Anatomy

One of the elements I had to create for the super hero pieces I am working on is a few illustrations of internal anatomy for the characters. Now, it's been a while since I sat in a life drawing class and worried about how a bicep connects to a deltoid and, even in school, we never got into anatomy in this much depth.

So, I pulled out my old Human Figure text book from school and did my best. But, even then, with a book in my hand to copy, I still had problems.

I've never studied every muscle that makes up a face. Never counted every piece of bone on a human spine. Never peeled back the skin of my characters to figure out how their mouths moved. This was all new to me.

Luckily, the woman directing me on this project knew all of the stuff I didn't know and really helped me out. More than a few times she'd send back detailed notes with markings on it how a certain muscle should stop or how this one overlaps here and not there.

You'd think getting back constant revisions would be a pain in the ass but, with notes as detailed as she sent, it really wasn't bad at all. I made the needed changes and would send her back revisions. Then I'd have to tweek a few more things.

But, it was certainly better than an art director telling me, "it doesn't look quite right to me...can you just fix it? I don't know how...just fix it." I'll take detailed, concise changes over that kind of wishy washy attitude any day.

And, finally, I think I almost got it.

Now I know way more about anatomy that I did when I was even in school.

I'm sure I'll still draw cartoony though. I don't think you can ever beat that out of me.