like you, too are suffering from that problem of poses slipping out into sideways, flat poses. Try the photo thing I’ve been suggesting to everyone. Also, you need to decide what you want to be getting out of this exercise!

Iwantjelly – delightful! You’ve taken on a real challenge, and come out on top. Bravo for tackling the bones with a minimum of simplification. Since your skelly is rotating around on only one axis, something you can do to check your work is to draw horizontal lines from key body parts. For example, a horizontal line from the top of one skull will hit the tops of the other two skulls. The left wrist, however, only crosses two out of three.

Bl@stzone – join in the fun!

Verastegui – welcome! Don’t forget to state what your goal is with this exercise. These are some good dance poses! Second and third row, far right, are particularly successful in showing foreshortened parts. The bottom right is a good complex one, because the skelly’s weight is not just on her feet, but on her knees – and it’s a good tough pose because the proportions have to be right to get the body to meet itself like that. Some of the less complex poses, such as the second row, left, get a little goofy in their proportions. Watch out for balance – a few of these dudes look like they might topple over.



Wonderful work everyone!

[Maledict]

Hello again Seedling

As for the proportions, I intentionally drew the poses with differing proportions to experiment with them. The bottom middle one was supposed to be a dwarf female (But the prelvis admittedly was a bit too large), and the upper left one was to be a super human proportioned male.

But anyway, the drawings were rushed. I just bought myself a new sketchbook which has white paper (Was doing the previous drawings on newsprint, which isn't exactly of high quality), and I'll do the gesture lines in light pencil this time so that they won't overlap with the lines of the actual skeleton.

Anyway, I'll take your advice, I'll find some dance pictures and draw over them to try to get my proportions straight. I just love making exaggerated proportions too much, hehee.

And as for what I intend to make out of this exercise, it is the ability to draw the fully nude figure in dynamic poses and render them to make aesthetically pleasing to look at.

I will be doing some more poses right now, I will post them shortly.

Thanks for having me Seedling