This is my way of making up for the horribly pathetic male muscle mini-tutorial I put up a while back. I threw that... tutorial together in a few hours and didn't really try to do anything decent with it.
This Tutorial was completed 06-02-02
This tutorial goes step-by-step through a drawing. It is IMPORTANT that you don't just look at the images and copy what you see, but rather, examine the different shapes and understand WHY it is drawn the way it is. You can only learn so much from just copying something. It is important that you learn why the lines are drawn the way they are. If you don't train your mind to examine why things are shaped and drawn the way people draw them, you will never be able to effectivly draw a person or object directly from your mind. You will always be straped down by having to look off of something.
While this tutorial will essentially be showing you how I drew this picture, if you remember the different shapes that are formed by the body parts, and really retain that knowledge, with practice you will be able to use what you learn here to draw different poses and angles on your own. When you've practiced with simple standing poses and feel you have an understanding of the different shapes formed by the body and muscles, then try experimenting with drawing the body from behind, or the side. From there, try more complex poses like siting, running, skipping rope, diving, etc.
On to the tutorial....
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Yup - Circle again. Always a Circle.
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And on to adding more detail to the face. There are countless numbers of different shapes you can use to make more individual faces in anime. In your more guy-oriented anime series (Slam Dunk, Hajime no Ippo, etc) the characters rarely have the stereotypical pointed chin look you find in a lot of other common series. These series tend to vary the jaw and chin shapes a lot between different characters. While this face isn't quite the average anime face, it's still rather close. The primary difference is that the chin is wider and sticks out some from the more shallow jaw.
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And next comes the features. Not really going to far from the norm here either. I made the eyebrows a little thicker then I usually do - which is common among more masculine characters.
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Now we're starting to get somewhere.
First off, I drew an oval showing not only the width of the shoulders, but also the thickness. You've got to remember that there is quite a bit of depth at the base of the neck and top of the shoulders. Drawing an oval here, instead of just the basic line can help prevent your character from looking flat and two-dimentional.
Since this character will be rather muscular, the neck rounds up at the base of the shoulders. See how there is a upwards curve at the base of the neck - this is caused by a muscle called the Trapezius. This muscle maintains the shoulder position (like when you pull your shoulders up or back). Also note that the neck should be a little thicker then your average-build character.
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Next I got down and draw the torso and hips. In past tutorials I have shown a guide for the ribcage here but in more recent times, I have pretty much stopped useing that guide. I have found it complicates my drawings a lot and it's not useful enough to be practical.
Instead I've found that drawing a bean-shape torso helps. If you look at the profile example to the right, you'll see that the torso is not straight up and down. Rather when we stand, the spine is usually curved as seen here. Stand up and try standing while keeping your body straight virtically - now reach behind you and feel your back - is it straight or curved? Remember this when you draw in the future and you'll have much more natural looking figures.
The next note I'll mention is one of proportions. For the longest time, I'd draw a picture and think it looked fine proportion-wise until the day afterwards when I'd look at it and suddenly I'd see that the head looked way too big for the body - or the guy just looked short. This was because I wasn't really paying attention to the proportions as I drew.
The torso, from shoulders to the bottom of the butt is around the same as two to two and three quarters of the head. It can vary depending on how tall your character is, but it should always end up somewhere around that figure.
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Long picture here. Here's another point where I'm gonna make you stand up.
....I'm serious - do it! Okay - lean a small bit to one side so you shift your weight onto one of your feet. Now if you're standing relaxed this is uaually what you do. We rarely stand relaxed with our weight equally balanced onto both feet. When you shift your weight onto one of your feet your hips change the direction they're leaning. Which ever side your weight is on, will be higher then the relaxed one. The weight of your body is pushing down, and that leg is pushing up since it has the force of the ground to push back. So that hip is tilted higher, while the other is relaxed lower.
In this picture, I decided to have him leaning on his right leg, and have his left leg bent back a little. I drew an oval to show a cross-section of his hips tilted. This isn't nessecary as a guide if you don't need to, I just drew it as an example to all of you.
Let's talk perportions again. The top half of the legs are shorter then the bottom half, but not by too much. The top half, from the top of the hips to the top of the knees are just under two head-lengths. going from the top of the knees to the ankles is about two and a half heads.
It's important to remember that the hips are included in the leg. This picture (taken from the female complex poses tutorial) shows that the legs bend from the hips and it's nessecary to remember this if you want to effectively show bent legs.
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