I Cant Stress Enough The Importance Of Stretching Your Hands, And Forearms Every Morning And Every Evening,

I can’t stress enough the importance of stretching your hands, and forearms every morning and every evening, spend 5-10 minutes going through a stretching routine. These are very easy to do, takes little time to do them. It’s VERY common in all animation studios. Conditions can slowly develop, the most typical one is Repetitive Strain Injury, it’s a prevalent condition resulting from overusing the hands to perform a repetitive task, such as typing, clicking a mouse, writing, and of course drawing. In simple medical terms, repetitive strain injury (RSI) stems from prolonged repetitive, forceful, or awkward hand movements. The result is minor damage to muscles, tendons, and nerves of the neck, shoulder, forearm, and most commonly hand and wrist, which can cause pain, weakness, or numbness. If you’re feeling some pains, tingles, weakness, or numbness in the wrist/forearm; one of the best ways to heal quickly are ‘Contrasting Baths’. What crazy voodoo am I speaking of? A couple different physiotherapists and massage therapists had recommended this technique to me several years ago, and for anyone I knew that tried it, they all say the results are fast and effective. Commonly used by carpal tunnel suffers, it’s a method of treating muscle soreness, swelling and inflammation, it’s also known as Hot/Cold Immersion Therapy. You can use the double sink in your kitchen at home, if you don’t have one, then get your hands on two very large identical bowls, it needs to be big enough to submerge your entire forearms from wrist to elbow. Fill one up with ice cold water (with a couple dozen ice cubes floating in there). The other with very warm water, not tea-kettle boiling hot water, just hot tap water, or as warm as you can handle, no sense in burning yourself of course. Have a stop watch or clock ready, and submerge your arms for 30 seconds in the hot, then switch to doing 30 sec. in the cold, and repeat a few times back and forth, 30 sec. a piece. After only a few times you’ll notice the hot water getting cooler and the cold water getting warmer, so then the technique grows to be less effective, but by then, the job is done. The idea is that the extreme heat and cold contracts and expands your blood vessels, promoting greater blood flow to circulate and flush through your arms, and increased blood flow is what aids in healing faster! Enjoy!

[Source]

For artists and animators. Take care of your body and your body will take care of you.

The PDF version of this can be found [Here]. Stick it up in your work station. Keep yourself healthy.

by any chance could you do a lil tutorial/process of how you draw limbs in different poses? esp. legs/thighs, your legs always look so jaunty and charming i love it but i never know what to, ,, ,,, do with mine, like where to put them so

Okay! I’m going to try to answer this best I can, but before I do, please remember I am just a humble animation student and by no means a professional artist or a seasoned expert, so this might not be the correct way to do things or be extremely accurate. This is just how I do it, and a couple tips I’ve picked up from teachers at school.

First of all, getting familiar with the anatomy of legs helps a lot! (I know this is the dreaded answer to every art question) I don’t know too much about the muscles of the legs other than the basics, so I don’t talk about them here because I don’t want to look like an idiot. They’re very worth studying though, especially the muscles that form the inside of the thigh and back of the calf.

Those are some leg studies I did from life in class last year, with the key parts labelled.

Chances are you’ve tried to draw legs and??

Unless you’re going for a certain style, legs that look like straight tubes or 90 degree angles are gonna look a bit weird.

As you can see with the life drawings above, legs have certain natural curves and rhythms to them! None of the bones in the legs are straight or tubular, so your legs should not be either.

Sorry for the really mediocre pelvis it’s not my strong suit oh god. It’s easy to characterize the legs as something like this:

Remembering that the knee is a hinge joint and that it has a sort of curved offset from the upper leg to the lower leg really helps.

So when you keep that offset in mind and apply some curves over the muscle and fat layered on top of those BEAUTIFULLY RHYTHMIC bones, you get dynamic flow in your legs. The hip (trochanter), kneecap (patella) and ankle (fibula/tibia malleolus) are good landmarks to keep in mind.

So by applying some curves, you get a softer/more dynamic/rhythmic feel to the legs that makes your figure look a lot less static even if they are standing entirely still. It’s also worth noting most people shift their weight onto one hip or another, position their feet weirdly, etc etc.

Hope that helps!

Source: AuroraCarina-Chan

A coolio fuck-ton of female arm angle references.

Credit goes to melsrefs (on tumblr). You should flood Mel’s inbox with fanmail so s/he’ll make more of these epic references.

How to Make Your Art Look Nice: Thumbnailing

It’s here! For those artists who spend loads of time trying to figure out why their art is not coming out the way they want it to be, making thumbnails (or making studies) is the thing for you! It’s also great of getting rid of the habit of zooming in.

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Mindsets |  Reference and Style | Color Harmony | Contrast

will this help? it’s just my own way of doing things though, and using references really helps too; it’s hard to draw from memory alone. also, knowing the 7 or 8 head proportion of the body is useful as well