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Acting with the Entire Body

The face can provide a wealth of story-telling data with just a simple expression. Rarely, though, does the whole story come just from the head. By using the entire body, and really pushing your poses, you can achieve a better sense of story and scene than you ever will with faces alone.

Let’s travel back in time to the year 1800. Two southern gentlemen are having an argument. Insults fly and tempers flare until finally one of them shouts in a furious rage, “I challenge you to a duel!” How might you draw that pose?

Animation Character - Angry
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This first attempt is straight-forward, plain and generic. There’s nothing special about the pose. Other than the facial expression it tells us almost nothing about what the character is feeling. To illustrate, look at what happens when I simply change the eyebrows:

Animation Character - Afraid
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Suddenly it turns from an active, angry pose to a passive, worried pose. Now he’s pointing in fear. That one subtle difference has completely changed the pose’s meaning. Why? Because the pose was weak and generic to begin with.

When you draw a character expressing emotion, be careful of relying too heavily on just the face. The head only makes up about 10% of a person’s body. Why waste the other 90%?

Angry Poses for Animation
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Here are some quick sketches showing the same emotion, but this time using the entire body. By acting with the legs, arms, and torso you’re able to explore more entertaining possibilities and at the same time make a clear emotional statement to the audience.

You’ve got an entire body to communicate with. Use it!

If you like this article, please consider backing the Pose Drawing Sparkbook on Kickstarter. Also, to promote the project I’m giving away a free list of 100 Sketchbook Ideas on my personal site, no strings attached. Enjoy! And remember to act with not just the face, but the entire character from head to toe.

Cedric Hohnstadt owns an illustration studio where he specializes in character design and toy design. His past clients have ranged from Coca-Cola to Hasbro to Disney. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three daughters.

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John H.

Wow these are good. If the books like this I’m interested! Thanks for the 100 sketchbook ideas will you have examples of them at all too? I would like to see more like that.

crystal

Posing is like the hardest thing in the world to me. I can never get it to look right! These are amazing!

frankie

Your web site is really useful. Many thanks for sharing.

Ryan

Congrats on getting it fully funded!! This was a great article I hope to see some more of them from you too.

renne

Top submit. I look forward to reading more. Cheers

tricia

Seems like it’s easier said that done. I read a lot about posing in books and online but they just say “Do good posing” and not HOW to do it. I mean I get that you don’t want to change the eyebrows and make the pose look different but it seems like how do you come UP with the poses in the first place!

J.K. Riki

That’s a great question, Tricia! Maybe we can do an article in the future on “How to find great poses” or something, if it would be interesting to you all? Much of the time you want to look at life (photos, or out and about) and then try to push the poses you see there to be sure you have clear silhouettes and such. You can read a bit more on posing here:

https://www.animatorisland.com/perfect-posing-1-listen-to-the-character-and-to-physics/

https://www.animatorisland.com/perfect-posing-2-appealing-and-readable/

Click

Cool tips thanks

Rachel

Shoot! I just found your website and the Kickstarter is over. Please let us know when your book is available in other ways, because it sounds fantastic!

J.K. Riki

Hey Rachel! You can actually still pre-order the book outside of Kickstarter right here: http://www.cedricstudio.com/sparkbook/

🙂

jinkly

Rachel did you get the book? Because it is great, I got my copy. You should get it to.