>>7912148
Glen Vilppu, Proko, Hampton, and Steve Huston.

>>7912268
Aren't these guys mainly gesture-driven? Is it really important to start with gesture first?

don't tell him

File: 1634090720510.jpg (68.7 KB)

68.7 KB JPG

>>7912278
>don't tell him

>>7912315
Some of us are handsome looking.

>>7912148
Study the skeleton in various poses, clothed bodies, and human silhouettes + negative space. Gather references and break them down into simple shapes and forms.

Don't get hung up on the details of the body, just note where things line up and focus more on simplifying the body into simple forms.

>The wingspan = the height
>The crotch = half the height of the body
>The shoulders = two heads wide
>Head to crotch = four heads
>bottom part of the knees = midpoint between the crotch and heels

What works for me is studying photos of real people, then studying my favorite humanoid characters.

>>7912148
>>7913076
I highly suggest you pick up a copy of Cognitive Drawing: Learn the Male Figure.

>>7912269
Look at the /ic/ torrent, They go through both.
Personally I like Steve Huston because he's more lax than a proko. Hampton's anatomy course really sticks in your head because how simplistic it is. I can't stand Vilppu's voice (someone get him some water) and Proko I'll probably go through now because my torrent client decided to try to download the ENTIRE torrent recently.

>>7913080
>Cognitive Drawing: Learn the Male Figure
Not OP but thanks I need some structure and that might really help me.

>>7916171
You're welcome, anon. The Cognitive Drawing method is probably the best way of self-teaching yourself art.

>step one: get a reference and observe it
>step two: put the reference away, and draw from memory
>step three: take the reference out, and draw while looking at it
>step four: repeat steps two and three until you are satisfied.

The book also briefly mentions the tracing method (popularized online as the Shrimp Method) as a way of self-study.

>gather references from multiple angles and trace them, making sure to break them down into shapes and forms (from biggest to smallest)

You may also use Iterative Drawing (drawing from memory at least 20 times from various angles) before engaging in Cognitive Drawing. You may also include the Envelope Method (capturing the outermost shape) with the Tracing Method.

>>7912148
just keep taking courses and reading books gang

>>7912148
>I've always been overwhelmed by all the different muscles, bones, landmarks, and proportions, which have to be accounted for alongside gesture
This advice is from a cartooning/animation perspective.
-Focus more on what the muscles and bones do, rather than anatomical knowledge. If you need anatomical accuracy, then keep a reference folder of books and images and refer to them as needed. There is no shame in that. That's why they are called references.
-Gesture is largely just an abstraction of the skeleton in movement. Therefore, landmarks and gestures have a closer relationship than people realize.
-Develop your own proportion system, but make use of every part of the body, not just head measurement. When designing a character, use relationships that are in halves or thirds. That's easy to remember. Trying to remember how many palms tall your character is, is dumb.
-Pose books typically share the same flaw: holding poses is not the same as an action caught by a camera. Real actions engage specific muscle groups, while artificial poses engage opposing muscle groups (because the goal is staying motionless, not moving in a particular direction). That changes the body rhythm. So study film when possible. Study theory behind how muscles work. Study hyper-extension, which happens more often than you'd think.
>What's the simplest way to manage this?
Take things as they come. Learn things as you need. Practice should be regimented, but learning doesn't quite work that way. You can't force it, and it doesn't happen on a schedule. Giving the variety of topics, you can't even know how much time to spend on any of them. Let need guide you, rather than expectations.