Creating a character is one of my favorite things to do when drawing. I really like that a good character can emit a lot of energy and emotion. But creating a character can be a very time consuming process. In the following tutorial we are going to see how we can use a model poser for drawing our characters in a very fast and efficient way.
TL;DR 4 Reasons to use a model poser for drawing characters:
A model poser (also known as a posing tool) is a program or an app that let’s you pose 3D character models. Most of the times a model poser will include features like:
To understand what are the benefits of using a model poser for drawing characters let’s first look at the basic process of drawing a character.
For simplicity we are going to decide that our character is a male warrior and we want to draw him in an action pose, prefereably with a weapon.
So the first thing we will want to do is to start sketching small poses of our character. This serves two things:
It’s very important that in this stage you should not invest a lot of time in the poses, just let them flow, don’t add details and start small.
Let’s say we chose a pose that we like, let’s try and make it better. Start exploring with different variants of the character in this pose. Different vairants can be a change of the pose a little (move a limb a bit, or the head - as long as you still feel what you want to feel from the pose it’s fine to edit the pose), different cloths or hair etc.
Like real humans, a character will most likely look like the task it does repetedly. For example, if the character is a manga drawing artist than most probably his physique will be small maybe even boney because in life the task that he repeatedly does is sitting near a desk and drawing manga (The reason I chose a manga drawing artist is because this task is known to take a lot of time). Another example is a sneaky theif, it will look funny if the sneaky theif will look like a big brute warrior because there is nothing sneaky about a big physique character.
Another common thing that artists do when they draw their character is to show their personality traits through the drawing. A good example will be an annoying character will have very sharp edges and a most calm subtle character will have more round edges.
These are the basic process of how to draw a character. Of course we can elaborate on this process a whole lot but these are the basics. Now let’s look at how using a model poser for drawing characters can help us with the task.
Specifically we are going to see how PoseMyArt can help us draw our characters.
PoseMyArt is a free online web application that let’s you pose 3D models. PoseMyArt contains a huge animations and poses library that let’s explore poses really fast. You can also change the light and the camera angle to find a better and a more interesting pose. For more information about PoseMyArt, you can check out the features here.
Click here to enter the webapp
Let’s get back to why you should use a model poser for drawing characters:
PoseMyArt has a huge animations and poses library that let’s you explore poses. I wrote a tutorial on how to explore and find poses really fast, you can check it out here. The main idea is that evey animation is a collection of poses that you can use to your advantage to find poses really fast.
Looking at the original approach we can see how it shortens the time for step one. Instead of drawing a lot of small poses and see what we feel like a good pose, we can see a more finished pose on a real 3D model. A more finished pose means that the pose is already on a 3D model with the right proportions and lights and shadows apply to it, so it’s easier to see how the final drawing will look like if we use this pose.
Tip: Use PoseMyArt to find a pose for your character faster
If we look at the basic second step above we can see that the step involves refinement of the chosen pose from step 1. Instead of drawing multiple versions of the chosen pose we can use PoseMyArt to move the 3D model and see how the pose looks with a little tweaking.
Another thing we can do is play with the lighting of the scene, the angle of the camera, the point of view and add props. All these features help us to see how the final pose will look on the character without drawing a single line yet. I hope you can see how this can be a huge time saver.
While tracing is a little frowned upon in the art community, it’s a huge time saver that you should just forget about. Even professional artist are tracing when they don’t have time and power to invest in their characters (of course it’s not good in the long run). Nobody will ever know that you traced a 3D model to create your character and you should not feel bad about tracing characters.
Instead of drawing the character from scratch you can take a screenshot of the 3D model from PoseMyArt and trace the lines on a drawing software (or even on paper if you can print it).
Tip: Don't ignore tracing
Artist block can be a very hard thing to overcome sometimes. So instead of staying in the artist block and be unmotivated you can play with PoseMyArt to ignite your art inspiration and motivation.
You can play with the different 3D model PoseMyArt offers and you can play with the animations and poses library. PoseMyArt also offers premade scenes that you can explore.
If you still don’t feel like drawing after playing with PoseMyArt you can start tracing a screenshot from PoseMyArt. Tracing can be a great way to start your art engine by doing a task that doesn’t require you to think too much and is relatively easy.
If you still don’t feel like drawing maybe you should take a little break and don’t force it on yourself.
Tip: Use PoseMyArt to ignite your creative engine
Using a model poser for drawing your characters can be beneficial in multiple ways. If I didn’t manage to convince you should use a model poser for drawing I would still recommend that you try to use PoseMyArt just to see and feel what is it all about - who knows, maybe you’ll find a different way PoseMyArt can help you in your art process.
I hope PoseMyArt will help you in your art journey.