Drawing question about proportions

[Puck]

Do you eyeball everything? Or did you pick certain proportions for your characters like 6 head proportions.
How do you make sure that your characters have the same height through the comic?
Also the height difference between the characters. This is the toughest thing for me when I create
comics because it took me a very long time to get the proportions of the human body right

[CytricAcid]

I wing it, honestly. Muscle memory is king for me, because I find fretting too much over proportions and structure tends to make my art look stiff. I just practice and practice and practice until it becomes natural for me. It took a long time for me as well, and I still have a very exaggerated style, but the nice part is that it's a nice "base" that you can just adjust proportions from to fit your needs. shrinking head, facial features, etc.
I also tend to draw on the cartoon side, so exaggerated proportions are easier to visualize. Edwin's literally just on stilts, so the fact he's taller than everyone else is easy to do, I just make him 50% leg.

[Puck]

Thanks for the answer and that´s a very nice art style.
Yeah I have the same problem, too much measuring makes the figure stiff and nobody wants
to see stiff figures in correct proportions when they can also see dynamic figures.
I trust muscle memory too that´s why I filled sketchbooks with thousands of proportional
drawings, 8 head proportions until I could draw it in my sleep and I´m doing daily
gesture drawings and excercises like that. I drew without caring about those things
most of my life, I guess that made it hard for me to relearn

[feuersichel]

My process is pretty much the same as @CytricAcid's. I know some people use reverences for every pose or even mirrow the face. But this is very annoying for me and I rather have some good training lessions and do the comic by memory later. And yes, I also struggle alot with proportions... right know I'm in the "I draw every nose too big"-phase :,D But I think it's okay. After all, mastering art is a lifelong process and some mistakes I worried about, didn't even get noticed in the end.

What helps me alot, is to flip the canvas horizontal. That way I see the wrongs in my art pretty fast.

[Kelheor]

I wing it, after some time drawing something with certain proportions becomes a habit.
Like you know that elbow belongs in the area of the waist, and the hand should end up in the crotch area, and 2 leg parts are the same length, and guys on average have longer torsos, and so you do everything from those simple measurements.

As for height, I just take a pick that this character is like half a head lower than another one, no one will measure it with a ruler I know my weakness is that I usually make bigger heads and I try to overcome this one now (I guess it evolved from drawing kids with weird proportions a lot), but I guess my characters look shorter because of it

[Puck]

Nobody will measure it but people with still see it even when they are not aware of it and that
makes the comic look worse in my opinion.
I read a lot of european comics where they show the full body of the figures in almost every panel
and even when they have different proportions 3-6 heads their height difference is perfect from
start to finish.

[Kelheor]

Well if the height looks drastically different - yeah, of course people will notice that your character is suddenly half a meter shorter. But if you know one character's height is below the shoulder of another, you won't suddenly draw them differently, only if your visual estimation is really off or you draw them from some unfamiliar angle that's hard to capture.
All and all it comes down to the fact you, or to be exact, your hand just remembers their proportions over time =)
But people also make and use reference sheets, they usually come in handy too

[Puck]

I´m a strong believer of reference sheets too

[darthmongoose]

I draw an action comic, so getting the proportions good enough that the poses read well is important, but I prioritise getting across the movement and impact of the pose over 100% perfect accuracy. I tend to just eyeball things with loose guidelines, so like I know the hand should be big enough to cover half the face, the foot is the same length as the forearm, the elbow lines up with the natural waist and the wrist with the bottom of the torso when arms are straight down, the shoulders should be roughly 1.5 times the width of the head... stuff like that. I don't use a lot of reference photos on full bodies because I personally think it tends to lead to stiff poses, but I might use them for specific details.
Overall, I believe that sometimes it's good to take artistic license with poses if it looks cooler, kinda like squash and stretch in animation. I'm all about how the pose FEELS over how it'd exactly look if somebody did that in real life.

[Puck]

that´s a very satisfying comment, thanks for the answer

[Stargazer31]

I eyeball it. I keep their body shape in mind, and I try to make it match.

[frgmnt]

So I guess I'm in the minority that actually has to measure proportions in full body poses to make sure I get them right...?
If I don't consciously keep track of them, I usually end up getting it notably wrong. I cannot trust my eyes. I also had to calculate (like, with a calculator) how many heads my commonly-drawn characters should be to keep style consistency (eg. one who's 5' is 5.5 heads, another one who's 6' is 6.5 etc.)
And I'm not even a beginner, I've been drawing for several years. I still get it wrong even when trying to keep track of it - for example, in this recent height chart attempt, I'm pretty sure Lilith's (right-most) head is too small, even though I could swear I checked it...

(and don't get me started on making sure feet/hands/etc are the right size, I pretty much just accepted I'm physically unable to do that)

[Puck]

You don´t have to worry about that, I know several pro comic artists who do it exactly the way you are doing it.
They have measured heights and character sheets

[Lady_T_Musings]

I usually eyeball, but when the eye just ain't doing it, I like to use this old gal

[Lady_T_Musings]

Your characters look good!
I know I need to go ahead and make one of these Hight chart sheets for my comic too. I eyeball everyone's height, but it would be nice to have official heights for everyone haha.

[skippyjoeskilling]

I keep track of proportion in terms of environment. As in, if my character is next to his car, I know the mirror is just above his elbow, and he has an inch of headroom in his bedroom doorway, but has to duck to get into the basement (those are both key locations in the story). So even though his proportions in terms of heads tall varies, it's not too noticeable since he always takes up the same amount of space in the room.

One thing I do struggle with is hand size. Mostly because I use my own hands as reference most of the time, but mine are very small and his are very large. So sometimes there are size inconsistencies when he's holding objects. I don't think it's too noticeable though.

[migxmeg]

I eyeball it (and you can tell...) but I think I'm slowly getting better at eyeballing it correctly haha. When dealing with relative heights of characters I just find the last page where they were in the same panel and go from there. Then again, I make a pretty big effort not to be consistent since I'm working on the first/learning comic.

In the next one, a relative height reference sheet will probably exist, but I doubt I would be very careful beyond that - I don't think the readers typically look for those details so as long as the differences aren't outrageous I wouldn't slow down over it.

[skicoak]

I use a smaller plate so all the proportions look bigger.

Fool the eye, fool the stomach.

[rajillustration]

I just use the head to measure it, and depending on the age of the character the proportions may be different. But for height I used to care more, but when they're next to eachother it's always at an angle or they're moving around all exagerated so...it didn't really matter too much to be too precise with height for my style.

[ReneVergence]

Honestly the best advice I could give and what I use a lot is look at yourself. You always have you, so use yourself as a tool for you art. If you can't get a good angle or you can't quite strike that pose, take a picture (or have someone else take a picture) or look at references. References are your best friend. Let me say that again. References are your best friend. Use them whenever you feel it's necessary. Aside from that, study anatomy. It could seem a bit boring if you're not interested but it's very useful, especially for more realistic styles. Look at how other artists manipulate proportions as well.