#figuary23

Figuary - last day

top-bottom, left-right: beginning of Feb 2022, end of Feb 2022, beginning of Feb 2023, end of Feb 2023

Fell off super hard and ran out of energy so I actually only did 27 days, but I'm just DONE with this lol. Also didn't sleep last night so that doesn't help... it's making doing a writeup of the month pretty hard...

I still really don't like how I simplify legs with that weird back-of-calf curve. It looks like too many bits. Need to check how Hampton does it. I also have noticeable problems drawing curves for the shoulders and also not placing the shoulders on a horizontal line instead of at an angle, which flattens the pose out.

My poses are still very stiff, which I'm guessing means that I am not getting accurate angles for stuff like hip tilt yet - I am slowly getting a feel for this though. Maybe it's time for me to start trying to exaggerate angles as well. I understand how the torso curves work sometimes intuitively but I would say this happens about 30% of the time - I definitely need to trace over photos like I said I would before being exhausted. Maybe two photos a day for the next month? It would be five minutes tops - I could set up a Krita document with a bunch of premade photo layers to make it as easy as possible too.

Figuary day 26 + weekly

Figuary day 25

Tried taking more breaks to see if it helps my learning. I guess we'll see in the next couple of days. About 10 minutes in I had to refer back to the same video to see how he handles shoulders - I think I saw some improvement after that.

Now having trouble connecting the ribcage and pelvis together with Flesh. Also still trying to keep my diagonals directional - I've found that I tend to draw very symmetrical curves (as in the midpoint is equidistant from both ends) and that I reeeeally want to hook the curve that represents the active/compressed side at the top. This does not show any kind of energy or form and I need to stop doing it

Figuary day 24

Figuary day 23

Accidentally played video games until 3AM yesterday so didn't do a video - will try to learn some more anatomy today to make up for it or something.

Figuary day 21

Figuary day 20

Still learning painful lessons lol

Figuary week 3 compilation

This week, I tried to construct with boxes over the gesture and also to push my diagonals more. Doing the construction feels like a big step backwards details- and speed-wise but it is definitely something I need to work on! I also set out some expectations for 1-, 2- and 5-minute poses in the last two days which helped me not rush as much.

I keep coming up against the problem of not knowing anatomy because it *still* has an influence on how you mannequinise stuff... but there are just soooo many muscles and bones I don't know and it feels like an insurmountable task. I have a bunch of random 'this should go this way' thoughts from just drawing mileage but they don't always connect into 'this is actually a muscle group which performs this task'. Is there some kind of simplified anatomy cheatsheet that also gives functions or do I have to work it out myself? (I know the answer to this lol)