Learning to Pose (Single and 2 Character)

Start with a very basic figure - you can even have a levely before this where is is just a stick person skeleton

Roughly get your pose down

Reduce the opacity of your first layer and start to add more shape to the body, maybe make the pose a little more dynamic. Here I widened the stance and pushed the stretching arm a little further to give it a feel of more movement

Now we're getting into drawing the actual form. You can use your transform tool to move or scale items to fix proportions. At this stage its still a simple sketch that makes it easy to change details of the pose

Here we're seeing if we want different arm positions.

This is the point where we will be working on the anatomy now that we're happy with the pose and proportions. This is also the point where if anything is giving you difficulty you would start to seek out references. 

For example here I got a reference for the position of the stretching hand

Adding character details and clothes now we know everything is where it should be. Used the ref to draw the hand

And now we're inking over the sketch. 

The main thing I'm trying to show here is that you can do as many rough sketch layers as you want to get to the finished piece, and arm might need its own few layers to get it where you want it to be when you're starting off but as time passes and you get more comfortable -you will be able to skip certain layers.

It also lets you play around with outfits when you have that solid base.

Part 2 - 2 characters

I've done a recording of the next pose so you can see it in motion

Heres a link to the video 

Starting with our stick figure - Ive been working joint to joint and I used 2 different colours which allows for me to be very sketchy if I want but they dont end up muddied together like they would if you used just one colour.

Another tip is to do a separate later for each character so that you can lower the opacity when you need to focus on just one of the figures.

I'm still drawing the blue body to make sure everything is where it should be but ive greatly reduced the pressure im putting on my pen when i do. 

Thsi is also where i realised the legs werent long enough in the sketch so i fixed that issue

For the 2 characters I've reduced how many layers I would use to draw but thats different for each person - normally I go base sketch to finished but thats only because i have been drawing so long and I used to do more when I started out.

Anything that helps your drawing look good and be proportional can ONLY be a good thing.

Refs are a godsend so use them when you need them - don't frustrate yourself trying to figure it out when you could just get a ref.

If youre trying to challenge yourself to draw from imagination then go right ahead but know your limits too. I regularly look poses up for things that I dont know how to draw. 

I went straight to inks for the clothes but you can do those as a sketch first and then ink. 

I also kept the heads and anypart that over lapped on a separate layer so that i could draw them completely first and then erase what I needed.

In the video you can see that I wasnt sue if i wanted Proms face right in against Nocts where his nose you be hidden by Noctis' but decided against it.

I hope this helps! 

If you have any questions please dont hesitate to ask!!