Drawing Fight Scenes for Comics

this video is all about drawing fight scenes we'll use a series of very simple gesture drawings to show you all of the tips and tricks and techniques that i've learned over the years of having to draw fight scene after fight scene and make them as visually interesting as i possibly can i'm david finch i've been a comic book artist for over 25 years if you enjoyed this video please hit like and subscribe and share with your friends we're gonna go ahead and start with a very simple concept that can make a big difference to the flow of your fight scene and that is changing your arm of action that your character is using to throw a punch or throw a kick from panel to panel so i've got my figure and he's punching down at a character that is lying on the ground and we're drawing this really simply just so we can get a lot across i want to cover a lot of ground uh today with this so i'm gonna keep these drawings pretty gestural so he's punching down through here and then in the next panel i'm gonna draw the same scene and i'm gonna draw the opposing arm [Music] punching again just very very simple drawings now i want to have the same leg extended and the other leg back the way that i had it before i'm going to bring this arm up and my proportions change just a little bit because it's such a simple sketch so something i could adjust but the general concept is if i show a panel where i'm punching with one arm in the next panel i want to punch with the other arm and then it reads like a punch is being thrown as opposed to showing multiple panels where the same punch is being thrown it just reads like you're looking at the same image again and the same thing works if i was to close in on the scene and i'll draw a panel here and here's my scene punching from here i'm gonna do a bit more of a close-up here's my head here's my arm punching through and because i'm punching again with this arm it still works so even though i've changed the angle a little bit i've zoomed in i want to make sure that whatever angle i choose i'd choose the opposing arm for the next panel and on through and the same thing really works when you have a character running if i have a character try to get that head in there a little bit better if i have a character running in one panel in the next panel i'm going to want to show that character running with the other foot forward and then it'll read like that character is is running and you have fluid motion from panel to panel it's a very easy mistake to make especially with a character running or something that isn't quite so action specific to draw one panel of a character running and then the next panel of the character running with the same leg forward in this case i've got his right leg forward so you really want to make sure if you wanted to read like action across panels to switch out your sides the next thing that i want to talk about is making sure that you're punching or kicking past the impact and so i've got my character he's punching put this arm up and because i've got one arm extended i'm pulling the other arm back and it just pushes power through the body this way that's something that we talked about in my dynamics video you can find it uh in my youtube library and so i've got my character being hit and he's reacting to the punch and hopefully that's enough detail that you can see what i'm trying to get across the impact would be just about here but i've got his arm extended all the way through and it makes that punch much more powerful i'll draw another example here's a character punching upwards [Music] his arm is extended all the way up as he punches past and my impact is going to be about here and i'm going to take his line of action all the way through his body so i'm going to lift this leg up keep this as simple as i can bring his head down just like this and then my character being hit is also my impact is here but my character is being driven up by the punch and so i'm going to draw him reacting to that punch and his head is being shot backwards and impacted by that punch and this really leads me to the next thing that i wanted to talk about and that is making sure that when you have an impact that the character reacting to that impact reacts in an appropriate way [Music] and you can see that i'm gonna angle his head so it's [Music] at this point i would have to erase but for this that's gonna be good enough to get the point across he's punching through the impact is gonna be about here his arm is extending all the way through that punch and it's coming all the way from his foot so he's got a line all the way through his body and i did a similar thing with this character where his line is coming all the way through here his face is what was impacted and his face is being driven back just about the same speed as the punch is going through and that really sells it as a punch that's incredibly powerful and having the character that's being struck react appropriately really sells the whole action and i'll show an example of what it can look like when you have a character punching and the character being hit is reacting in a way that doesn't match the punch or kick or whatever it is being thrown in this case this is just gonna be a punch [Music] and so i've got my character punching here and i've got a character being hit by that punch and i'm going to draw that character with his head pointing out this way so i can see his here's his eyes his nose his mouth is open and his head is being pushed around back this way and i don't want to twist his head too far so let's bring him here angle his body so his head could actually turn that way that's something that's really important to learn is the constraints that your body can can go through if you turn your neck too far or extend your arms too far back it can look very wrong so it's a good thing to get a good handle on and so there's my character not the best drawing of a character truthfully but there's my character being hit and it really looks like the impact is just being lost it it's missing something and it can be a little bit difficult if you're not really aware of it to know what quite went wrong and what went wrong is his head is being hit it's going to be about here and i've got his head driven back this way but the punch is going this way so the action would be pushing through here and so in order to fix it i'm just going to erase this character completely and i'm going to draw my character his head is twisted way up this way mouth is open and i've got his body kind of sideways his other arm in here and again a terrible drawing i know but the point is that and the point is that i completely blew that one too let's try this again and you know what i think i want to leave this in i blew that by drawing his head being shot up this way and i still ended up not drawing my head reacting to that punch appropriately and it's something that i do all the time so i just try to be really aware of it and when it happens i fix it and uh so i've got the punch going this way so i really want the head to be following that punch and so i'm going to draw the head coming around this way so my eyes will be here angle his body just about here because i don't want his head to be going past that angle of his body i want to angle his body in an appropriate way and it can be a little bit of a challenge to kind of get a good sense of exactly how far you can push this kind of thing [Music] and so there's my character reacting to being hit and i think i could actually make this even stronger let's fix that body which is a little weak anyway and i want to actually extend his body out this way and really push his whole body into that punch and if i bring his center of gravity over here it's really gonna add to the impact that that punch has and it's pushing his whole body out into the punch so there i think that's a little bit better and let's angle his head down toward the character he's punching this is why it's so important to get all of the stuff established before you start putting in detail because you really don't want your character to be punching and then looking upward uh this way away from the character that they're they're punching and so hopefully you can see just how easy it is to make that kind of a mistake even in fixing it i ended up making a mistake that was just about the same i think just about as bad as i did the first time and so the next thing that i want to talk about i'm going to draw a punch and this is just going to be from the side we'll start with the head of the character that's punching he's got his arm extended [Music] and he's punching a character and that character is right here you can see that this shot really doesn't have a lot of impact at all the character being hit is really not reacting much to that punch and because i'm showing the actual impact it's a little more difficult to really get action across and you know what let me let me go ahead and fix this whole thing i want to make sure that my character being punched and maybe it'd be a little easier if i draw the character first i want them to be about level i don't want one character way down below even though this is a little simple sketch i want it to be at least somewhat accurate [Music] here's my fist a lot of times i find it's easier for me to draw arms things like that if i've got something specific going on with the hand to draw that first and then draw through the arm you just need to make sure that your distance is correct so you don't end up drawing a really short or long arm and so there's my impact and you can see it really doesn't have any power behind it at all and that's to a large extent because we're only seeing the impact we're not seeing any kind of reaction to it and so it just looks very inert but you can actually do this and really make it work and i will show you how i'll show you a couple of examples first of all i'm going to start by making my character throwing that punch just a little bit more dynamic [Music] so here's my fist here's my head being struck same way that i did before i'm gonna bring his other arm up just a little bit more just make it a little bit more powerful i'm extending his punch through a little bit more i'm also i'm gonna bring his body back this way and that brings his center of gravity forward and when that happens it's bringing more weight forward and so it makes it a little more powerful this would still work even if i had drew the figure the way that i did the first time but using your center of gravity for your finger always has such a good effect i don't want to not use that and so here's my basic punch here's my character being hit and the secret behind making this powerful even though you're looking at the exact impact is for me to take my whole body and i want my impact to be through here and so i can consider this to be a point where i want the rest of my figure to be deflecting from and so i'm going to draw his whole body and extend his arm out [Music] his other arm through the neck here and his whole body is really reacting to that punch much more strongly and you can see just by really using this kind of a triangular shape pointing at the exact point of impact it pushes that power from here all the way through to the back of the figure and it pulls that whole figure and it gives it that it gives it that extra impact that you need to really sell that punch even though you're showing that point of impact which is generally speaking not the most ideal way to go but it can be pretty powerful if it's done properly i'm going to show you another example in this example i've got a character i'm gonna have him kicking another character and the reason why i like using this kind of a technique so much is because generally speaking kicks don't make another character fly in the same way they really impact into a character and i feel like they're more powerful that way [Music] extend his arm back out this way his other arm i'll just put about here and so here's my character kicking and my other character is going to be reacting to that kick well i know that i'm going to want my point of impact to be out here i'm going to have him kicking the other character basically right in the gut between his stomach and his chest i guess and so what i'm going to do is i'm gonna draw and this is where it can be really helpful to draw your torso as a bit of a uh and i've seen this i think andrew loomis did this but you draw your your torso as as like a sack of potatoes and it's something you can really get a lot of movement and play from and what i really want to get from this is pushing that movement through the center i guess that sack of potatoes and push the action through it like this and so here's my chest i'm going to draw my arm up through my head's going to be here my other arm my pelvis and just kind of finish out the rest of his body but i'm making sure to draw my character being impacted all the way through by that leg and that really pushes power through and makes it very very impactful as opposed to just drawing a character flying away from that kick which can work but i think it's less powerful or a character that's just not reacting to it properly the way that i did this here the next thing i want to talk about is a bit of a limitation when it comes to hand-to-hand fighting and that is that you're really throwing a lot of punches and it can get very very static if you choose the same angles uh continually and so i want to show the same basic punch it's not really going to be exactly the same but it's going to be thrown with the same arm punching another character in the face and i'm going to show it from a few different angles so in this angle we're going to be looking up at the scene so we're looking up at the character that's punching his arm is coming through the character that's being hit is going to be here and so there's a punch from a bit of an upward angle i don't know that my proportions are exactly exact there but that'll basically get the idea across and so we're kind of looking up at my character punching and this character is flying back toward us so he should be actually probably a little bit larger because he's closer to us but i'm just going to go ahead and leave it like that i'm going to draw the same basic punch and now we're going to be looking downward at our character so i'm going to draw his his chest here his head here you're looking down at kind of the top of his chest for shorten this way his arm is going to extend out like this so basically the same general movement that i had going on here i've drawn this a couple times already just in the last few minutes and my character being hit is going to be we're going to be looking much more downward at that character also and i want to make sure that his face is looking toward where the punch is pushing through [Music] and then we'll draw a bit more of a side long angle but also have some foreshortening coming toward us and that's something that can be very powerful uh in a panel i'm going to have this arm coming toward us so the hand gets larger my head is going to be just about here my other arm extended backward [Music] so there's my basic figure and then the character being punched is gonna be just about here i think angle his head just otherwise i'm gonna have to angle his whole body to match that head i want his body to be just a little bit more facing the character that's punching him and i've got that punch coming through my point of impact is going to be here and i've drawn that for short and coming toward us in the whole scene from the side and i'm drawing essentially the same shot uh i think the angle is slightly different it's not like i'm trying to be 3d perfect with this but it's really important for me to be able to draw a basic punch from multiple different angles and that way i can draw a fight scene and obviously i'd want to change up the sides so i don't go panel to panel to panel with the same punch being thrown but i can show a lot of different action and keep it really exciting visually even though i'm showing essentially the same basic movement and the next thing i want to show this is more of a really conceptual thing than anything but i'm going to show a character and he's got a sword in his hand [Music] and he's stabbing into another character i've got my sword coming out through here and depending on the kind of comic that you're drawing um it's not always ideal to really show uh violence to such an extent and i know that i've done it certainly in the past but a lot of times especially if things get a little bit more uh graphic i always feel like a really good technique to use is just to silhouette it out and obviously i would work out my fingers a little better than this before i start drawing it in silhouette but as long as i make sure that my action is clearly readable [Music] i can just silhouette out a scene like this and i can get away with some violence that might be a little bit more disturbing without making my comic overly graphic or something that is you know too disturbing especially for a younger reader this is something i use i like to use quite a bit if i've got somebody doing something that is just a little bit more extreme so now that we've covered some basics i wanted to draw a scene that really brings it all together especially when you're drawing a team book you can get in a script a description that will say i want this character fighting this character and this character fighting this character and these characters fighting another character and it all needs to be in the same panel and it all needs to work and that can be incredibly stressful trying to figure out how to get all those things working in a panel and showcase everything to the best of your ability and so i've found over the years the best way for me to do this is to basically break down my panel into a foreground a middle ground and a background and so for this one for my foreground i'm just going to create a bit of a shape like this very very simple and that's going to be the block where i put my most important character fighting my most important villain right here will be my main character my villain will be here but generally i want them to take up that space here and then i've got a character fighting multiple characters and i'm gonna put them into my uh mid-ground so i'm gonna create a bit of another shape just like this it's gonna be its own composition here and then in the background i've got another character fighting another villain and so i'm going to block out that space for them here and going foreground so these would be larger than a little smaller a little smaller and they each take up their own really simple compositional space it makes it very easy for me to lay out a panel like this and so now that i have my basic shape design i don't need to worry about all of the characters that i've got fighting here the characters that i have fighting here all i need to do is draw my foreground characters and make sure they take up generally the space and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to draw that in my panel here and that's going to be about the shape that i want to take up for this and i'm just going to go ahead and start to rough in my figures here so i've got a character punching another character i'm going to draw them fairly large because we're in the foreground here i want that arm kind of coming toward me so it's going to be a little foreshortened we did an example like this just a minute ago and i think that's going to work i'm just being really loose with this right now just to get this across very simply i'm going to draw his other hand here [Music] rough in his head shape so i've got his line for his brow his nose his lower jaw forehead here and this is where you really start to just have to bring all of these skills that you learn how to draw heads how to draw all these different things and it needs to just become second nature so you can just very quickly and easily sketching these characters get the detail in and get it finished to a schedule and so there's my basic character right here and my character being punched i'm gonna put here i've gotta have extended a little bit past the line there but i think that'll be fine mouth is open maybe i'll have some teeth flying out it's amazing how you can get away with drawing a character with their teeth flying out in the next panel they're in there no one ever says anything i do try not to do that i've done it and so there's my character being punched i'm going to draw his other hand in here i want to fill this area in and so there's his other arm my brow my nose my jaw is going to be quite a bit longer because i've got the mouth open my forehead ear i want to extend the neck out this way maybe i'll bring his whole body over just a little bit more so i can really get a good movement going this way and there's going to be the roughing for my foreground and it's very loose and sloppy but it's it's really what you need to just get that established and so it's in the scene and so now from there in my little layout here i've got a larger area it's i don't know that it's larger but considering it's in the foreground it's it's a large area i'm going to put multiple characters in here i'm going to have a secondary character and let me block that that overall shape and i want to leave a decent amount of space up here for my last bit of action in the background and i'm gonna draw a character fighting a whole bunch of characters and i'll have my character fighting a bunch of ninjas really i have characters in mind for these drawings but they're marvel characters and i don't want to uh i i don't know that it's a problem for me to draw just marvel characters for a tutorial i'm sure that it probably wouldn't be and i mean marvel has always been incredibly good to me and they're you know they're very easy to work with but i don't want to push it either and so for the sake of this they're just characters for right now and i think i'm going to finish this out and do a full complete drawing of this and i'll just kind of create my own costumes so they're not licensed characters so i've got my my next character here and i think this character's gonna be slashing so i'm gonna flatten his hand out sideways and i'll give him like a blade like this and another one like that mouth is open so you can see that it's quite a bit smaller than this character here and i'm going to draw a bunch of characters around them they're all fighting them so i've got a character down here these are my ninjas i've got an arm here another character you're flying back he's being slashed i'm just really roughly laying these guys in right now [Music] i think uh i'll draw another character here and i'm kind of coming off of my line i guess but uh nothing's strict it's kinda i just go with whatever feels like it's gonna fill out that space and you know if it's gonna work for me then i try to go in with a plan but it's like the famous saying everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face and when you're drawing a scene like this uh with a lot of people being punched in the face you'll find artistically that will happen to you it's it's very difficult to to not just start throwing in things where it's going to fit in order to make uh the panel work i'm going to draw another character closer here so he's going to be a bit more close into the like almost the foreground here but it's not going to conflict with the foreground and i'll make sure that he's further back than my foreground i just want to bring this this portion out here i'm going to draw maybe another ninja and he's laying on the ground he's he's already been defeated maybe another one here i'm just really quickly roughing these in just to get a general sense of my placement he's got a sword in his hand this one he's got his hand up he's had a sword in his hand but it's flown out of his hand so i'll draw it like this up in the air and then i'll have another couple of characters here's one swooping in from above dropping in from above the ninjas so this is what they do another one here and don't worry about how how poorly these are drawn right now that's really not the point the point is just to get all of these uh sorted and i'm going to draw another character back here i really want to fill this whole area in with as much as i can i'm going to draw another ninja climbing up here toward the scene just kind of filling out this overall shape [Music] and i think that's going to do it for my my mid ground another character lying here and then for my last two characters i'm gonna draw one character up here he's being grabbed by a bunch of tentacles so you know it probably narrows down who i'm thinking about for this character i'm gonna have another leg up his arms are back he's in agony and i think i might have drawn him just a little bit too big you know what i think he's all right i want to make sure that this character and the character that he's fighting are smaller than these characters it doesn't matter if they're smaller than everyone but i do want to differentiate these planes generally and so i've got this character about that big i think that's going to work [Music] and then i've got my my character that's attacking and here he is he's coming in [Music] fix those legs looking a little stiff [Music] he's off the ground and he's got his tentacles coming out they're wrapping around [Music] and just as a general design that's kind of what we want here and so i've got i'm going to draw basically like a rock formation you can imagine after superheroes been fighting for a while you get a lot of rubble um some stuff here and then in the background now i could think in terms of i've got my horizon just about here so i'm gonna draw a point just directly in the center and i could um start to draw on some buildings and some detail behind but really for a scene like this that's actually a bit of a secondary thought so here's my general perspective uh coming out here and i would really establish these characters first and then worry about the background but i need to make sure before i do that that i have a general plan of where it's going to be so if i know generally my horizons about here i can rough that in and it gives me enough and you can see how quickly and easily you can get a layout for a very very complex scene i think this took me less than 15 minutes to draw this and now it's just detail and i can go ahead and really get something finished out uh fairly easily without having to worry about this overall design i've made sure that my major characters here's one here one hero here one hero here and then the other one here and they're all very well showcased i can see all the action that's happening nothing's really conflicting and they're all taking up their own space and i've established a foreground middle ground and background very cleanly and i just did it using really really simple shapes all right that's it for this one thank you so much for watching check out my gumroad where you can find this complex action scene drawn from start to finish from a simple layout all the way through to completion with commentary and all of my thoughts that go into making sure that everything reads as clearly as possible and has a pleasing overall look

Channel: David Finch

Views: 90,457

Rating: 4.9899626 out of 5

Keywords: drawing tutorial, how to draw, comic art, inking

Id: tE_Cbm0aT3Q

Length: 28min 25sec (1705 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021