Female characters

[Kaven]

Any tips on how to make your characters...more feminine? Mine always come out looking like cross-dressers.

[slowtiger]

A quality like "femininity" can be missing on so many levels, it's hard to answer this. It highly depends on your chosen drawing style, your drawing skills, and the story you want to tell.

Thee's so many indications of "female" in animation:
- something with two globes in front
- something with long hair
- something with a female voice
- something on high heels

but this is just superficial and doesn't get the essence. One reason for choosing basically 12-yrs-old body proportions in Anime is that any gender can be applied to such a body just with adding the right symbols.

You could get any book about basic drawing from your library and train your skills. If you manage to draw a character without any hair or clothing in slihouette and it's clearly a woman, then you have progressed a lot.

Then there's the Preston Blair book which gives you a more cartoony approach.

As for faces: you need to know a great variety of possible styles before you can choose one that suits you. Spend some weeks in a decent comic shop, that is, one which has independent comics from all over the world. Don't watch Marvel/DC/Manga stuff - they just use formulas, and it's no good to base youor own style on any formula.

But the most important part of femininity is movement. A really good animator can make a stick figure walk like a woman.

[Farbklecks]

May I join in?
I'm a worse animator amateur beginner, but I think I'm a usefull illustrator.
(forgive my lousy english)

I think you should show us some examples of your women/girls.
So we can see and tell you where your "mistakes" are.

There are some differences in the anatomy, in a cartoon you can screw this up, very easy.

Maybe, I suppose, the shoulder of your ladies are to wide like a man, this is one of the most common mistakes.

The face has also some differences, the position of the eye brows, normally they are a bit higher, the chin is not that strong as male face, and the neck is thinner.

[heyvern]

Sorry but questions like this are like asking for art lessons. Even the best answer here is nothing compared to a life drawing class or getting some books on figure drawing. See if there are any free or cheap art classes in your area. I remember when I was a kid the local art museum had some life drawing classes for very cheap (no neked woman... it was an all ages kind of thing).

Drawing the female (or male) form requires practice, as well as practice. And then you need to practice. Throw in a little practice. And then after that you should have time to practice some more. During all of that practicing and sketching you should also study anatomy. If you don't know what all the "curves" and "bumps" represent it's harder to make up your own stuff.

Sketch, sketch, sketch, sketch, draw, draw, draw. Go to the local Mall or the park with a sketch pad and draw people.

I also found that using "how to" books for drawing comic book heroes/heroines was very helpful.

-vern

[PARKER]

You could make the eyelashes stick out a lot.

[Rhoel]

JAB has some good tutorials on the female form, albeit in his own distinctive adult style. His observations about what makes something look sexy are aimed a drawing adult comix but the theory behind it are still sound.

Rhoel.

[la novata feliz]

Any tips on how to make your characters...more feminine? Mine always come out looking like cross-dressers.

like a illustrator I would advise you to draw, and draw a lot, I can recommend to search photographic references (before you create a character) that you feel feminine and look carefully .. it certainly helps to understand the anatomical differences and insurance may achieve

[heyvern]

I feel the need to elaborate on my growth as an artist.

Not that long ago I made a huge personal "jump" in my skills as an artist. I didn't feel strong drawing female characters (as well as male characters for that matter). I wasn't "horrible" but I wasn't confident.

Some time ago I had bought a book on comic book hero drawing. At the time I was not interested specifically in learning to draw comic book heroes but it was the stylized breakdown and step by step construction of characters from simple strokes and shapes that I studied and learned from. The dramatic lines that are not confined or exclusive of the comic book or anime genre.

The comic book "style" is a FANTASTIC way to learn how to draw the female and male forms.

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Rhoel mentioned the JAB tutorials. I appreciate his honesty in recognizing what you can learn from that artist. I may have been a bit reluctant to admit studying his style in the past. I was raised by conservative Mennonites and certainly wouldn't be the one to confess to it... uh... first. Since Rhoel is brave enough to bring it up I am willing to comment on it.

It is apparent that JAB leans towards... uh... er... a certain type of adult oriented material. Some people might feel... uncomfortable viewing or studying the adult content created by JAB... but WOW! His predilections aside... he has incredible talent. If you are old enough and able to get past his... uh... extreme sexual content... you can learn a lot from his instruction.

Let's face it, drawing an appealing "sexy" female character requires you to acknowledge the sexual nature of it. How far you go with that is a personal choice obviously. Some take it just a bit further than others but you can still learn from it. I am most certainly not interested in going in that direction with my own artwork but I can put that aside and learn from the style.

I would strongly suggest that anyone UNDER 18 not view his content. It is not for the feint of heart (you already know this if you clicked the link).

I would hate for this forum to get into trouble having links to what many might consider "porn" expecially with so many young people here... but... for those who can handle it it is a great resource.

I often wish JAB would do a more... er... mainstream set of tutorials.

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If anyone is disturbed or concerned about that link I could remove it. It is a bit over the top. However it would be a bit hypocritical of me to make a stink over it since I have viewed and studied the JAB tutorials myself and learned from them.

Any guidance from others on this topic would be appreciated.

-vern

[la novata feliz]

jab seems fantastic! I love his style and frankly you need to create a character to draw (I think) completely naked and then add (or not) the items you want to .. so get to create a character of well-proportioned.

[synthsin75]

Yeah, that link leads to an age warning first, so it's not like anyone get led to the stuff unwittingly. I always wonder at how the strictly puritanical learn to draw the human form. Is very skimpy swimwear allowed?

[slowtiger]

Haven't you seen "Persepolis"? Marjane Satrapi has a scene in there where she describes the nude drawing lessons at Teheran Art Academy after the islamistic revolution. Yeah, you guess it: all female models covered in Tchadors, so the students drew black blobs with a small field for the eyes.

[FCSnow]

Synthsin75 wrote:

I always wonder at how the strictly puritanical learn to draw the human form. Is very skimpy swimwear allowed?

I 've toured art museum, to see some of the old masters work. It becomes quite apparent who had studied anatomy and who hadn't. A renaissance artist took a chance if he carried anatomical studies to far.

In basic graphic classes; a square is masculine, a circle is feminine. (Maybe that's why some women tend to call us guys "Block Heads".) Also, a triangle sitting on its base is feminine, but flip it over on its apex and it becomes masuline.

How about a little exercise? Try drawing a female figure without any of the usual attributes, (ie breasts, wide hips, red full lips, and a dress), and yet fully clothed.

After a several thousand drawing, it will finally sink what makes a female feminine. And the same goes for the male too.

F.C.Snow