Lotsa Art

They are not medically accurate, just enough for artists to know the necessary muscles and how they work together

I 100% recommend doing the last exercise I did to be able to actually place the muscles

Can you share your process for coming up with them?

Sure! And i'll see if I can make a more concrete guide another time with, like, images and stuff.

I always start with research. I look up things like time periods, functional gear, possible inspirations, etc. When doing Flash's, I knew I wanted to have a suit that could look good both in comics AND on screen (because the CW suit was good but also kinda cheesy to see irl). So I made sure to research things actual speedsters would wear, such as racecar drivers and runners. For Batman, it was a little harder, but I knew what suits I liked most over his runs/games/shows, and I knew what kind of build I wanted to give him. Oh yeah, look up specific athletic builds, too.

Then, it's rough passes. You've seen on several of my design sheets these little guys:

They're like thumbnails for character designs. I focus first on palette and shape. Where do the colours live? What kind of shapes do I wanna use? Silhouette? Things like that. Easiest way to keep a character design fresh but recognizable is keeping the colours in about the same placements as their original designs, like with Dickbin here.

Same for Superman:

I may have turned his trunks into kinda-pants, but the colour placement keeps the design faithful. I can introduce new shapes and concepts, but it still looks and feels like Superman because of colour placement and overall shape language.

Flash was similar, but I introduced reddish-black to the palette. However, because of location, it still looks like Flash. The roughs process for Flash looked like this:

You can see with each iteration, the ideas get clearer, and I make more informed decisions based on my references, research, and design skills. I also like to make my designs FUNCTIONAL, so I choose to think technically as well as aesthetically.

I work exclusively in forms and shapes rather than lines, since shapes are easier to edit.

Meanwhile, with every step, I update my knowledge. I look at clothing from that time period. E.g. when I'm drawing Bruce through the different eras of his life + the kids at that time, I have to remember what, say, 2014 boy fashion was like for Jason. Or what hair in the early 2000s was like for year one Bruce. I'm looking into their comic, TV, and movie runs. I have wikis open. I want references to their origins, their personalities, etc. I want to foreshadow events. I want to know what I can so that I'm bringing something new to the table without abandoning what makes the characters themselves.

This is my current Starfire design! I wanted to pay homage to the Starfire I grew up with (Titans '03) while also learning more about her original comics portrayals. I also knew I REALLY wanted to play up a princess-esque look. So, with references and research in hand, I prioritized colour and shape placement, added my own flair (the translucent glittery parts, the princess-y armor, the shoes, etc.) and voila!

My design philosophy revolves around form and function meeting in the middle. It also is heavily based in costume as narrative, just like in TV shows and movies. What kinds of clothes people wear says a lot about them as a person. Someone, like Starfire up there, who is confident in their body, may strongly prefer tighter fitting or revealing clothing. Someone like Red Hood, whose body is scar-torn and a dead giveaway (badumtss) of who he is, will want to cover every inch. His layers and armor indicate he's protective of himself, putting up a lot of walls.

Anywhosit! I hope this was helpful? This is the bare minimum of what my design process looks like. And again, this is for like mostly comics or for funsies. If I were designing these guys for 2D animation, they'd look way different.

✨ The collection of my Mari Lwyd art through the years ✨ — First art is called: “Dude… give me the bottle” (or when you lost a rhyming contest against the supernatural skeletal horse) Second art is a meme reference x) Third art is featuring Mari on her day off (hence no rhyming, but she wouldn’t say no to a treat) Plus other stuff, silly sketches and artworks, like Mari Lwyd in modern times being disappointed that nobody wants to rhyme with her anymore, so she has to buy everything herself (featuring a distant relative of the guy from the first piece, plus a Waterboy mashup). —

December is my birthday month (in the end of it), so I’m very happy to have such a wonderful cryptid on my side.

Blood—the fluid that circulates in the heart, arteries, capillaries, and veins of a vertebrate animal carrying nourishment and oxygen to and bringing away waste products from all parts of the body

Arterial - relating to or being the bright red blood present in most arteries that has been oxygenated in lungs or gills

Body fluid - a fluid or fluid secretion (such as blood, lymph, saliva, semen, or urine) of the body

Carmine - a vivid red

Cerise - a moderate red

Claret - a dark purplish red

Clot - a coagulated mass produced by clotting of blood

Cruor - obsolete: the clotted portion of coagulated blood

Ensanguine - to make bloody; crimson

Geranium - a vivid or strong red

Gore - blood, especially: clotted blood

Hematic - of, relating to, or containing blood

Hematoid - resembling blood

Hemoglobin - an iron-containing respiratory pigment of vertebrate red blood cells that consists of a globin composed of four subunits each of which is linked to a heme molecule, that functions in oxygen transport to the tissues after conversion to oxygenated form in the gills or lungs, and that assists in carbon dioxide transport back to the gills or lungs after surrender of its oxygen

Hemoid - resembling blood

Ichor - a thin watery or blood-tinged discharge

Incarnadine - bloodred

Juices - the natural fluids of an animal body

Maroon - a dark red

Plasma - the fluid part of blood, lymph, or milk as distinguished from suspended material

Puce - a dark red

Ruddle - red ocher (i.e., a red earthy hematite used as a pigment)

Russet - a reddish brown

Sanguine - bloodred; consisting of or relating to blood

Scarlet - any of various bright reds

Vermilion - any of various red pigments

Cheek: a round dull pain that clocks your entire head in a different direction. It’s painful and throbs but the main effect of a punch to the cheek is how jarring it is. You feel it in your mouth, your teeth. And no matter how you position that punch the knuckles will always hit the jaw and cheek bones adding a frame of sharp pain in which the redness will be painted.

Temple: getting hit on the temple pushes your head to the side rather than turning it. It’s disorienting because it leaves you very off balance. It essentially feels like a bad pressure headache, like when you have a sinus infection on a plane, but in one spot and on the outside. It’s sharp in the middle and radiates outward and even after the initial impact it pulses like an earthquake epicenter. It easily causes long lasting headaches and is the most likely of these examples to cause a concussion.

Eye: this is a weird one. The fist doesn’t fit within the eye socket so either the knuckles on the brow and cheeks bones protect the actual eye or they don’t. The former option gives a full spreading pain below the eye which results in the classic black eye look and a sharp pain on your brow similar to hitting your shin on the couch. The latter option, well bad things can happen when a hard fast object makes direct contact with your eye but for the sake of this it feels like a vacuum bc the concave shape is being covered and pressurized. The eye feels pushed back and pulled forward all at once. It doesn’t necessarily hurt that bad for that long unless the punch was meant to do damage. I’m fortunate to say I don’t know what it would feel like then.

Nose: remember that prank kids used to pull where they’d line up their hands with their nose, push them in one direction and crack a knuckle at the same time to pretend to break their nose? Yeah that’s what it looks like when someone punches you from the side in the nose, except it’s someone else’s hand and your nose makes the sound instead of their knuckle. It’s just like breaking any bone where you hear it and feel the action if it being done but that moment of shock blankets you for a split second until all the pain comes rushing back. It’s sharp and needlelike and can give you black eyes just to add insult to injury. If you get hit in the nose from the front it’s like the uncomfortableness of when you have to sneeze but can’t. Except that feeling took all the steroids and is now using your face as a punching bag to express its roid rage. It crackles outward like static electricity under your skin, your eyesight gets fuzzy and you can’t tell if it’s because you’re tearing up, it’s hard to open your eyes, or you’re momentarily stunned and blinded. Just know it’s all three. I find that this one knocks the wind out of you the most. Gotta remind yourself to breathe just don’t try to do it through your nose.

If you really want to know what this feels like I’d suggest joining a mixed martial arts because they’ll teach you correct form and power distribution and you can spar with pads and actually hit each other.

But sometimes people can have odd proportions or wear rings or just be capable of punching someone with two fingers positioned oddly that kinda... Makes the punch a staircase surface instead of flat.

When I punch, I tend to unintentionally have my first two fingers kinda... Pushed forward. Which means my punches aren't... Well they kinda suck to be on the receiving end of tbqh.

The bottom image shows how I punch. The first two fingers are pushed out, sort of, and this, actually, is a much... Stronger kind of punch than a flat one like top image.

In martial arts, you typically get trained to make sure the punch you give uses the first two knuckles on your hand because those bones are stronger and the line from knuckle to wrist to arm is straighter which means force is easier to apply and the "recoil" is lesser for you.

(yes there are technical terms for all this, no I do not remember them, I had a shitty night so brain not working 100%)

Anyway. Back to the hitty hitty things.

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Nose:

Punching someone directly, like at the nose, without pulling your arm back to work up a swing, will have a different effect in terms of injury and the force behind it.

If I hit someone across the bridge of the nose from directly in front of them, the force I put in depends on my own speed, accuracy, and existing strength. If I can't pull back my arm to add extra momentum and force, then it's entirely on me and how I land that hit.

A sharp jabbing motion to the bridge of the nose is enough to bruise and possibly break the nose. It will cause stunning pain, the kind that makes you stop for a moment because your brain kinda stalls from WHITE STATIC OW before the aching settles in.

A hit from the side to the nose, as in a wide swing, is more likely to extensively bruise and cause bleeding but less likely to break the nose. Of course it can still happen if there's enough force behind it, because force and momentum science blah-blah.

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Cheek:

As said before by @burn-brighter-than-fire when you get a hit to the cheek, it tends to be a throbbing ache. Like, the kind of ache you get after the dentist has jabbed you with needles and bullied your teeth in a root canal or an extraction. It's because the tissue and such gets more blood in it, it causes pressure and swelling which in-turn causes more pressure. You can cut the inside of your cheek on your teeth, bite the soft tissue in your mouth, or even get teeth dislodged or knocked out with a good hit to the cheek.

When it's a punch with those first two knuckles hitting you, as I mentioned with the nose above, there is a higher chance of having your inside cheek getting cut or bit in the act of being punched. The force and pressure exerted with a wide arc swing, the kind you see in fancy slow-motion shots in shows and movies (especially Asian dramas which are 👌[okay-emoji]) transfer a lot of energy into a relatively solid area with your jaw and cheekbone offering resistance to the punch you're getting. Bruising is common, a cracked cheekbone isn't ultra rare and if you have a "glass jaw"? Oh boy is that punch gonna hurt even more than it would otherwise!

Beyond the initial burn that has you stagger or stumble with the blow, the kind that makes it feel like you've just slapped a hot cloth to your cheek (genuinely, a punch tends to make an echo sensation of burning, just like a slap, because the skin of your face is very sensitive and the friction alone that's caused by the impact is enough to make your skin hurt), what follows depends on things like where the punch actually landed, where those first two knuckles hit, and the kind of punch delivered.

A wide swing will deliver a lot of force with that momentum. Most people don't know how to take that kind of hit and remain standing because, typically, you don't. Genuinely. Most punches that hit that hard will knock someone on their arse.

I know that personally. From both sides of the fight.

Someone who has training or has learned how to take a hit, can take the force and momentum and work with it. They absorb that force, let it push them back, turn them, shift their stance, even stagger with it and go down to one knee.

Turning your head with the hit will lessen it somewhat but it doesn't diffuse it entirely. Your jaw and cheekbone will take the majority of the force and energy in the punch and it will bruise. It will ache. It will throb. The faster your heart is going, the more it will throb in time with your heartbeat. It will creep up your face, along your temple, and become lime a low-level headache or the echo of a hangover.

Sound will cause that throbbing to spike. Every breath you take will cause the ache to flare. You will open and close your mouth and it will feel like someone is gripping your jaw and making that ache pulse each time you do.

If you're in a fight and have to think and move and talk etc after that punch, it will be somewhat dulled because adrenaline, but you can't ignore it. Especially if you're doing a speech or dialogue etc with your opponent.

If the punch hits higher on the cheek, closer to the ear, btw, you will almost certainly feel intense disorientation. More than the punch would cause because of how our ears work. The inner ear canal, the way nerves of the face are arranged over bone and through muscle and sinew etc. It makes it sound you feel like you're kind of trying to hear sound through headphones that have noise-cancelling effects but also happen to be really tinny and bad with bass and treble. Or like you're listening to something with a pair of headphones that are broke and failing to fully share the audio properly.

That pain, no matter where you get hit, will persist and linger. You will bruise, it will swell, you can easily get a split lip from your teeth because of the punch. So can have that to contend with too.

Basically a cheek punch is always gonna ache and throb with spikes of pain that can be hot and sharp or even make you feel tingly and shocky because nausea and adrenaline are not a great mix.

If the punch to the cheek is more of a direct hit, similar to how you can hit the nose while standing face-to-face and don't have the opportunity or space to pull back and deliver a full swing, the force is obviously going to be lesser and the hit closer to the front of the face rather than the ear and side of the face.

This kind of punch is more likely to cause a split lip and cause you to bite or cut your inner cheek because the force is distributed across your teeth and jaw. Unlike a hit to the cheek that comes from the side, there's no "hollow" space for the punch to strike so all the force in the punch gets despised through solid bone and teeth.

Honestly, I'd prefer a punch to the side of the face that makes me feel like I'm underwater with my hearing and a mega hangover over one that mainly hits teeth and my jaw. Genuinely. You can more readily take that kind of hit and stagger with it, adjust your stance to keep your balance etc.

Any punch to the front of the face, or near front, tends to just make you go backwards because your stance and balance tends to not be able to adapt to without giving your opponent more openings to then follow with more hits.

A step backwards as you stagger makes you more vulnerable (in my personal opinion and experience usually) than a step sideways or a stagger to the side because all your weight shifts back and that shifting can be harder to correct or compensate for in a fight, especially if you're disoriented or already injured.

A nice little aside here, specifically for a cheek punch is that if you have your jaw relaxed and muscles slack when you get punched, you will not be as injured. Tension is what makes a cheek punch worse. Tense jaw? Energy transference will make it bruise worse. Tense muscles of the cheek? More likely to cut your inner cheek and get worse bruising, maybe even a fractured cheekbone.

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Temple:

Same as with the cheek punch, if it's force that comes from a side punch, as in a wide arc swing, the force and momentum is gonna really turn your head. It's basically just a blunt force trauma to your temple. Disorientation, balance issues, heck, consciousness issues are expected here.

The pain is sharp and striking, can be easily like static and if I had to assign a colour to a temple injury/punch, then it'd be silver-white that just disrupts everything.

A hangover, a headache that presses and presses and presses is the easiest kind of explanation of the pain a temple strike causes. If you've ever grabbed your head and pressed the flat of your palms to your temples and felt that? That's sort of how it feels. It's a vice that just causes pressure that turns to an ache to a tingling, electric pain. Because blood builds where that punch landed and pressure builds under tissue and skin and it doesn't let up.

Add in a pounding heart and adrenaline and you get a baby migraine that makes following conversation agony. You get lights that stab your ears. Sounds that gouge your eardrums. You get everything aching even if you're not injured anywhere else because your brain is getting pressured and that has to translate to pain, it just so happens the pain ends up feeling like it's everywhere.

And with a temple strike, it doesn't really matter what kind of punch you get. The results tend to be the same. An upper cut, a full swing, a direct single punch with no pull-back and swing? Doesn't matter.

It's gonna hurt anyway.

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Eyes:

Any punch to the face hurts, for sure, but I'd rather not get punched in the eye tbqh. If the punch lands with those first two knuckles, you can easily get fractured eyesockets or your nose broken or a cheek fracture. If it's not the first two knuckles it still can do all that.

A pull-back and swing punch will bruise, make a stinging burning, an audible crunching or cracking if bones are broken or fractured, and that eyeball is probably going to be useless to see out of for a bit because blood and pressure and pain.

The pain can be sharp for a moment and subside to a throbbing that goes with your heartrate or it can be overwhelming because things break under the force exerted.

Unlike the cheek with the bit of padding and "hollow" space, the eye is in the eye socket which isn't a super large space, is hard and not padded like the cheek, jaw, and mouth, so when that full punch lands?

Bones can bruise just like muscle and tissue.

Bones can also fracture and break.

A fractured eye socket is... Its agony in the moment and blinding for a while after. Then it aches and throbs and stings periodically while it heals.

You know how your brain can sort of... White out for a moment when you elbow something? Because, you know, that's your "funny bone" and the nerves get all jangled for a moment? It's because your brain doesn't know how to process the pain for a moment. Then it hits.

If it's a little bang or bump, it stings like a shock and then fades to a throb like a distant rumbling of thunder barely audible to you.

If it's a bigger bang or bump, a jab, or even a fall with all your weight on the elbow joint, it's still a shocking sting but it turns into electricity in your nerves, up your arm both directions, aches and throbs and feels like the impact point is being pinched and twisted over and over until it eventually fades.

Getting punched in the eye is sort of like that.

Your nerves get overwhelmed because they're close to those bones and intertwined with muscle and sinew and ligaments and tendons and so on. That crackling electricity whites out everything for a moment, a split-second perhaps, before it comes back as your brain processes and translates and turns that input into pain pain pain.

I have been punched and kicked and slapped in the face many times before. I've blocked strikes that would have easily knocked me on my arse and caught one's that did. Of them all, getting hit in the eye is honestly the worst.

Because you don't just have the pain to deal with. If you're unlucky, you also have the panic and terror that can follow when you think you're blind in the eye. Because your brain stalls for a moment. It literally stalls from that pain input it has to process and translate and then send back out.

I have had the displeasure of being punched in the eye and felt for a long moment after, easily a few seconds (which can truly make a difference in a fight) that I was completely blind in the eye that got the hit. Because again, as mentioned, the pressure and force sort of... Makes a suction issue. It's like a mini implosion as the socket is covered and your eye pressed back and also pushed forward simultaneously.

I don't know the fancy science for it but I found that it seemed to have... Almost caused my eye to Error 404 for a hot minute after the punch for whatever reason. I literally couldn't perceive anything with that eye for about ten seconds (probably less actually but to me it felt like a lifetime for a split-second of disorientation turned confusion turned fear) before it subsided and I could see again.

My vision was blurry and took a good couple blinks to return to "normal" and even with the pain becoming less every second that passed, I genuinely would prefer to be punched anywhere else on the face than my eyes.

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This isn't universal to everyone and their experiences, obviously, and I'm coming at this from the side of how the punches can affect the pain and injuries but