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Hey guys, it's Mike,
and in this video we're going to be drawing a fighting scene
and I'm going to show you the principles I use
when I'm composing a scene of two characters fighting.
So I started off drawing a rectangle, that's going to be the frame of our scene
I'm going to start off with dividing the paper into thirds,
or this frame into thirds,
and I'm going to draw one of our characters on the right third
the idea with this scene is going to be
one character is going to be leaping at the other,
kind of, catching him off guard and it's going to be an up-shot
so if you saw the video of drawing characters in perspective in an up-shot,
you'll see some of the tips and techniques that we used in that video.
So I'm starting with the head,
and tilting the shoulders slightly, curving it because it's an up-shot
and here we have the general guideline for the up-shot.
Remember, it gets more narrow towards the top.
Using simple shapes, not focusing on details,
this stage of the drawing is all about finding the pose
and the best way to do that is to use simple shapes
I have the head torso and hips
the head is going to be much smaller than normal
and the hips are going to be much bigger than normal
below the hips I draw the legs
and you can already see the angle that I'm after
he's slightly tilted and those horizontal lines
of the shoulders and the waist are curved
like sad faces because it's an up-shot.
So next I'm going to draw the shoulder that is closest to us
with a curve and normally the elbow, which I'm going to
draw with a circle, normally it's at the bottom
off the rib cage
but I'm going to draw it slightly higher for this view
because of the perspective.
And for the elbow I just use a circle, very simple.
And now coming out at an angle,
I'm going to draw the forearm, just two lines
really easy
and for the hand, it's going to be a square
or a rectangle and he's going to be holding a sword
and so I'm going to draw the hilt
and the sword's going to be angled towards the upper left.
I'm not even worried about what kind of sword this is
or what the details of it are
I'm just worrying about the position
and that's all I'm focused on, is the position.
to make things easy, oh,
first I'm drawing in his other arm
again, circle for the elbow
and getting more narrow as we head towards the wrist
because this arm is going away from us.
And just like in my videos on hands,
I just try to find the palm shape first
and I'm just placing that for the hand.
For his head, I'm going to erase it and
redraw it because I want to make sure that the head is
smaller than normal so we have that perspective going for us.
And I also want to point out that
his left arm, the top part of the arm is
shorter than the forearm
on the other side, it's the opposite
the forearm is smaller, shorter length
than the top part of the arm.
So now for the other character,
I'm going to draw him on the other third at an angle
and for this scene to have a dynamic feel,
I want to create depth, so this character
is going to be smaller
and I drew his head and tilted his shoulders.
He's also going to be viewed in an up-shot
so just like the first character,
I'm going to draw in his shoulder.
This time, I'm going to use a big circle for his shouler.
Zoom in a little big so you guys can see it
And he's going to be mid swing so
he's going to be coming out all epic-like, mid swing
so his arm is going to be coming across his body
using a circle for his elbow,
and now his forearm and a square
for his hand that is grabbing the sword.
So now I'm going to place the sword,
just like the other character, thinking about
the angle that I want it to have.
And I'm leaving room for the other fist
which I'm going to place with another square
right there, and for that arm you just draw it
behind the first arm, down to the elbow
and coming back up towards the shoulder.
so after this we'll move on to drawing the legs.
The idea for this guy is that he's going to be
leaping at this guy in the foreground
kind of like, surprising him or something.
So I'm drawing his legs behind that sword
down to his knee.
Since he's leaping, his lower leg is going to be...
you're not going to see it so it's just his knee
and then another shape for his foot
and then his other leg is going to go behind the sword
down to his knee
and then, just to vary it a little bit,
you're going to see some of his lower leg,
right there, and below that is his foot.
This stage of the drawing is all about using
these simple shapes, right?
really easy geometric shapes, circles for joints
and what I like about it is
it's vary easy to erase and find new poses
and you haven't really invested a lot of time
into the drawing
Imagine if you spent maybe ten minutes
or twenty minutes drawing an arm
and it's looking great and there's a lot of
detail in it but you continue your drawing
and you realize that, hey, maybe this position isn't right.
and you want to change it but there's a part of you
that's like, "Man, I spent so long on that drawing..."
and it's almost a lose-lose situation.
The pose isn't strong, in your mind, but you don't want to change it.
But with this method that I often do, I use simple shapes
and I haven't invested a lot of time in it
and there's no detail so I'm not really worried about erasing.
so when I'm searching for the pose, like I'm doing here,
it's not really heartbreaking to erase it.
so here I'm trying to find the correct angle of the sword
and just to capture that feeling of-- he's in mid motion.
It's just a square and two lines for each forearm
and I just keep erasing it, keep changing the angle of the forearm
and the sword, until I find the correct position.
and the same thing goes for the legs.
It's maybe circles for the knees,
you can see that I'm just trying to find the angle
and it's really easy to redraw
and so this drawing [laughs], I really had to struggle
with this sword arm for this guy, and it's really frustrating
and a struggle some times but don't settle for something
when you know it's not working because
you may think that adding detail will save the drawing but
the pose is really the most important thing,
and so here I realize that it starts to feel better
when the arms or at least the fists are further away
from his head so it feels like he's swinging
and the feeling is what I was after.
So I'm pretty happy with this position and now
I'm going to zoom out and you guys can see
the shot, the scene that we have, and even with
just simple shapes and anatomy, the scene has,
in my mind, captured that feeling that I was after
of an up-shot, we have depth between the front guy
and the back guy and the guy in the back
is in mid motion of his swing.
So what I'm doing now is [laughs]
I'm erasing everything and starting all over, no,
what I'm doing now is I'm using my kneaded eraser
and I'm just gently erasing the hard lines
so that what I have left on the paper is what I like to call
"the ghost of an image"
What this does now is it gives me a solid foundation
for the next stage which is going to be
adding in all the detail.
So now I'm going to into a timelapse and I'm just going
to be adding in armor for both of these characters
and I guess what I wanted to talk about was
just the concept of drawing in different stages
and this is something that I learned in college
that I hadn't done prior to school
and so the first stage that we did was, remember,
it was just about finding the pose
we don't think about detail, we just think about simple shapes
and the position of characters
Often, I like to think of it like we're directors for a movie
and our characters are the actors and we're telling them
"okay, maybe you stand there or when you swing, swing like this,
or maybe stand more to the right or more towards the left
or closer or farther"
and we're constantly moving the character around
until we have that framing and positions of characters that we want.
At that point, we don't really want to be thinking about detail
because the details, they don't... I mean they matter
but at that stage they don't matter.
What matters is finding that pose and that camera angle
that's going to give you that feeling that you're after
And then once you add in all the detail, it's like icing on the cake
and you have a strong pose to back everything up.
So that's what I'm doing in this stage... I'm sort of...
I did a video for Evan at the CartoonBlock and in it
I was sort of talking about these concepts and I said that
once you reach this stage, the second stage where you
add in all the details, it's like you're chilling
and it's like smooth sailing because you can turn off
that part of your brain that is worrying about the pose
and you can now focus on all the detail
so when I'm going through the armor here
I'm not really worried about oh, is the arm in the correct position?
and stuff like that because in the last step, the last stage,
I've already decided that, yeah it's working and
I like where it is so I'm just focusing on the armor and the detail.
And this part is really a lot of fun.
You can just focus on drawing texture and detail and
a lot of my inspiration for this armor was from Miyazaki's Nausicaa.
Some of you know Miyazaki. He did Princess Mononoke and Castle in the Sky
and Spirited Away and before he became an animation director
he actually made a manga called Nausicaa and it's really epic
It's super epic, quite brutal too but it's amazing.
And so I've been reading that recently
and I'm getting a lot of my inspiration from the armor
that he drew in that series.
So this guy near to us, I'm thinking more like...
He's more barbaric. He's got sort of a samurai inspired armor and
he's going to be weilding a heavy sword.
And I'm going to try and contrast that with the guy who
has leaped out at him and caught him off guard.
This guy is going to be wrapping up pretty soon
and we'll get drawing on the second guy.
But what I like about Miyazaki's manga is he uses
a lot of cross-hatching and a lot of texture in his drawing
that I don't really see nowadays but when I work on my own story
and my own manga, those are the things that I'm going to want to try and add.
So now I'm working on the guy who is leaping out
at the first character and I'm thinking that he's going to be...
I'm trying to make his armor different than the guy in the front
so he has your typical knight armor but I'm going to give him
a breast plate and on the breast plate I'm going to give him
some kind of insignia, like maybe it's an eagle or a dragon
and then I thought, maybe I'll give him dragonscale armor
which would be very different than the front guy and
maybe kind of cool. So I'm having fun just drawing in all the detail
and when I get to his face, I wanted to mention that recently I had a request
someone gave me, to do a character screaming and
I was going to have this guy screaming but then I thought that
giving him a mask and a hood would be more menacing
and more mysterious, not trying to be lazy or anything
but I just thought it would be more fun to draw
so screaming coming in the future.
Now I'm working on that crazy... those two fists
that were grabbing that sword and I'm not worried at all because
I solved it in the last stage and now I can just worry
about the details of the sword.
I actually looked up a lot of swords from Final Fantasy
just to get inspired and get some ideas for different swords
so this guy is going to have... I guess it's like a saber.
It's a light weapon. It's fast.
And that's going to contrast with the guy who is in front of us
who's going to be weilding more of your typical Final Fantasy
humungous sword, sort of looks like what chefs use to chop vegetables.
Not sure what you call that. uhhh... what do you call that?
That big rectangle knife?
If you guys know, leave a comment and let me know.
So this drawing is wrapping up and hopefully you guys can see
I guess, the process I use and the way, the techniques that I use
when I'm composing a scene-- It's all about the idea first.
What you're trying to capture, and then, use simple shapes
simple anatomy to find the pose because the pose
is really the most important thing
and then once you find the pose, you gently erase it
to leave a ghost to be your foundation for all the detail
that you're going to add and that's going to be the icing,
what's really going to make your drawing sing
and really bring it all together.
and with that, I will wrap up this video guys.
So just wanted to say thanks for watching, subscribing, and -liking- the video.
It really helps me to get my videos out there to more people
so I really appreciate it and I will see you guys next time.
Take it easy!