Original subtitles

Let's now take a look at the basic forms of the arms and legs.

The great thing about drawing the arms and the legs is that, really the simple cylinder is the basis for

those forms.

However, we really want to use the dynamic form version of a cylinder, because a cylinder on its

own without any directionality,

it's kind of dull, it's kind of boring.

It doesn't seem to show off the movement or the life that is happening in those limbs.

And so what we do is we create this type of shape where we curve the cylinder, and have one end being

larger and another and being smaller of that particular form.

And that gives us that directional flow.

Now the great thing is that, arms and legs, both the upper arm lower arm of leg and lower leg are made

from really this shape.

Just in terms of the basic form. No anatomy just their basic form. And you'd be shocked at the poses

you can achieve just using these basic forms and all the basic forms we've learned so far.

So for example, if I did a quick chest here, center line down the middle, and I wanted to add two arms

to the form, I would add one cylinder that we were bending, and then I'd add another. And on this side

let's change the initial curve.

So instead of this curvature angle, we will go to that curvature angle.

It can then add a different direction to the arm.

So you might imagine that this hand might be facing upwards based on the arm position, and this hand we

may be seeing the palm, the top the top of the palm,

based on the direction happening here. And this leads into something called apposing curves, or opposing

curves theory, which I talk about primarily in module 4, but it's applicable here because both the legs

and arms work in this particular way.

So before when we want to be looking at the legs and the arms in a little bit more detail, let's just remember

that really, we're drawing a cylinder, and the cylinder has an ellipse at the top, a drawn through ellipse

at the bottom, and we just connect the edges and we have a cylinder, we can rotate the cylinder in our

minds.

We have a more of a circle here, slight ellipse and we're just connecting the big one in the foreground

to a slightly smaller one in the background.

As things get smaller as the recede and we have an ellipse at a different angle.

And what we're doing is we're taking this elliptical shape, and making it dynamic by bending the walls,

and changing the size of the initial ellipses that we use to define the outer planes or the top and

bottom planes from the side planes.

All right.

Let's look at arms and legs

once again. We've studied the proportions.

So, hopefully you're you're you've been getting your work done on learning them off by heart, because they help

you measure out how long the arm should be.

And you may have noticed already that, when in particular, when I'm drawing out the forms, I don't tend

to add little joint balls to things, you know, apart from obviously the pelvis and maybe a knee, but generally

speaking I don't add these drawing balls, because really, they're kind of strange to draw on top of when you

have this weird ball in the middle of an arm or a leg.

So what I will do instead, is really just, have the forms be relatively where they should be.

You don't really need those joint balls there, and then proceed to draw in the bent cylinders.

And I can then just really measure the length relative to the ribcage where the ribcage supposedly is,

and then it's just measurement lines, and then draw in the fore arm, which is once again, just another bent

cylinder.

And when you start trying this ,you'll see how relatively easy it is to get fairly convincing looking

arm forms.

With just these very basic shapes. Basic, very basic dynamic 3D shapes. When it comes to the legs, using

that same pelvic or pelvis shape that we used, before kind of like a cup

Similarly, again I don't really use these balls to connect things.

Although, of course if you feel comfortable doing that, by all means go for it.

But, I tend to just draw the ellipse nearby, and bend the form out. Bending those cylinder shapes and (let's just make

this just a little bit smaller) to add

the lower legs. And really

just make it a pose.

So if that's curving that way, the next part will curve that way.

Similarly here, if that's curving that way,

the next part will curve that way.

So this is opposing curves theory. And again I just drawi in that ellipse.

And I have some fairly 3 dimensional and lifelike looking limbs.

Once again, if we don't apply the principle of dynamism to these forms, we get very static, blocky, unrealistic,

non living looking drawings.

So, here's me using the pyramid.

And if you could imagine me trying to figure out how I'm going to attach the leg forms to it, it's no

wonder that a lot of beginners don't end up drawing the anatomy in any kind of particularly realistic

way, because they're trying to conform these bulky forms into anatomy, and the forms don't really have

the dynamism that real anatomy has.

Whereas dynamic forms do.

So I know I'm reiterating this and I know I've said it before.

But I really want you guys to understand how bad this is for drawing, that we really want to stick with

the dynamic forms, particularly, especially in character design. Industrial design-

It's a different story. But for character design for human beings we want to stick with dynamic forms.

So let's draw an arm and a leg.

Just the basic forms once again.

I'm going to bend that cylinder that way.

And bend this cylinder this way, and you can notice that I always have the biggest cylinder at the top,

the bigger Ellipse at the top, and it bends down into a smaller ellipse, and then we will do a leg shape.

This could viably also be a leg shape, but nevertheless, let's do a leg over here.

Same basic form.

And what we want to do is, just imagine it's the skin wrapping around these forms.

So I know that there's a knee cap and so forth.

So what I can do is just add a line, indicate a knee, just use a very simple shape for that.

It's kind of like a very broad "V" in a way, sideways "V".

We follow the form, follow the form down, and I have perhaps not a well-proportioned, but certainly convincing

enough leg. Lacking in of course minute and anatomical details, and certain, kind of, anatomical lines and

bumps and things.

But nevertheless, for our purposes,

Totally fine.

Same thing with the arm.

We know there's an elbow around here somewhere, it's just, you know, it's not the same as the knee cap but

it does protrude from the skin in a similar way to the knee.

You put the knee, the elbow there, follow the lines of our form,

implying some overlap here, because of the way the joints work, and there we have an arm.

And of course our hand would then go here.

So essentially it's the same as the previous two modules that we've done, the previous two lessons that

we've done, where we're doing the head.

Where we're doing the chest, and the pelvis, and the abdomen. We're building basic forms, very basic forms and

then were allowing the forms to determine what our skin layer,

If you wish,

looks like.

And when we start learning anatomy, your mind will be expanded to how easily you can actually drawn anatomy,

because of this basic dynamic form structure.

And also particularly, following the rule of opposing curves

that happens in the forms, in all of the forms.

The head, the chest, the abdomen, the pelvis, and of course the arms and legs; and even the hands, and even

the fingers.

Everything opposes.

All right.

That's it for arms and legs.

Let's move on.