Oh Brother Prep work, Part 3: Pushing Poses

Following on from my previous posts about designing my characters and then practicing drawing their emotions, I had one final task: to practice drawing these characters in different poses!

My natural instinct is to draw all my characters in pretty much the same, boring, stock standard pose (standing straight with arms either hanging by their sides or in their pockets if I’m not feeling up to drawing hands). But after years of hanging out with animators, and seeing their excellently expressive and dynamically engaging character designs, something has finally started to rub off on me. I really wanted to be able to show more of the characters’ feelings through their body language (and not just their faces). So when I was practicing the new character designs for this rendition of Oh Brother, I tried my hand at pushing the poses of 5 main characters, starting with myself.

Gina - Pushing Poses

It was really hard for me to start pushing poses (as a naturally stiff pose drawer) but I loved seeing my characters become more loose and energetic the more I pushed the poses. I particularly enjoyed using this exaggerated body language to show the different personalities of the characters. My character’s poses are generally smaller and tighter as I’m a generally anxious and nervous human. In contrast, Callie’s poses (the friend character) are big and wide and open, because she is excited about lots of things and generally more open and welcoming.

CALLIE - PUSHING POSES

Pushing poses with my brother’s character had two extra drawing challenges: 1) He is constantly moving (whether it’s his arms or his legs, small movements and big movements, he never truly stops moving), and 2) He mostly went around barefoot when we were kids. I’ve done lots of playing around with ways to get across all of Rob’s different energies in the still image format of comics. And I’ve done my best to draw feet, which to me are like hands but much, much harder to draw (side note: I have never drawn so many feet in MY LIFE as I have with this book; I’d like to say that I’m getting better but…).

ROB - PUSHING POSES

I think my absolute favourite pose, of all the characters, is the one of my Dad wearing safety goggles and holding a drill in one hand and a hammer in the other. He just looks so silly (which is a side I don’t think people expect when they first meet him) but also focused and business-like (which I think is more a personality trait that people do associate with him).

MUM & DAD - PUSHING POSES

A resource that a friend recommended to me that was super useful was Sherm Cohen’s SpongeBob Drawing tips. It was a good visual reminder about just how far you can push a pose.

As this was new to me and my perfectionism can get in the way of doing new things, I found that it was useful to follow these loose steps when trying to draw pushing poses:

1. Pick a character.

2. Decide on a pose.

3. Pencil it, without worrying if I was pushing the pose “correctly”, just draw like I would normally draw.

4. Then I’d pencil it again but I would actively think about how I could pull or stretch certain parts of the pose. Can I make an arm higher or a leg longer? Should the body be straight up or can I bend in more?

5. Finally, the fun part: ink and colour!

Practicing all these poses really highlighted to me that when I exaggerate body language, the characters somehow look more real and the emotions I want to convey to the reader are easier for them to understand. This is what I love about comics! I can show in a drawing how I feel much more clearly than when I use words to try and describe how I feel.

I’ve already started to see the difference in my characters’ poses (both for this graphic novel and other shorter comics & character illustrations). So I will keep practicing this and hopefully it will slowly start feeling more natural to me and I’ll be able to cut out step 3.