Once grasped and understood, concepts like foreshortening can be great assets in an artist’s stable of skills to use in making their work more dynamic and interesting. In action scenes or superhero figures, foreshortening is one of the principle ways to make the figure pop, jump, or leap off the twodimensional plane of the comic page. There are a few approaches an artist can take to help break down and deal with the issue of foreshortening that can help solve this tricky problem:
Breaking the figure down into separate forms
The best way to start is to break the figure down into its simplest and biggest basic forms: the head, chest, and torso. By keeping the forms simple and geometric at this stage, it’s easier to see them in perspective and deal with the foreshortening of any part of the body.
(above and bottom left) In these sketches Mike demonstrates the stacking principle when drawing an arm. (below) Bret puts the principle into action in this Batman: Shadow of the Bat page. Batman Š DC Comics
Stacking
Next, you can stack the parts of the figure that are foreshortened. Build the figure by stacking the forms on top of each other toward you or forward in perspective. It is important here to not get caught up in the details of anatomy yet, but to stay with the concepts of the bigger masses or forms. In the process of stacking, often some parts may be partially hidden, obscured, or blocked behind the closest part of the figure as it comes forward toward the eye. In this page (at right), penciled by Bret and inked by me, you can see how in almost every panel Bret is pushing the perspective and creating a great foreshortening on some of the figures due to the way he places the camera. The first panel is a great example of stacking the forms first, and drawing specific anatomy second.
DRAW! WINTER 2014
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