Mannequinization – Structure of the Human Body
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Figure Drawing Fundamentals

Mannequinization

Mannequinization – Structure of the Human Body

48K
Mark as Completed

Mannequinization – Structure of the Human Body

48K
Mark as Completed

When you’re doing these mannequin sketches, always start by establishing the gesture. Find the flow, major angles, and check your proportions with measurements. Then as a second layer, start adding the 3d forms of the mannequin.

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Marco Sordi
2023/11/30. Good morning everybody. Here's another gesture and mannequinization study sheet. Thanks for your comments or critiques.
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Marco Sordi
2023/11/28. Good evening everybody. Here's a new mannequinization study. Thanks for your comments and advices. Good night.
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Marco Sordi
2023/11/25. Good morning everybody. Here's some mannequinization studies. Thanks and have a good weekend.
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Jesper Axelsson
Hi @Marco Sordi, cool studies! These mannequins are really nice! They feel solid, and the flow is nice. I'm currently working a lot on learning to draw the figure for animation, and I'm constantly making discoveries, most recently the discovery of drawing with shapes. It makes it much easier to capture the gesture AND structure and form of the figure quickly. You seem to be interested in drawing Disney characters, so I thought I'd share some things I'm learning :) Keep in mind though that I'm in the middle of the discovering, so take my advice with a grain of salt. When I draw the figure here's how I approach it at the moment: I imagine the figure as built out of shapes á la Glen Keane I focus on feeling the gesture; tension, weight, squash and stretch And I try to express that with my lines But the lines are part of the shapes If you want to draw characters from Disney animation I would strongly encourage you to practice drawing like an animator. Study how they do it, and you might, like me, discover how it makes achieving a result closer to theirs much easier. Here are some Glen Keane drawings that inspired me https://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/508/2740/1600/ariel04.jpg https://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1250/2135/1600/page5.png https://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/508/2740/1600/ariel06.jpg Again Walt Stanchfield's book is a treasure chest for learning how to capture the story of the pose. I hope this helps :)
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Luka Reinmöller
So these took me pretty long but I learned a ton. I would like to improve and therefore I'm asking for critique. The two on the left are from the day before. Have a nice day :)
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@needsmuchhelp
this was difficult for me, any feedback is welcome
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Jesper Axelsson
Hi @needsmuchhelp, nice studies! This is not easy. Nice job with showing dimensionality of the forms! - What's you art goal? Do you want to do animation, illustration, florence academy style portrait, or something else? Knowing that might help me guide you better. Feel free to put together a slide with a few examples of art by artists that you admire. Not just any artwork that you like, but the type of work that you'd like to create yourself. - The proportions are off in your drawings. I have some ideas to help you with that: Do a few more figure drawings, but rather than drawing boxes and cylinders focusing on the form, draw simple shapes. That will help you focus more on the relationship between the parts. The great thing is that within those shapes, is the form. If you want to show the form, you simply add crosscontours. You can see some examples of me drawing with simple shapes in this reply https://www.proko.com/s/nH3v - It would be great to see more energy in the poses you draw. I think you'd appreciate reading this reply https://www.proko.com/s/bcZ6 - I noticed that you posted some drawings for the Drawing Basics course as well. I think you'll really appreciate taking it. It will support you with a lot of skills that can help you with your figure drawings. This video for example shows How Animators Use Basic Shapes with Aaron Blaise. And the course also seems like a lot of fun :) I hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!
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@wintersouls
hello everyone! here are some of my mannequinization drawings. i know i added a lot of contour lines, but i just got so excited to see things come together! let me know what you think :^D
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hArtMann
Did take out line weight out of the gesture to focus on the shape and flow. Spent quite a bit of time studying on how to approach each body part in different ways.
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@grugrugru
Final drawings for this lesson for now. I tried picking out poses that challenge me. Had a lot of trouble with some of these getting proportions right, especially 4th and last image. Critique is appreciated.
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Noe Luis
Oct 26 2023 More mannequin,yay! The first is just a gesture drawing pointing down the landmarks. The other two 3d forms. Mostly the back drawings of the figure. The whole practice was trying to quickly sketch the figure.
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Amado Karim
Hi! just picked up the course again after a while. Feedback would be much appreciated
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Jesper Axelsson
Hi @Amado Karim, really cool drawings! I would work on proportion/structure and weight & balance - Sometimes the torso is too long (drawing to the right image 1) Sometimes the torso is compressed (drawing to the right image 2 - the hip seems to small and we're missing the waist inbetween the ribcage and hip) - Sometimes the arms and legs are too long. You tend to make the upper arm/leg too long. In drawing to the right of image 2 the legs are too short. Suggested exercise: Draw from a reference and break the figure down into simple shapes, then repose that figure into different poses from imagination. Try to maintain the proportion of the volumes. Pay extra close attention to the bilateral symmetry, so that the upper arm on one side for example is the same size in space as the upper arm on the other side (only mirrored). You could think of it like you're drawing key poses for animation, moving the character continously through the same space and telling a story. Learning to maintain volumes is especially important for animation. Use simple shapes. It might help to study how the old Disney animators broke down their figures. It helped me to study drawings of King Louie. They look quite realistic and complex, but the structure is simple. My favorite Disney animator is Milt Kahl. - To capture the weight of the figure, it helps to be aware of what is horizontal and what is vertical in the environment the figure exists in. You might find reading this reply useful https://www.proko.com/s/bkus. As you do the exercise suggested above, try to really get involved in the pose, and feel the weight, forces and emotions that the character experiences. Then tag me (@Jesper Axelsson ) if you want me to take a look I hope this helps :) Keep up the good work 💪😎👍
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Jack
2mo
I think I'm afraid of making the head and legs too big/short, so I'm overcompensating by making heads smaller and legs longer. Also, I feel like I'm ignoring hands and feet
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Martha Muniz
You've got nice forms and gesture, it all feels very structured while keeping the flow of the pose. When it comes to proportions though, you are correct in assessing a tendency to create bigger legs and small heads--and it's good just being able to self-analyze your own work. A quick tip is to keep in mind that the average human figure has its midway point (from head to toe) where the hip joint connects to the pelvis, so this can help calculate the distribution when placing the legs. For the head, I usually leave it for last in my drawing process, and this can be worth trying, too, to see if it helps you once you have the rest of the figure to assess its size relatively. There are a couple of methods to measuring the human figure that go more in-depth too: https://www.proko.com/s/KW8Z and they can be worth exploring to see what clicks better with your process. Hope this helps!
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Noe Luis
A drawing of the side view figure.
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Noe Luis
I have actually waited to break down figures into building blocks. Let me know if I'm on the right track. If not why? I will be very appreciated of your time.
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Martha Muniz
There may be some tendency to use building blocks following a more "default" or average human proportion, but remember to take into account how sizes vary from body to body. It's important to start out with a gesture to help both capture the rhythm of the pose as well as check and correct your proportions early on. This model here is rather lean/muscular, with a smaller waist and larger upper body, so comparing body part sizes to one another can also help (e.g. leg size to torso size to shoulders). Aside from that, your construction appears solid and you demonstrate a good understanding of the body's building block structure--so you're on the right path :)
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Marco Sordi
2023/9/11. Good morning everybody. Here’s a quick mannequinization study I made as warming up exercise. I think I should push the arch of the pose much more to the right. I ended with a too straight pose. And also her right elbow, arm and shoulder must come out more. Thanks and have a good week.
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Jesper Axelsson
Nice! -The proportions are a bit elongated, especially the upper body, head and upper arm (the one closest to us). - The sense of weight could be clearer. Dropping a vertical line from the neck as I suggested before might help. Also, consider which leg has the most weight. Cheers!
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Samuel Sanjaya
did 3 more mannequin, taking my time on this one. any feedbacks will be greatly appreciated
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Martha Muniz
You have a pretty good grasp of 3D forms, so the next thing to focus on is proportions. There's the tendency in these drawings to elongate the torso, particularly the connection between the pelvic and ribcage boxes. It can help to know that the middle of the body vertically speaking will typically be at about the hips, so careful with the torso getting too far away from the pelvis. Also, watch out for the arms getting too long--the model's left arm in #167 and her right arm in #176 could be less elongated.
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Samuel Sanjaya
5 to 10 minute poses. trying to combine the gesture and the forms. Any feedbacks/critiques on these and way I can improve will be greatly appreciated.
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Arman Jucutan
Hello Folks, here is my submission for this lesson. Please let me know your thoughts and critiques.
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Liandro
Cool, @Arman Jucutan! The volumes are effecticely described, and there’s very good gesture, especially in the fourth one! If you were to take these and develop the drawings even more, perhaps you could do some finetuning on further passes and maybe soften some distortions - for example, the hands in the second drawing (which seem a bit too big); the arms in the third one (which feel a bit too long); and the knee box in the first one (which I notice might be a bit too skewed). Just some adjustments in case you want these figures to tend to more realistic forms and proportions. Hope this helps. Great work overall!
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Samuel Sanjaya
0 minute pose figure drawings, I'm more aware of the simple form beneath the figure, altough the proportion is still off, and have some trouble for pose like s225 where it clearly off.  I still have this bad habit of hyperfocusing on one part instead of the overall figure, It usually came back if I get a little bit tired. I think that's why the latter figure have a more distinct wrong proportions.  Any feedback or critiques on how I can improve will be greatly appreciated.
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Peter Anton
Looking good! WHen you do side views, it looks like you have a tendency to turn the figure toward the viewer, making it more of a 3/4 view. Honestly, that's a pretty good problem to have. Most people do the opposite. One thing I see in a lot of these is that you are misplacing the head when you make it into a box. I think most of that would be solved just by making sure the tilt of the box matches the tilt of the eyebrows. Same problem with the box around the knees. When you draw the leg in the side views, a cube turns into a square, but you are forcing it to be a cube in 3/4 view, which makes it out of line with the thigh. Think about the thigh as a box with a side and top, and make the box a continuation of those planes.
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@aeyt
Some more mannequins and 2 min quick sketches! Summer "break" has been really busy with work and gym and stuff so I haven't gotten to draw as much as I would've wanted. A lot of you guys are managing to add some nice detail particularly in the torso area while mine are still more like robo beans with some cylinders for legs and hands. Maybe I should work on that. I don't think I captured the foreshortening on the big guy correctly. I'll try to find the reference for it later.
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Jack
5mo
More practice!
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Volker Wuyts
I think you captured the gesture very well in these mannequinization studies. I think you can improve on line quality, so it will be easier to add more layers like muscles on top accurately. Good luck
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