Make Your Figures POP with FORESHORTENING

this video is all about foreshortening we look at how shapes alter and shorten as they start to point toward us and how we can accurately foreshorten using simple measurement we explore the importance of line overlap and then wrap with a few examples i'm david finch i've been a comic book artist for 27 years if you enjoyed this video please hit like and subscribe and share with your friends and if you have any questions or comments please leave them below i think the easiest way to start talking about for shortening is to just start with a very very simple shape in this case it's going to be a tube directly from the side it looks just like a rectangle it is a rectangle and as we start to tilt it toward us you can start to see the bottom of the tube and the curvature at the top and it also gets shorter as it comes toward us and it starts to taper to a point and as we tilt it more we just lower down that point and the tube gets shorter also until ultimately you're looking directly at the bottom of the tube that's all that you see now the exact length of these tubes is something that i'm sure there's a way to calculate i really don't know what it is and it's just not something i've ever found that i've needed to mathematically or had the time to mathematically work out in my workflow and so from here i think the next best thing to talk about is a hinge and so this is essentially a door and this would be what you would see if you're looking at a diagram of a house and generally the way they they'll draw a door is they'll draw the curve of the way that the door opens and so obviously the actual door can't change length as it rotates in space and so it takes a curved path and the same thing will happen with a figure if you draw a figure in very very simply here's going to be my hinge where the shoulder is and if i have my arm straight down would be essentially like this and as i straighten it out the length isn't going to change and it's going to act just like a door in an architectural drawing and i'm sure it's something you're all very well aware of but this will be important later on so i just wanted to throw this in here and so next we're going to draw some rectangles and we're going to draw them from some different angles and so i'm going to start by drawing a rectangle just about here between these points and so there's a rectangle and you can see that it's coming toward us it's in perspective and so it's for shortened if it were straightened it would appear to be longer and it would be just a bit more like this if we were looking directly at it and if i wanted to take this rectangle and rotate it around [Music] it would take a path something like this and so what i'm going to do is in order to do that i'm going to take this point i'm going to move it just about to here and i'm going to take this point and move it the same distance just like this and so now i'm going to follow my new perspective and i'm going to start to rotate around go to here here [Music] and so you can see that when you turn your forms in space they actually i'm using the same horizon for everything because the horizon is my eye level that's how i'm viewing everything so my eyes would basically be here i'm looking into the scene and when i want to rotate objects in space the perspective point also rotates along with them and it's important thing to bear in mind if i'm drawing for instance here's a body and we're going to use just an arm again very quickly [Music] and i've got the arm and it's coming toward us but very mildly in space it's very mild for shortening out to the right just like that my perspective point would essentially be way over here and it would be getting larger like this something like that i think my point would be actually a little further even out here to really make that work and if i wanted to turn the arm i would have to bring that perspective point in and i would end up with something that would follow along this point so and it also for shortens and again if there is a real mathematical way to get this working exactly perfectly that length i really don't know it as far as i know getting that length worked out if i was to make it longer it would just make it appear that it's less for shortened and so i could also put the point directly behind and obviously you would just see let's quickly draw that in here you would just see the fist you really wouldn't see much of the arm at all you would see the shoulder and because the arm is wider than the hand like drawing a mess you would see some of that also that's about all you would see and so what i'm doing is i'm drawing the arm arcing around as it comes around and my perspective point is just moving along with the arm now again i don't use perspective points for this you really need i think to be able to do for shortening well you need the ability to just draw objects in space yourself from any different angle and it's really it's a very intuitive easy thing to do i think that you really don't need to be using perspective in order to get this working for you but i will say in terms of drawing a gun for instance if i wanted to draw this angle what i would do is just quickly sketch it in and i know this is basically what i want and i would just draw my perspective on top of what i've already sketched in and i would get something that works with the angle that i have at work and so that's all well and good if i'm drawing just one large shape that's receding back into space but if i want to draw a shape like this and then draw an equally length shape like this behind it and make sure that one is longer than the other the truth is i also just fake this but there really is a way to do this properly and make sure that your proportions are absolutely correct if it's something that you're concerned about and so let's draw i'm going to use just a simple rectangle shape again [Music] i'm drawing this on top of proper perspective i'm obviously not using a ruler to draw in my actual rectangle here so i'm being a little bit lazy but you get the idea and so now if i want to make the next rectangle back exactly the same length as this going back in space all i need to do is draw a line from this corner to this corner as long as i keep the angle of the line the same i can just reproduce that just like that and get something that's accurate and there you go and i can also do it again just like this and this will be basically accurate behind it here i can go back in very predictable lengths and so if you're not comfortable in just faking this yourself or if you're not really being aware of it in the way that maybe you should and something that you could really kind of try is just take the top of it draw a line across and then draw a line across and it'll give you a good idea of how accurate your sizing was but all that is dependent on making sure this line here these lines are all parallel if you obviously don't come off a parallel you'll end up with something quite a bit longer or shorter depending so that's something you really need to be aware of and so i can actually take this and i can make a tube for my wrist at my elbow it's going to be wider and here will be my forearm like this and in here i'll draw my upper arm and my shoulder construction like that and i can put a hand on the end of it i can get something that's pretty accurate with the angle that i've chosen just like that another thing that's very important to bear in mind is when you're drawing your first rectangular shape and i'm not going to use perspective for this i'm just going to kind of fake it you can make that first shape as long or short as you want there's no rule behind it obviously because not all rectangles are the same length and so you really have to use your own common sense for how how long that shape should be i can make it very very long like this and then the next shape obviously would be just as long going back or i can make it very short basically all the other rectangles or all the other shapes that you go that you received into space will reference from this original shape but this original shape really is your choice and so a way that i can really use this you know actually this time we'll draw a leg just to change things up a little bit and so i've got my shin my knee behind that and my thigh behind that and i've got my leg going back in space here and i'll draw my foot coming off that whole operation obviously just a quick sketch in here right now let me clean things up a little bit just to get something a little bit more polished [Music] so there we go my knee my upper leg there it is now that's coming toward us this way in perspective if i want to make sure because this length here and this length here should be the same basic length ideally if i want to make sure that that's really working for me all i need to do i can draw a perspective kind of going back in space that's a seems about accurate toward i guess my point would be just about here and i'm kind of faking this but strictly speaking this is all you would ever need to do and so what i can do is i can just draw a line here a line here and then draw a diagonal here and then i'll just draw the same diagonal back make sure that what i have is basically accurate and i think i was pretty close that worked out pretty well and so it's very easy to draw this part way too long this part too short this part too long this part too short if you really want to get an idea that you're going about it the right way and that things are working properly that's a just a really good quick little trick just to test your own work there are a couple important principles that will really really set you forward with your foreshortening and make it much more believable and to start i'm going to start with just some simple shapes and you can see what i have here are just some lines on paper kind of outlining basically a shape and i'm going to take these lines here and put them in front of these lines here i'm going to do that again here what that's doing is really bringing this one forward in front of this one this one's in front of this one and i can really make that much more clear even just by kind of completing it out just a little bit and there you go and you can see just how much depth that has in space just by the overlaps that i created and i made sure to be consistent with them i can actually take the same shapes again let's just do it again and i'm sure you can see where i'm going with this i can go the opposite way and these shapes are the same size i'm making sure or while as close to the same size as i could get really quickly so this is just sitting completely flat these lines here and put them in front of these lines these lines in front of these lines and you can see that it gives me completely the opposite effect just like that and this is now coming toward us in space and i'm not using any linear perspective for this at all it's not getting larger on one end or smaller on one end but just by overlapping my connection points consistently down a form it really pushes it out toward us or away from us in space there's a very very important thing to learn it took me a little while i was actually very fortunate that colorist pointed that out for me early on when i was starting drawing and it made all the difference so shout out to ashby manson wherever you are and so i'm going to quickly sketch in an arm and i'll show you that kind of in practice and so we've got this arm kind of coming toward us i'll draw my fist here sketching in my forms really quickly and i'll clean this up in just a minute and so there is a quick sketch i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to draw this without using any real overlapping and we'll see the difference it makes when i start to properly overlap my forms and this actually by now is going to be a bit of a fight for me to do we'll see how i do with this because i've been doing this for so long i'm basically programmed matter of fact i think i'll actually do the whole thing wrong and i think that will actually drive the point home even more and again this is a real fight for me to to get across because i have been doing it the other way for so long [Music] and so there you go there's an arm for shortened and i've drawn all my connection points the opposite way that they should be and you can see that it looks incredibly odd and very flat sitting on the page even though the under drawing had the feel that we were kind of looking for and this is one of the reasons right here i think this might be the fundamental reason why your sketches can have so much more energy than your finished drawings it's this fact right here and so let's go ahead and fix this [Music] and so this tube essentially i'm going to draw this whole thing just as a simple tube is going to come out in front of this shape this will overlap over the elbow here and my tricep under there my bicep connect in behind there and that connects around my shoulder [Music] there i've got everything connected properly and you can see that arm now all of a sudden just by changing those connection points and really nothing else looks like it's sitting properly in space and has the direction and energy that we were looking for so i put a lot of attention into this into your drawings and i can do the same thing here now you can see i've kind of got this overlapped and this is overlapped properly and i just do this naturally just after so many years this is overlapping this is overlapping from what's behind and i just consistently make sure to be consistent and it really pushes things forward in space i'm off the page apologies so it really pushes things forward in space and it really is just using this technique right here very very simple all of this linear perspective and using a perspective points in the whole thing this is really not the way that people actually work you need to get a good feel of adjusting lengths of your objects as they go back in space without having to measure so i'm going to draw this one the front one's going to be pretty short it's coming much more toward us than this one is and so i'm going to make this one just about half as long just about like that and i think that's probably pretty accurate and i could measure that i'm not going to bother and i never do when i'm actually working and i cannot possibly imagine that you would be doing that very often either i think maybe the worst thing that you could do is do half of let's say your arm this way and half of the arm this way and not realize that you're doing it and you end up with something that really sits inert on the page and just looks odd to the eye and it can be easy to not know what could have caused that and so now what we're going to do and i'm going to sketch in my perspective so i'm going to put a point here i'm going to point it and put a point here you really don't need to go in and draw in proper linear perspective with the ruler unless you want to be very very accurate and because we're drawing figures there's no linear background that just seems like more work than any of us really need [Music] so there we go it's very loose and let me also now this is a three-point perspective i'm i'm going to because i'm looking down at everything i want everything to get larger as it goes up toward the horizon line and so i'm just going to fake this in to just get something that's fairly accurate this would be a perspective point way down below the page but this will give us everything that we need to get started i'm going to go ahead and lighten this down just a little bit now that it's impossible for you to see what i have on the page i'm going to go ahead i'm going to start to draw a figure i want my figure and i'm just going to sketch it in to be something like like this you know and i'm not worrying about my proportions at all and so the legs are way too long my arm is too long at the bottom i've got my head not really sized and what i can do to really make this much more accurate i've got perspective in there so my chest is about here and my pelvis and stomach is about the same length as my chest and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to measure it downward along my perspective and so that's going to put me about here i was good clean this up a little bit and my upper legs i want to be about the same length as my chest i have my line to here bring that down [Music] so that's going to put my upper legs here and keep going down my lower legs will be here and so i can really start to receive my figure downward in space pretty heavily and get something that really looks like it's dropping down in space and do it fairly accurately and you can see now he's he's getting larger as he comes up toward us toward our eye level and it looks like it's working in a pretty accurate way now my upper arm i've got about this long so i'm gonna because the arm is angled i can't use the perspective that i established here so what i'm gonna do is just adjust it a little bit like this so to be along the arm and so i'll be just about like this and you can see i'm really just i'm really just estimating with all this it's really not so important to be completely perfectly accurate so i've got that length here i'm gonna go along the same angle and that's going to put my wrist just about here so let me erase that down draw that in just like this you can see that pretty well lines up with where i want it to line up from the pelvis then my other arm comes up along here my elbow comes along here so i really don't need to measure it i can just draw it along my established perspective strictly speaking i could have drawn the lengths of my arm now that i have my body landmarks and i could have drawn my arms just using that as a guide instead of having to measure it out and so there's a figure fairly accurately drawn it shows all the basic principles of just measuring your shapes downward as they go let's do another figure i'm going to basically draw my finger i'm going to draw my finger line down so i think what i want is something like this so i'm going to draw basically a simple box and this is going to be where my figure is going to sit so i think my legs are going to be here this is all going to be pretty short so i need to try and keep this fairly clean and then i'm going to draw that same angle again that's going to delineate my next section kind of here and then here here we're gonna fake it [Music] i can say okay my feet are here there's another foot and my upper legs i had measured here and here about here and so brought my pelvis in in perspective simple shapes my lower leg started here so my other leg all along here [Music] and my chest stomach area will be just about here chest will be about here my head about here then my arms will come out i'll stop my upper arm just about here and my lower arm if i bring it here it'll be all the way to the knee so i need to bring that up actually just a little bit to bring the whole operation up there's there are ways to do this more accurately but ideally what i want to do is just find something that's going to give me enough of a framework to get across what i'm trying to get across with my artwork without bogging me down with something that's going to be impossible for me to recreate on a schedule and so there's basically my figure in perspective lying down or shortened using decently accurate measuring and so now what we're going to do i'm going to draw a figure and i'm just gonna start to sketch him in he's gonna be sitting on the ground [Music] got my pelvis right here and i want one leg projecting out toward us here and the other leg coming out here and so this leg will be for short in this way and this leg will be before shortened this way and so really what i can do is i can just say okay my horizon line is going to be about here i could lower it and raise it and if i lower it then the leg would be lifted much higher if i raise it the leg would be push would obviously follow much lower but for this one we'll put it about here i'm going to say i want this angle for my leg so that would put my perspective point here and i want this angle for this leg and so that will put that point here so that's about where i'm at right here just like this for my legs and so what i'm going to do start to draw [Music] this tube here this tube here [Music] and again i can measure this and i can say okay [Music] i'm here to here for my lower leg and so for my upper leg i want to be and let's actually come halfway up to the knee so it's a little more accurate there and so my upper leg i want to be about here and i'd say i'm pretty close and this is just you do this enough times and it gets much easier i think you'll find that for the most part you really won't need to be measuring at all [Music] so there we go there's a leg for shortened that way and now if i use the same horizon line this other leg is going to be sitting on the same floor [Music] and so i'm going to say i want now they're opening like a hinge also so my one hinge point is here one hinge point is here it would basically go like this this would be straight down with the body like that and this leg would do the same thing and it would so my hinge point would be like that and so i'm going to want to be about here i figure so let's draw in my foot say my shin is gonna be just about here i think i might be a little short fix that [Music] and so there we go he's got his legs for shortened at two different angles but along the same plane and so i've got my tube connecting into this tube here which connects over the knee even though and i know the knee actually connects down into the leg this way but for shortening to really work i still want to accentuate that line over it [Music] connect all my tubes back into each other very very simply and from here i can start to draw in my actual anatomy on top of what i've got established [Music] get something that's a little bit more finished but making sure that i'm drawing my muscles all along that plane and so you can see that for my knee i kind of went with this sort of a shape for it and this knee same kind of a thing i think drawing your knee that way can be very helpful as opposed to trying to draw a more complex shape and it's very easy to get something that shifts or sits on the leg in the wrong angle and also drawing the top of the knee as this kind of a curved shape gives you gives you the plane that the muscles on top of it rest along one final note that i want to make i've got this arm heavily for shortened coming toward us and in order to do that i just have one simple tube shape it's wider in the back because the elbow is wider than the wrist the back of the arm and another tube shape here this tube shape is just about even front to back and then the shoulder here and the hand attaches off the front basically like this off of the wrist and it can be very easy i'm going to erase this off a little bit it can be very easy to extend your shapes way out like this and it's something i see quite a bit and it's very important to make sure that you especially with extreme for shortening like this it's very important that you really establish the front of your shape where it's more narrow and then the back and really push that back and that gives it a lot more depth in space [Music] i can do the same with this i'm making this a very this is my triceps that you see just poking out of the back here and i'm bringing this well back and making it very short if i was to and we'll do this you can if i was to round that way down it really softens the whole shape and it'll still work but i think it gives it a lot more dynamic power when i really push that shape well back into the form so it really is a difference between an overall soft form and a form where i'm really pushing my shapes back like this as opposed to and it just to me it gives it a lot more pop and a lot more bounce as you can see all right that's gonna do it for this one thank you so much for watching

Channel: David Finch

Views: 316,682

Rating: 4.9879479 out of 5

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

Id: 9XtgOExgLt4

Length: 27min 2sec (1622 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021