Art Book

You don't climb trees?

the FIRST figure skating backflip was performed by this guy Terry Kubicka

now Terry landed his flip at the Olympics in ‘76 and in ‘77 the backflip was quickly deemed illegal in this level of figure skating as it was considered dangerous and, some argue more crucially, couldn’t be landed on one foot, as is the required landing for all other figure skating jumps

Fast forward to 1998 at the Olympics once more and French skater Surya Bonaly.

It is widely discussed and disputed as to whether Surya was historically underscored by American judges. She won five straight gold medals in the European championships from ‘90 to ‘95 but couldn’t break past 4th place at two Olympics during this period of time. It was at her 3rd Olympic Games she pulled out her backflip and crucially landed it on one foot.

The one foot landing was seen as the big obstacle in the way of the backflip being legalised. That and its danger level. In the time between Kubicka and Bonaly however many skater had already added two foot landed flips to their performance routines (ie not scored competitions)

Some people see this as the moment the backflip should had been legalised in competitive figure skating. Many skaters had executed it safely and Bonaly proved she could accomplish the one foot landing. Bonaly placed 10th at this Olympics, incurring harsh deductions for the illegal backflip. The backflip was at no point considered in contention for legality despite Bonaly’s accomplishments, (one of which being the first female skater to land a quad jump at the Olympics). Her Olympic backflip was seen as a middle finger to Olympic judges and the stringently unprogressive nature of the sport. There were more moments than this throughout her career such as her initial refusal to mount the second place podium at the ‘94 worlds for reasons unclear. There are rumours of her ‘throwing tantrums’ or being ungrateful, and while this may be true, it’s not an uncommon sight in the world of figure skating, and given how black women are still treated in sports today, especially those that take physical appearance and body lines into account, it is undoubted that Bonaly faced racial bias during her professional career.

Surya Bonaly continued to preform her now signature one footed backflip in performances. And the backflip remained illegal in competition.

Within the conversation about Olympic figure skating backflips, there is one skater who may well be the most overlooked. The one who got the committees to legalise it! And that would be this guy, Adam Siao Him Fa

At the 2024 worlds he told himself if he skated his routine clean he would finish with a backflip, a move he had been practicing with his coaches despite it still being an illegal move. Fa did skate clean, and did preform his backflip, and so incurred the mandatory penalty of a 2 point deduction for the use of an illegal manoeuvre.

In a figure skating full circle moment, one of the judges on the panel for that competition, was Terry Kubicka himself. Almost 50 years on from his backflip he has since commentated on the irony of seeing the move he began in the 70’s and being required to deduct points for it. This two point deduction wouldn’t stop Fa from still claiming the gold medal that year. He preformed an illegal move at the end of a perfect routine and took the gold. Mere months after this at a scheduled review the backflip was removed from the group of illegal moves. It would not be granted any technical points like other jumps but would no longer incur a two point deduction.

Today at the Olympic Games in 2026, Ilia Malinin, thanks to these three (and many more performance skaters) before him has landed the first backflip at the Olympics since it’s legalisation.

So to wrap up.

First backflip (two foot) - Terry Kubicka - move made illegal

First backflip (one foot) - Surya Bonaly - move still illegal

Legalisation turning point - Adam Siao Him Fa - move made legal

First fully legal backflip - Ilia Malinin - flip still does not score points

In the future personally I hope to see the flip be utilised by more and more skaters, be given a score, and personal creativity to be more welcomed into the sport, because really we could have had 50 years of Olympic Backflips at this point.

Colin Bridgerton after kissing Penelope when she asked him to as a ‘meaningless favour’ then realising she’s been the girl who’s always cared for and loved him:

We live in a pretty great digital age and we have access to a ton of amazing tools that artists in past generations couldn’t even dream of, but a lot of people look at a cool trick and only learn half of the process of using it.

Here’s the missing part of this tutorial:

How do you populate your backgrounds?

Well, here’s the answer:

If the focus is the environment, you must show a person in relation to that environment.

The examples above are great because they show how to use the software itself, but each one just kind of “plops” the character in front of their finished product with no regard of the person’s relation to their environment.

How do you fix this?

Well, here’s the simplest solution:

This is a popular trick used by professional storyboard and comic artists alike when they’re quickly planning compositions. It’s simple and it requires you to do some planning before you sit down to crank out that polished, final version of your work, but it will be the difference between a background and an environment.

From Blacksad (artist: Juanjo Guarnido)

From Hellboy (Mike Mignola)

Even if your draftsmanship isn’t that great (like mine), people can be more immersed in the story you tell if you just make it feel like there is a world that exists completely separate from the one in which they currently reside – not just making a backdrop the characters stand in front of.

I’m a 3d artist and have been exploring the possibilities of using 3d as reference for 2d poses. I want to add a couple of tips and things!

Sketchup is very useful for environment references, and I assume it’s reasonably easy to learn. If you’re interested in going above and beyond, I highly recommend learning a proper 3d modeling program to help with art, especially because you can very easily populate a scene or location with characters!

Using 3ds Max I can pretty quickly construct an environment for reference. But going beyond that, I can also pose a pretty simple ‘CAT’ armature (known in 3d as a rig) straight into the scene, which can be totally customized, from various limbs, tails, wings, whatever, to proportions, and also can be modeled onto and expanded upon (for an example, you could 3d sculpt a head reference for your character and then attach it to the CAT rig, so you have a reference for complex face angles!)

The armature can also be posed incredibly easily. I know programs exist for stuff like this - Manga Studio, Design Doll - but posing characters in these programs is always an exercise in frustration and very fiddly imo. A simple 3d rig is impossibly easy to pose.

By creating an environment and dropping my character rig into it, I have an excellent point of reference when it comes to drawing the scene!

Not only that, but I can also view the scene from whatever angle I could ever want or need, including the character and their pose/position relative to the environment.

We can even quickly and easily expand this scene to include more characters!