How can I try to aim for more fluid poses?

[aqua03]

So recently I was chatting with my friend @Kiweevil a while back about my art and she said that I should try my hand at more dynamic and fluid poses akin to that produced by Vivziepop (or in my case in regards to art inspirations, I want to aim for something like you'd see in a Studio Trigger production like Kill La Kill, Gridman, or Promare.)

Currently, here is some of my currently most "Dynamic" art I have at the moment. (Pardon if some of them are rough sketches.)

(These two characters kinda-sorta belong to @nathanKmcwilliams, FYI )

(I have more examples if you want/need them.)

So I've been wondering how I can get a more fluid style asking to artists like Vivziepop and Studio Trigger among others to push myself and grow as an artist and really push my art in that really fluid style? What even does it mean to have a fluid and dynamic art style anyways?

Thanks for the help.

[LCT_m_a_d]

I wouldn't call my poses the most dynamic, but what helped me with exit_success and my digital illustrations was that I knew there were so many poses that I weren't skilled enough to pull off.
So I decided those were the ones I had to do.

Basically the poses that I could draw were boring. The right poses were the ones I didn't know how to.

[iraphelvindergag]

I am in no way experienced enough to give an objective opinion, however, I too am going for a "fluid" and dynamic artstyle, though I am aiming for something akin to Jojo's Bizarre Adventure or Murata's One Punch Man Manga.

What I've been doing to improve my artsyle is research, a lot o research, analysing the mangas I like, the panels and effects, the movements in high action, everything. For you, you could try analysing Vivzies and Studio Trigger's style frame by frame and the different ways of drawing the characters in that style,

Moreover, for me, writing a story goes hand in hand with my desire to draw a fluid pose, whatever it may mean. Maybe this will help you. Finally, I suggest getting some books on anatomy for artists or googling a lot of reference work. I will take time, so don't give up.

[Kaydreamer]

I know this is almost always the first piece of advice dropped for almost any 'how do I art' question, but it's absolutely vital for dynamic poses;

Figure studies!

These guys below have the best dynamic pose packs I've seen, and they have several. (In amongst hundreds of other figure packs.) Buy a few, and practice drawing the figures. I really like the Epic Flying Pose pack.

WARNING: Nude people.

Grafit Studio

As far as how to practice, I recommend three things:

1. One-minute gesture drawings. Just quickly getting down a few strokes fer figure which indicate the position and shape of torso, head and limbs.
2. Ten-or-more-minute life drawing. Draw the figure as accurately as you can.
3. Stylisation. Once you've completed a few figures, choose one and re-draw/stylise that pose into one of your characters.

It doesn't matter how toony or simplistic your style is, or that you don't draw humans; this is the way to improve the anatomy in your art, and draw dynamic figures.

[migxmeg]

What does it mean... beats me . Thinking about this a lot lately too - here's what I got so far:

Took a quick peek at Vivziepop and the first thing I noticed is that there is a lot of stretch and squish, which pushes that "fluid" feeling. I got/am getting a lot out of the "Drawn to Life" book but just in general checking out resources for animators could be useful?

Exaggerated perspective/wacky camera angle. It's everywhere in anime/manga because it looks cool as hell and feels dynamic.

Last one I can think of is cutting the composition so that you have elements extending past the edge of the canvas (like cape or whatever you need to crop to make it look cool). It helps give an impression of movement through the picture.

[VibrantFox]

One of the biggest lessons i've learned (and still try to practice myself) if that for fluid/dynamic poses your biggest thing is going to be the line of action, exaggeration and perspective. There's also using references like kay mentioned

the big thing with line of action and exaggeration specifically is "animating" you poses

for example line of action is about movement, for example these are some notes on line of action and a couple other references pulled from google

then exaggeration which focuses on pushing movement and expressions just a bit more, that i know of it's usually applied more to animation but it's good for drawing as well

then perspective which is something i think is less about actual angles and stuff (tho having a rough idea helps) but the focus in this case is more showing what angle your viewing the character from (are they above or below etc)

studio trigger which you mentioned shows it really well in it's shows adding to how big their characters look and feel on screen and thus emphasizing their personality or presence. plus it doesn't always have to be pushed to an extreme just subtle exaggerations can work well it simply a matter of experimenting

one thing that can help outside of static refs is looking at people in motion and seeing how they move and freezing those frames to get a good look at those things i mentioned about line of action and exaggeration. ask questions like: where are the feet placed, how are they moving, how does the pose follow through action to action. it seems complicated at first but the more you observe the more you notice and thus the easier it becomes

like for a bit of practice this guy, kevin parry, does videos of like 50 ways to enter a room or walk ad whatnot and the way he "animates" himself in his action can show great reference on how to "animate" or liven up your characters in their posing

i'll have to apologize if this is a long winded explanations but it's something i'm actually super into and passionate about when it comes to art and drawing because those little details can really help push a work to give it a bit more visual appeal. if anything i think you've got a rough idea of what your trying to do in your work already so little practices here and there can definitely help. you got this!

[Mallory]

On top of figure studies, you have to kinda start thinking of your action lines that define the entire figure, from head to toe. In some of your images you can see that there's is an action line for one limb, or one torso, or one cape, but they do not compliment each other or flow together.

Super crummy sketch because I have no idea how to put it in words, but basically, my process is - draw the rough pose, then check what the action lines are, and align the sketch more with the flow of the action line. So like, the light blue was the OG lines; the darker blue is what I adjusted to fit the two red lines. Most of this character, including the cape, follows those lines (I would probably adjust the head and hair more when I draw them). Typically you will have one dominant action line (usually this one aligns with the spine) and sometimes a secondary action line, if your character's limbs are flying everywhere.

Looks like I got ninja'd by VibrantFox, so, yeah basically all that.

[VibrantFox]

sorry for double posting but another thing i notice that could help is also changing the way props are interacting with your characters, namely capes in the case of your examples

on thing some of these fall victim too is having the cape obscure the pose with how they're flapping around when you want them to accentuate or emphasize the pose. the are mega rough but here an example of the same pose with the capes laid in two different ways (you can also kinda spot a rough line of action)

in some cases it's useful to have the cape blocking a pose (say if you're trying to hide some unecessary detail or a messy pose in a comic panel or something) but in other cases using the cape to frame the character or add motion to the pose can help a lot so playing around to see what works is good. even doing two or three sketches of the same pose or similar poses works so long as you get a better idea of what you want

and as i'd said before you do seem to have an idea of where you wanna go so keep at it and i'm sure you'll nail it

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I want to aim for something like you'd see in a Studio Trigger production like Kill La Kill, Gridman, or Promare.)

Hmm...exquisite taste~ ^^

I think the element that makes Trigger stand out the most is probably the aggressive use of perspective on the characters. When a limb is distant, it's exaggerated to look super tiny, and when a limb is pointed at the viewer, it's exaggerated to look super big.
This is already an effective technique for a still illustration, but in animation it gives the viewer the impression that every movement is very powerful, with the way the body parts swing between extreme sizing, and it also makes it feel as if space itself is warping around the character as they move because of how unrealistic it is. The end result? Super dynamic~

Of course, all the technique in the world won't help you if you don't know how to pose characters in dynamic ways. For me, this boils down to three factors: spacing, direction, and airflow.

Spacing is how the limbs are arranged. Dynamism is about emphasizing movement, so you want to place the characters limbs to give the impression that they are about to move, in motion, or have just finished moving.
You can get better at this by paying attention to how humans move; where they place their arms and legs when they are about to fall, or hit someone, or swing something. Sports photos are great references for learning the 'language' of movement, which takes a lot of time and study. But here are some general rules:

• Pull the characters limbs away from the torso, especially when the character is in 'active' motion: walking, or running, or flying, etc. When people are trying to get from one place to another, they tend to have very 'open' body language; the limbs spread out to ensure that the body stays balanced as it moves.
• Twist the torso whenever appropriate. A good torso twist will lend extra dynamism to many poses, because it gives the impression that the movement of the lower and upper body are offset by some amount of time, and that one section fluidly 'follows' the other.
• Speaking of offsets, make sure to offset the position of arms and legs whenever possible. To give an easy visual example:
  
  The right stickfig has a much more dynamic pose than the left one, due in part to the offset limbs. Instead of both sides of the body looking like mirror images, we have the arms bent at different angles, the legs bent at different angles, and even the feet placed at different distances from the viewer in space. Not only does this look more natural, it gives the impression that the body is poised to move in a certain direction.

Direction is just that: determining the general direction of movement, so you know where and how to emphasize the shapes of the character.
You can have linear direction along one vector...

Or you can have 'turbulent' direction, along several vectors at different angles (but usually in a coherent pattern, like this circular motion):

Direction is actually much harder to explain (and to master) than it sounds...it's kind of like when you learn to use gravity's 'down force' to make clothes and hair look 'weighted'...only in this case, you have to choose the direction of force yourself, and apply it to the action lines and proportions of the body.
Understanding the language of movement is also involved in this, because you need to know where people put their limbs in preparation to have them go in the direction you chose...there's a lot.

Last but not least, Airflow is exhibiting the flow of air around your character due to their movements...even movements that don't normally cause much airflow. ^^ This is used a LOT in anime; it's one of those stylistic elements that kind of belongs to it as an artform.

Airflow in still illustrations is a little different from the way it's used in animation, though...when you draw it, you usually use it to give your figures a light, slow-motion quality. You want to lift their clothes up, lift their hair up; take any easily movable element you can get and apply the opposite of your Direction vectors, or at least jostle them around a bit.

The third pic is an interesting case: the Direction of the drawing is up, and the Airflow of the drawing is also up...which combines to give the impression that the character has risen in the air and then stopped, as if they're mid-jump. Sometimes the Direction tells the past, and the Airflow tells the present. ^^

Man, I wrote a lot; this was like one of my tutorial threads. But before I go, I want to try to apply some of this theory to a couple of your drawings, just to show how you could improve 'em:

[rajillustration]

I think it's really great that you're pushing your characters more--it's a lot of thinking about them rotating in a 3d space, and I can see that you're thinking in diagonals and thinking about the line of action, too, which is good, and that's a good place to keep working at it.

For other things to think about to add on to the other great things people brought up: there's a lot of ways to approach dynamics, and it depends on the artist and how you can think. It can sometimes be really overwhelming to think of every part of the human body (or humanoid in some of your cases) and so what I like to do is think of the entire composition first. Zoom out, and make really big abstract dynamic shapes, and then place the people in them.

Like one of my favorite artists right now is Toni Infante, and their work, if you squint, is thinking in shapes and dynamic energy first, really composition heavy. Like this is an example of what they do,

They've talked about their process quite a bit on twitter, so it's worth checking out. But, they carve their characters out of the scene, they don't really think in building detailed stick figures and muscles and all that without thinking about the composition first, and honestly--I'm kind of the same way. Probably just a painterly mentality vs a line art mentality, but whenever I do stick figure first it always feels stiff.

Like even when I do gesture drawing at a figure drawing session, my first strokes are tiny ticks to place the start and end of my composition and the direction of the movement and general outside shape before carving in the insides. I'm an outside in type of artist. Others draw inside out. We all think different.

The other advantage to trying out this method, is that thinking in light vs dark areas is one of your most valuable ways to draw the eye and set a focal point, and that's where we see action. If your characters are light on a light background--they're not going to focus on the silhouette that you've created no matter how nicely it was drawn. Toni tends to think in 3 gray shades before they start working color and solidify poses (and this is true for a lot of people) they think in dark, midtones, and light--and they won't move forward until that feels good.

So when we look at Trigger stuff (which is great) you see evidence of the same painterly method, but at the end, after they've added lineart, and sometimes we assume they all started with lines and building muscles on those lines, but they started as storyboards and rough color and grayscale passes before they became polished animations:

So part of what also makes this dynamic is the play with the contrast of light and dark against a night sky, the colors, the whole vibe and setting for scale. So, to make fluid characters, you don't necessarily have twist everything around to make the pose interesting, but the camera angle and the setting can really amplify a fun pose more.

[Legendofgenii]

This thread is brilliant! taking notes

[aqua03]

As far as how to practice, I recommend three things:

One-minute gesture drawings. Just quickly getting down a few strokes fer figure which indicate the position and shape of torso, head and limbs.
Ten-or-more-minute life drawing. Draw the figure as accurately as you can.
Stylisation. Once you've completed a few figures, choose one and re-draw/stylise that pose into one of your characters.

It doesn't matter how toony or simplistic your style is, or that you don't draw humans; this is the way to improve the anatomy in your art, and draw dynamic figures.

That actually sounds like a really good art exercise regiment. I'll definitely have to give that a try soon and see how it helps.

@VibrantFox

No, no, it's fine! I actually really like having such well thought advice like this to reference and learn from. I've recently been tracing some of Loomis' drawings to get better at anatomy and i was thinking of maybe tracing some of Trigger's work (and others) to get a better grasp on their style and how to better emulate their energy myself in my own works. Wonder if that could work well as an exercise.

@DokiDokiTsuna

Thanks for the detailed mechanical breakdown of each element that works together to combine them together into a good and dynamic peace. Those are definitely things I'll be thinking about more as I work on my art more in trying to push it. (Never even really considered "airflow" in regards to motion until now.) Also, thanks for the feedback and applications on how I can apply it to my own works as well. It's really giving me some good ideas on where to go from here in my pursuit of better art.

@rajillustration

Those are also really great as well! I'll definitely need to be on the lookout for that type of compositional logic regarding my stuff as well. Also, I'll definitely have to look more into that artist and their stuff as well. It's always super cool to see the behind the scenes process of artists and media like that. Always been fascinated that sort of production side of things.

---

I guess in general I need to accept that I'm learning and good stuff takes time and I should drop the desire and need to have to produce a flawless masterpiece every time in order to put up the image of being a prolific and "invincible" artist like it feels I have to be at times (at least the pressure I put on myself, anyways) out of a fear that showing any sign of flaw in my artwork would make me look "Silly" and give ammunition to people to mock me for it, or at least that's how it feels sometimes. Everyone's learning and I'm glad to be part of such a kind and supportive community of artists here at tapastic. I really am.

[VibrantFox]

No, no, it's fine! I actually really like having such well thought advice like this to reference and learn from. I've recently been tracing some of Loomis' drawings to get better at anatomy and i was thinking of maybe tracing some of Trigger's work (and others) to get a better grasp on their style and how to better emulate their energy myself in my own works. Wonder if that could work well as an exercise.

glad to know! and tracing/referencing can definitely help in understanding how they're putting these principals to use! i feel bad that i can't remember where i'd seen it but i remember it being suggested for studies to take certain frames/panels and break them down into what your wanting to improve on so in your case locating the line of action getting an idea of the shapes and forms in a characters pose and seeing what and how certain things are exaggerated (be it with perspective, placement in the bg/environment) and then in rough sketches trying to not so much replicate but like draw in your own version so you get more accustomed to applying it to your own art.

I guess in general I need to accept that I'm learning and good stuff takes time and I should drop the desire and need to have to produce a flawless masterpiece every time in order to put up the image of being a prolific and "invincible" artist like it feels I have to be at times (at least the pressure I put on myself, anyways) out of a fear that showing any sign of flaw in my artwork would make me look "Silly" and give ammunition to people to mock me for it, or at least that's how it feels sometimes. Everyone's learning and I'm glad to be part of such a kind and supportive community of artists here at tapastic. I really am.

if there's one things that's helping me as i'm still struggling with this myself is knowing that there's perfection in imperfection and mistakes are okay and normal to make. plus if ever you find yourself fearing criticism or only focusing on "bad" parts of your work stop and point out what you think looks good whether it's line work, colors, shading, the sketch, literally anything you thing looks good. highlighting the positives keeps you in a better headspace about your work plus builds confidence (can't grow if you don't know your strengths) looking forward to seeing you grow

[aqua03]

glad to know! and tracing/referencing can definitely help in understanding how they're putting these principals to use! i feel bad that i can't remember where i'd seen it but i remember it being suggested for studies to take certain frames/panels and break them down into what your wanting to improve on so in your case locating the line of action getting an idea of the shapes and forms in a characters pose and seeing what and how certain things are exaggerated (be it with perspective, placement in the bg/environment) and then in rough sketches trying to not so much replicate but like draw in your own version so you get more accustomed to applying it to your own art.

Yeah, that's a pretty good exercise. Kinda reminds me a bit of what an artist on youtube I like said a while back in regards to teaching yourself by tracing and copying other artists purely for practice to help learn and reverse engineer how they do things and apply it to your original art going forward to improve.

if there's one things that's helping me as i'm still struggling with this myself is knowing that there's perfection in imperfection and mistakes are okay and normal to make. plus if ever you find yourself fearing criticism or only focusing on "bad" parts of your work stop and point out what you think looks good whether it's line work, colors, shading, the sketch, literally anything you thing looks good. highlighting the positives keeps you in a better headspace about your work plus builds confidence (can't grow if you don't know your strengths) looking forward to seeing you grow

That's a good way of viewing things. Thanks for the encouragement. I definitely need to start shifting my mindset more towards that as well and see how I grow as a person and artist there as well.