To start my study of anatomy, I decided to do a muscle study. I wanted to focus on the anatomy of the arm for the study as I felt as if, although I had drawn arms plenty of times for multiple characters, I didn’t truly understand the structure of it.
I used these two references to study how the bone structure of the arm sits beneath the muscle structure.
I tried to focus on the shapes of the individual bones and muscles that make up the entire arm. I think I did this quite successfully as the drawings are fairly accurate to the reference images. It helped me understand the actual structure and different components of the arm.
If I were to further my muscle studies, I would look at how the muscles sit on top of the bones, and how they interact with each other in different arm positions.
I started my character design with a sketch. This is to get the general shapes and ideas of the character in place and to map out the position of the character.
I then create a base colour for my character and trace my sketch with that colour. This creates a base tone for the skin, or tree bark in this case. I was inspired by concept artist Scott Flanders for this technique. Although he uses the lasso tool to draw the shape and then colour in.
I then added in the muscle details using my previous knowledge of anatomy and my newfound knowledge of arm anatomy. The muscle study was really useful in helping with the structure of the arms. Even when I did a thinner arm on the left hand side of the drawing, the same arm anatomy basics I learnt were very useful and could be applied.
I used this reference for the anatomy of the chest and body. It also helped for the shading and lighting of my piece.
To achieve the effect of my character being made out of wood, I used a wood texture and used puppet warp on it. This was my first time experimenting with puppet warp, but once I got the hang of it, it was really effective. It is used to warp images and textures into unique shapes.
This is the wood texture I used for the wood effect. I set the layer it was on to 10% opacity and then used puppet warp to warp it into the correct shape – until his entire body was covered.
If I had to do this character again, I might have experimented with using a bark texture with puppet warp around his trunk/leg area.
Overall, I am happy with my anatomy studies. I studied the anatomy of the arm and applied those concepts in my character design. If I were to do it again, I would research further into the anatomy of the arm in different positions and also another muscle group.
REFERENCES :
Proko (2020) Creature Design with Scott Flanders – Lightbox Expo Demo [Video]. Available online : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS8VIbUltpk [Accessed 12/12/2021].