Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hey guys, it's Mike, and in this video we're going to be drawing a fighting scene and I'm going to show you the principles I use when I'm composing a scene of two characters fighting. So I started off drawing a rectangle, that's going to be the frame of our scene I'm going to start off with dividing the paper into thirds, or this frame into thirds, and I'm going to draw one of our characters on the right third the idea with this scene is going to be one character is going to be leaping at the other, kind of, catching him off guard and it's going to be an up-shot so if you saw the video of drawing characters in perspective in an up-shot, you'll see some of the tips and techniques that we used in that video. So I'm starting with the head, and tilting the shoulders slightly, curving it because it's an up-shot and here we have the general guideline for the up-shot. Remember, it gets more narrow towards the top. Using simple shapes, not focusing on details, this stage of the drawing is all about finding the pose and the best way to do that is to use simple shapes I have the head torso and hips the head is going to be much smaller than normal and the hips are going to be much bigger than normal below the hips I draw the legs and you can already see the angle that I'm after he's slightly tilted and those horizontal lines of the shoulders and the waist are curved like sad faces because it's an up-shot. So next I'm going to draw the shoulder that is closest to us with a curve and normally the elbow, which I'm going to draw with a circle, normally it's at the bottom off the rib cage but I'm going to draw it slightly higher for this view because of the perspective. And for the elbow I just use a circle, very simple. And now coming out at an angle, I'm going to draw the forearm, just two lines really easy and for the hand, it's going to be a square or a rectangle and he's going to be holding a sword and so I'm going to draw the hilt and the sword's going to be angled towards the upper left. I'm not even worried about what kind of sword this is or what the details of it are I'm just worrying about the position and that's all I'm focused on, is the position. to make things easy, oh, first I'm drawing in his other arm again, circle for the elbow and getting more narrow as we head towards the wrist because this arm is going away from us. And just like in my videos on hands, I just try to find the palm shape first and I'm just placing that for the hand. For his head, I'm going to erase it and redraw it because I want to make sure that the head is smaller than normal so we have that perspective going for us. And I also want to point out that his left arm, the top part of the arm is shorter than the forearm on the other side, it's the opposite the forearm is smaller, shorter length than the top part of the arm. So now for the other character, I'm going to draw him on the other third at an angle and for this scene to have a dynamic feel, I want to create depth, so this character is going to be smaller and I drew his head and tilted his shoulders. He's also going to be viewed in an up-shot so just like the first character, I'm going to draw in his shoulder. This time, I'm going to use a big circle for his shouler. Zoom in a little big so you guys can see it And he's going to be mid swing so he's going to be coming out all epic-like, mid swing so his arm is going to be coming across his body using a circle for his elbow, and now his forearm and a square for his hand that is grabbing the sword. So now I'm going to place the sword, just like the other character, thinking about the angle that I want it to have. And I'm leaving room for the other fist which I'm going to place with another square right there, and for that arm you just draw it behind the first arm, down to the elbow and coming back up towards the shoulder. so after this we'll move on to drawing the legs. The idea for this guy is that he's going to be leaping at this guy in the foreground kind of like, surprising him or something. So I'm drawing his legs behind that sword down to his knee. Since he's leaping, his lower leg is going to be... you're not going to see it so it's just his knee and then another shape for his foot and then his other leg is going to go behind the sword down to his knee and then, just to vary it a little bit, you're going to see some of his lower leg, right there, and below that is his foot. This stage of the drawing is all about using these simple shapes, right? really easy geometric shapes, circles for joints and what I like about it is it's vary easy to erase and find new poses and you haven't really invested a lot of time into the drawing Imagine if you spent maybe ten minutes or twenty minutes drawing an arm and it's looking great and there's a lot of detail in it but you continue your drawing and you realize that, hey, maybe this position isn't right. and you want to change it but there's a part of you that's like, "Man, I spent so long on that drawing..." and it's almost a lose-lose situation. The pose isn't strong, in your mind, but you don't want to change it. But with this method that I often do, I use simple shapes and I haven't invested a lot of time in it and there's no detail so I'm not really worried about erasing. so when I'm searching for the pose, like I'm doing here, it's not really heartbreaking to erase it. so here I'm trying to find the correct angle of the sword and just to capture that feeling of-- he's in mid motion. It's just a square and two lines for each forearm and I just keep erasing it, keep changing the angle of the forearm and the sword, until I find the correct position. and the same thing goes for the legs. It's maybe circles for the knees, you can see that I'm just trying to find the angle and it's really easy to redraw and so this drawing [laughs], I really had to struggle with this sword arm for this guy, and it's really frustrating and a struggle some times but don't settle for something when you know it's not working because you may think that adding detail will save the drawing but the pose is really the most important thing, and so here I realize that it starts to feel better when the arms or at least the fists are further away from his head so it feels like he's swinging and the feeling is what I was after. So I'm pretty happy with this position and now I'm going to zoom out and you guys can see the shot, the scene that we have, and even with just simple shapes and anatomy, the scene has, in my mind, captured that feeling that I was after of an up-shot, we have depth between the front guy and the back guy and the guy in the back is in mid motion of his swing. So what I'm doing now is [laughs] I'm erasing everything and starting all over, no, what I'm doing now is I'm using my kneaded eraser and I'm just gently erasing the hard lines so that what I have left on the paper is what I like to call "the ghost of an image" What this does now is it gives me a solid foundation for the next stage which is going to be adding in all the detail. So now I'm going to into a timelapse and I'm just going to be adding in armor for both of these characters and I guess what I wanted to talk about was just the concept of drawing in different stages and this is something that I learned in college that I hadn't done prior to school and so the first stage that we did was, remember, it was just about finding the pose we don't think about detail, we just think about simple shapes and the position of characters Often, I like to think of it like we're directors for a movie