What body types do you have the easiest time drawing? Hardest?

[beebutterbee]

Lol yeah I guess kid characters are fun to draw, they're very derpy and cute and they can make such silly characters they are easier to draw because they are just kinda simple shapes. I feel like I can draw guys bodies okay now its actually just the face, and I sort of love drawing the juxtaposition of a kind of built guy with a really pretty face

I think the way you draw your girl characters is cool though, you don't have to draw them conventionally "sexy" but also that phrase also gives of the same energy of when in animation they give the anthropomorphic lady animal character curves D:<??? like why does that happen, do you know what I'm taking about?? its so weird looking ... Anyways, I do draw alot of characters with curves but I'm not trying to make them super sexy either lol.

[KevinReijnders]

Ugh I feel that, for the longest time (and even very recently) people would think a character like Kyara is a boy

Like, I've legit heard that from people all the way back to 2015, telling me I should give her a big chest and extremely wide hips etc.

[beebutterbee]

What? People can be so weird like not all girls have big chests and hips My brother draws men better than me, and his girl characters get mistaken for guys too. But really I feel like people need to use context clues better if they’re that bad at telling a characters gender lowkey.

[Lensing]

What´s the problem with girl characters being mistaken for guys or the other way around?
It´s a drawing in the end and everything is free for interpretation from the creator´s and the
reader´s pov. For you as a creator it can be whatever and the same for the reader.

Here is an example from Morris, both characters could be anything, it doesn´t really
matter imo

[Lensing]

Easiest for me is curvy female characters and muscular male characters because I like
to draw in an exaggerated style.

Drawing obese characters is probably harder when you 1) haven´t done it often 2) try
to draw them realistically. But that´s just a matter of practice and knowing where the
body fat has to be but that´s the same with muscular bodies, you first have to know
about the muscles, observe, have reference etc.

Hardest to draw for me are kids because I never draw kids. Pretty much like @simplykit wrote.

I don´t find hands hard to draw at all after I have been practicing it for a while, there are only
a few hand poses which are hard to draw for me (fists mostlly)

[beebutterbee]

Children books authors are thing, there’s nothing wrong with drawing kids my mom is a children’s book author

[beebutterbee]

Also I just thinks it’s funny when people mistake my characters now, I think you misunderstood, I said I thought it was weird people thought a girl character should look a certain way I just like characters that don’t fit the norm.

[Lensing]

I don´t think I misunderstood you, I was just asking a question out of interest
And I also don´t think there is anything wrong with drawing kids when you are
a children´s book author or when you have a story where kids are the characters
It´s just not for me personally

[beebutterbee]

Ah gotchya, sorry it’s late at night for me and brain feels like it’s on low battery mode so I’m probably the one misunderstanding lol. And I see. I’m influenced by a lot of children’s books because it’s what I grew up with since she also helped edit a lot too, but I forget not everyone’s as vanilla as me. Maybe @Leyelle ‘s wholesome meter was accurate

But yeah I guess no one can control others people interpretations of their works. It just frustrated me as a kid that I couldn’t draw what I wanted to, but now I’ve completely embraced the androgyny of my guy characters and quite content with whatever the outcome of the viewer is, not because I’ll agree one way or the other, but because I don’t care as much anymore. I think it’s cool to see more characters that don’t fit the conventions.

[KevinReijnders]

Why does it matter? Because it's incredibly fucking annoying haha. And the ones who mistake them for the wrong gender will never just take your word for it and have to argue ad infinitum.

My characters' genders are also not designed to be open for interpretation. I made Kyara a girl and that's what she is.

[Lensing]

I don´t remember that I ever thought about something like that as a reader
or creator, but this is interesting to hear

[KevinReijnders]

Well that's interesting. How do you then determine a character's gender when designing them?

Because for me, that's one of those important pieces of what makes someone who they are.

If I take Kyara as an example again. She's a protagonist in an action-adventure story. Those roles are predominantly assigned to male characters. When I developed her and her world, I explicitly wanted her to be a girl. Even her dynamic with Zack, the boy in the story, is in many ways an explicit role reversal.

[Lensing]

I choose if they are female or male when I create them but that´s it for the thought
process.

It´s maybe because I draw exaggerated character who always have a cartoon
element that I never have to think about it / or readers never have to think about it.
I have one character who is a boyish looking guy but he still wouldn´t be mistaken
for a female character

[KevinReijnders]

So for you it's all just an instinctual process? You don't ever think about why certain characters are one gender or the other in your work?

[Lensing]

Yeah you could call it instinctual. They come from my subconcious. I don´t sit down and
create them. It´s like that when I´m drawing faces too. I start drawing and my brain is off
and the character appears. My only thought process is in the story writing but that it also
a lot like daydreaming

[Leyelle]

Lol, I love making everything pretty too, and I have the same struggle with my male ocs appearing female, tho I'm trying to work on it because I want to be able to express a wide range of features, handsome guys, pretty guys, cute guys, and the same with girls honestly. I'm still struggling to draw my girls who are suppose to appear more 'handsome' but still make them clearly female. It's a process ig

[Leyelle]

I don't think you have to worry about trying to make your ocs conventionally sexy if it's not your thing. Personally I think it often goes over the top when people are trying to make a character read as sexy specifically anyway (like that being a primary part if their character design.) Not that there's anything wrong with the conventionally 'sexy' hourglass body type. It's just another body type (my FL from 'Damsel in the Red Dress's body type.)

But everyone has a different opinion of sexy anyway, so unless your goal was to write a character who clearly reads as like...a femme fatale for plot purposes, it's no biggie. Body diversity is always nice to have anyway, so it's okay if none of your female characters look like Jessica Rabbit xd. I think your female character designs look distinctive.

[Leyelle]

This. Like, thank you. Not every girl has to be super curvy. Can people not tell female children's genders just cuz they don't have curves?

(Don't answer that, the answer is probably yes for some people who are just unobservant i guess)

I've seen people talk about wanting to 'bring back pretty female characters' but they mean doing it by perpetuating the stereotypes as if a woman who falls outside the beauty standard can't still be just as beautiful.

Honestly, I try to include a wide range of body diversity in my stories to represent ALL kinds if women as beautiful, so some of my women don't have many curves like Essence and Texas, but they're still obviously female. Everyone has different body types, and you don't have to caricatureize a gender for the sake of clarity, imao.

That being said, some people will be confused no matter what. I've been confused for a boy for quite a long time and my own mom says I'm built like a Pixar mom lol.

In response to your other statement (quote isn't working for me rn) I also agree. There's nothing wrong with drawing kids. I like it. They're adorable, and babies and small children make their way into a lot of my fiction

[ArtGremlin]

Yeah I don’t really care about being able to draw conventionally good-looking people. I just think it’s funny that I can’t

[Leyelle]

Aye lol, it can be unusual the really specific things we find we struggle at. Like I can't draw tall people. They always look like they're leaning. And I can draw sea creatures and birds but not mammals very well (even people tbh lol)