I’ll be uploading my exercises as soon as I finish them, but in the meantime, I just want to say that this course has unlocked so much of my ability to: - Put my character designs into practice - Improve my poses by focusing on intention, storytelling, and body language - Approach anatomy in a much friendlier and more intuitive way Right now I’m working on a graphic novel, and I bought this course when I started designing my characters because I felt it would really help me along the way—and it truly has. Before this, I studied anatomy for artists with an amazing teacher here in Argentina, and that experience was extremely valuable. But I feel that this course gave me a way to integrate that knowledge much more fluidly. In other words, it helped me let go of the stiffness that we inevitably develop when we focus too much on muscles and anatomy, and lose sight of the overall structure and abstraction of forms. Now I feel I can make much better use of everything I learned from those anatomy courses. I also want to highlight and thank you for creating a course like this. Many people sell courses promising to take your character drawings “from 0 to 100,” which focus purely on the final result. Of course, we all want to achieve those results—so I don’t blame them for advertising that way—but I deeply value that you offer something different: a course that emphasizes the fundamental constructive principles that truly make a difference in the final outcome, even if it’s hard to grasp that when you’re just starting out and, as you say, only want to draw comic characters exactly as we see them—without yet understanding the importance of this kind of exercise. I’ve been drawing for years, I’ve studied with many teachers, and I have to say that your way of explaining things has unlocked new abilities for me. Congratulations on your work—your book, your courses, and your teaching style. Thank you so much!

Following along with the critique. I even gave the last shading part a go but think it would have made more sense if I actually knew what I was doing ;) Will have to get around taking an anatomy class some day!

What would be the next steps to do? How long do you think someone needs to get better at gesture and what should be the next step to learn? Do you also have a 2nd course what to do after that? Greetings

This was such a good course for me to do at this time. The timing was excellent. Both approaches speak to me and in particular the second approach I find to be critical to developing a more complete thought process when studying and when inventing. If I combine them with what I learned from Mike Mattesi and Drawing with Force, I get a third approach that unifies them all by focusing on function of the pose. I am particularly appreciative of the shape based approach for it's ability to be more character driven, allowing us to modify what we understand about a piece of reference. In this crit video, when you discussed the pros of sticking with the given perspective on the first pass of modifying the pose to avoid introducing new problems to solve while you're inventing. I can really see how that just increases the opportunity to confuse the objectives, and create more headaches while working. I want to acknowledge your excellent ability to clearly explain what you are doing as you are doing it (I know there are cuts and edits). There is a lot of value to see it done IRT as opposed to a voice over or narration that may end up with digressions that don't serve the lesson. Here are some mostly legible notes from the video. The first pose top left, was invented as you were talking through the first crit.

Thank you, Michael, for addressing the foreshortening issues I faced for the modified body types. I will keep in mind your advice on designing them in a better way.