Raw illustrated bodies

Once again, I’m “showing my work” in the making of Yearling’s Bobtail, this time with the character bodies that I originally drew on graph paper. Unlike with the heads, I took several “before” photos of these along the way, so I’ll show those here as well. They provide a nice glimpse into my workflow, I think.

As with facial expressions, I took some time to read up on drawing hands and clothing. But for the rest of the body, I decided to just lean on a basic knowledge of anatomy, along with posing for myself in the mirror. This is why all the bodies resemble mine⁠— even those that ideally would’ve been more shapely or muscular, ha.

As with the heads, I’d already needed to scan these to make the audio webcomic. However, with the bodies, I freely trimmed and edited the scanned images at will. Hopefully, the one collage photo will suffice to show what these drawings look like on physical sheets of paper.

To save paper, I drew some of the props next to the bodies. You’ll also notice that, for those figures where the bodies interconnect or overlap, I’d put them together on the same sheet, which then required me to draw each one to scale right then and there.

Otherwise, I liked keeping them separate, since this allowed me to use one skeleton size for all the adults, one for all the preteens, and one for all the young children⁠— and then just scale them as needed in the SVGs. You can see now why I chose to use graph paper: There was a lot of measurement and math involved, ha.

As you can see, I’d always start with a skeleton, because otherwise I couldn’t visualize the naked body. And I had to sketch out a naked body to visualize how the clothing would drape. This is what happens when you skip art school, I guess, ha. Still, I have no regrets: By learning on my own, I shaved a few years off this project for sure.

Oh, a quick note. I originally meant to show myself carrying my guitar case in the right hand, and my guitar amp in the left. That’s why I look off balance: Tubes are heavy! But then I decided to save time and not draw the amp. Instead, I had myself carry Ana’s bass case, which was originally going to be outside already. So, for the record, Ana, I wasn’t suggesting you’re too lazy to carry your own gear! Ha.

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