neat!

[psocoptera]

This was going to be a "stupid bad web design" post but it turns out that Yahoo movie showtimes, unlike hollywood.com, moviefone, and fandango, is lynx-compatible. Thank you, Yahoo!

(I wonder if I'll stop using lynx if/when I have a shiny new computer/graphical browser that can handle javascript and flash and pages with a thousand little graphic-buttoned links and stuff. I mean, Lynx is so obviously superior, unless you actually have other options ::grin::)

Speaking of bad design, I need to figure out the difference between men's and women's butts. Haha, that sounds really bad - I got comments about my most recent gaming drawing pertaining to the dubiously "womanly" curves on one of the (male) characters. I guess men have flatter butts? This might seem obvious to you, but, like, there are so many things I just never thought about until I was trying to figure out what they would look like cartoonified. "Clothing folds" is actually at the top of this list since so far people have mostly been drawn as if their clothes were painted on (which exacerbates butt-curvature problems). Clothes done properly, though, are like, an entire extra object in addition to the body to try to figure out where they would be and stuff. On the other hand shortcuts like drawing the druid's vine armor directly onto her body-shape result in the impression she's running around more or less naked, which, while more or less traditional for depictions of women in fantasy art,
is not necessarily respectful of her character if the boys are getting shirts and stuff. Perhaps it is time to actually check out some "how to draw" books from the library. Not of course that I should be spending any time on this with a gazillion-page Patterson tutorial in my backpack and umpteen other things I should be doing. But, you know, butts. It's important.

Comments

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

I'm not actually sure that men's butts are really much flatter than women's, except insofar as men, when they put on weight, put less proportionally on the butt. (Unless you're me, and the only place you have any fat at all is, in fact, the butt.) And men definitely tend to have thicker waists, which probably makes their butts look smaller in proportion.

I think that this book was the one we used for costume design, but I'm not sure (and can't find out until the next time I'm in Plattsburgh); if you can find it in a library, it might be helpful for drawing clothes. Or any kind of guide to drawing for costuming or fashion, which will focus on the clothes.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Possibly - I just now found a rugby-scrum picture that leads me to think it was a waist-thickness thing (curvature at the top of the butt) as opposed to the butt per se. (Google image search for "men's butts" turned up, like, 4 hits. Very unhelpful. ::grin::)

Also I wonder to what extent it is a "comics are drawn by het men" thing in that we're used to it being a woman every time we see someone's ass in a cartoon. The "Superman flies with his feet together, Supergirl pulls one knee forward" phenomenon.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

And, of course, at least in superhero comics, everything is stereotyped and exaggerated, so women are more curvy than in real life, and men have smaller butts.

Come to think of it, there's a good place to see examples of drawn clothing: non-superhero comics. Sandman, perhaps. Or maybe Megatokyo, which is conveniently free of color, so it won't be distracting.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Megatokyo is an interesting suggestion. I like paper-comics for the ability to flip through quickly and find different poses - of course I end up doing half of my drawing in class or in the sci library where I don't have my shelf o' comics at hand. Ranma is my big reference for motion effects and action poses when I have it around though. And Phil Foglio for facial expressions, not that so far I've done much with good face expressions but it's definitely something I want to work on, a good face can make an otherwise boring panel work.

[elysdir.livejournal.com]

And if you're going for a cartoonified look -- more abstract/iconic, less detailed/"realistic" -- then it makes sense to look at more cartoony comics than superhero ones. I was going to suggest Amy Unbounded (you do have that, don't you?), but a quick flip through it suggests that Rachel doesn't draw butts per se very often. Still, the women there do tend to flare out around the hips a little more than the men, especially when wearing a belt.

Other black-and-white line-art also seems like a better idea to look at (if that's what you're drawing) than the full-color superhero or even non-superhero stuff. Even Foglio's butts -- I mean, XXXenophile is not necessarily the best place to look if you don't want your women to be over-sexualized, but looking at the somewhat exaggerated version may make clearer how to do a subtler version. On a quick glance through various b&w comics I have handy, it looks like in general the women's hips tend to be wider/curvier, and their butts tend to stick out more in back. In real life I imagine sticking-out-ness is probably partly a question of stance/posture/spine-curvature, and in comics I imagine it partly has to do with sexualizing the women, but it still might be a useful thing to look at.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

No Amy Unbounded, alas. Is on my list of things I should at some point see about reading (do I even need to comment about size of this list? ::grin::). Hee to Xxxenophile... of course there people are mostly naked, and it's occurred to me that men may be expected to wear their pants differently than women, just to complicate things further ::grin::.

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

By the way, Amy Unbounded is several fairly quick reads, and my J. has all of them, I believe. He's nice about lending people stuff, too. :^)

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

result in the impression she's running around more or less naked

I think, then, that you are getting the correct point across. Keep up the good work!

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Well, see, no. If it was my own character, sure. But illustrating someone else's character, there's a general problem of wanting to be true enough to their image of their character that they'll be pleased with the portrayal.
And a specific problem in drawing someone's character as more naked than they should be, because what are you saying by that? If you draw a sexualized portrayal of a female character played by a female player, are you saying it's okay to objectify female characters or the characters of female players? Not to be all weird-feminist-gender-politicky about it, the whole topic of gender representation in role-playing is something I find really interesting so it's going to be something I think about.

[franzeska]

Many men have very flat butts. Japanese women, however, have the flatest butts in the world. This makes me very sad. I like to have something solid to grab onto, and I like the look of tight pants that have something to fill them out.