[Jarno Koole]

So what�s the catch?

a clich�..

The character is an inexperienced knight
who had bumped into a massive cave troll while exploring the cavern for a treasure.
Well.. you can guess what had happened
The troll has hit the knight with a
crushing blow.. *lights out*

The knight is reviving from the blow now
and while leaning the wall he tries to
get up...

This rough sketch took me about 3
hours to draw and the pose is the
most challenging I�ve ever done with
my intuos. No references used. I
tried to make the anatomy beleivable
and the pose lifelike. I also tried to capture the feeling of weakness and
despair in the character. His right leg
is still in balance, which gives the
feeling of a little hope. He may be
able to make a counter-attack...




If you have better solutions with the pose, overpaint. Comments and critic are also welcome.

[Akukage]

ahem...

"Its only a flesh wound!"

[gArGOyLe^]

thats very good.. is he leaning against a wall?

[Jarno Koole]

Yes, that�s correct..

[gArGOyLe^]

just noticed some thing with the left arm.. the deltoid is too low.. and so is the bicep tricep area.. and the fore arm seems kinda short. I might be wrong..

other than that I think that sketch is reaally good

[Mr. T]

netbox, the left arm is foreshortened... at least that's how i understood it

[Drew]

The character's right arm (on our left) is the one with the problem. The bicep is shown extending past the elbow, which is incorrect. It's making it look as though the guy's arm is dislocated. I'd over draw it for you but I don't have any webspace handy. :-)

[Jarno Koole]

Drew:

Glad you noticed it. I�ll fix that right away..

[Rune L]

Think about it looking down from above. If his left arm is extended, elbow locked, his shoulders must be quite a distance from the wall. That is fine, so the weight is on the left arm and right leg, and he is in action of moving up and away from the wall. The torque from the inactive side of the body would tend to twist the torso and pelvis away from the viewer, not square on as you have it.

I think the natural thing for someone to do in this state would be to rest on the left knee, with the back on the wall. When you get up, the weight would be carried from the legs to the back resting on the wall. So the basic premise is a really difficult one.

Try to act it out. Play the knight, find a wall. Note how you move and the direction and action of the basic masses. This stuff is way to hard to do from your head, at least at first. You don't need to take photos, just analyse it more. I think it will all fit together better if you do, it will kind of "draw itself" if you understand things correctly. Most of drawing is simply understanding.

[Jarno Koole]

Rune L:

Good points there. In the original sketch
the knight was falling down, defeated.
Even the knight's right leg was relaxed
at that sketch. Then I thought that I
wanted to create some hope for the
character by aligning his right leg
like it's shown in this sketch. That may
be the reason why this doesn't work.. i should have altered the other bodyparts aswell. I see the errors here. I�m going to make the sketch again from the scratch
without changing the idea after it's ready

Thanks.

[specialbrew]

I think Rune's points are spot on, but also I think's it's important to understand the value of roughly mapping out your figure's pose before tackling the sketch itself, particularly when there's tricky foreshortening going on. Just a few geometric blocks will go a long way in solving such proportional problems.

In my crappy attempt at demonstrating this, I've unfortunately managed to lose your figure's stockiness, but hopefully you'll get the idea!



cheers

sb

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: specialbrew ]

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: specialbrew ]

[Jarno Koole]

By the way.. I'll quote myself a bit:

"The knight is _trying_ (!) to get up"

Hmm.. That doesn't mean that he really
is able to get up with a great effort.
It's important to have a feel of
struggle in that case. I think i'll
leave the legs like they were.. I want
to create an illusion where the knight
tries to get up but in vain.

How more blind you can be to your own
words and work?

Specialbrew:

Somehow the feel of suffering is gone.
I can't see movement there aswell. The
pose seems to be very static. Now
the viewer gets an idea that the knight
is very alert and the blow from the
troll's club is still to come.

One thing that looks good here it's the
evasive manoeuvre he's making. And I
like the static cartoon-like pose which
has a funny elastic feel in it. Reminds
me of Dragon's Lair the game

And thanks for the tip. I usually just
start sketching spontaneously. Starting
out with simple geometrical shapes seems
to help a _lot_ when doing poses like this.

Thanks a lot for the tip!

[Tarandon]

I thought Knights were defenders of Kings, not cave pilagers.

well thats my 2 cents. I liked the original pose to, minus the right arm.

later

[Granite]

Sometimes you have to pillage a cave to defend the king.

Pre-emptive maybe, but effective.