The Beginners Guide to Being a Poser

[Tomi]

Hello there!  I decided to write a tutorial on how to make charaset poses.  These can be useful for making battle charasets, and just your everyday poses for on the map.  There are an infinite number of poses to make, from swimming to climbing to singing.  Today I will be attempting to teach you how to create your own poses.
Making Poses, takes practice. A LOT of practice. Like, a LOT LOT of practice.  Ok, you get the point.  Even with this tutorial you aren’t going to be able to instantly make xJ or Insane poses.  So, read, learn tips, practice, and you too can be a poser. (XD)

Moving Arms and Legs

This is one skill that, in posing, one must master, and never forget.  5 bajillion poses (not like that’s a number) can be made by moving a character’s arms and/or legs.  It is actually not that hard, once you get the hang of it.

To move an arm, start by selecting the arm, as seen below (I will be using Idraw, but I think almost anything will work)



Ok, say we want to make a battle stance for this character.  Lets flip this arm vertically (right click, Flip Vertical) and move it upwards and out a few pixels.


Now, all we have to do is connect his arm to his body.  Draw the outline of his arm first, and then fill in the color.  If you ever get confused on how to draw a pose, get off your chair and do the pose yourself (and I’m not just telling you this to make you look stupid).  This helps you to see how your arm moves, and will often result in a more natural looking pose.



Now lets say that you want to move the other arm too, but in a different way.  You might want him to stretch his arm straight out to his side.  This is basically the same process as we did before, but with one extra tool used.  Select the arm, like before…



Now right click the selection, and choose the option “Rotate”.  A box should come up with a calculator looking thing in it.  Enter in 90 degrees, because to make the arm horizontal, that’s how it needs to rotate.



Now move the arm out a little, and connect it to the body just like you did before...



Or, if you wanted, you could change the rotation to 45 degrees instead of 90, and you character could look like this… (you will need to edit the arm a little so it doesn’t look so, well, screwed up.)

[Tomi]

To pose the legs, the process is almost the same as moving the arms.  To get started, I usually just move the foot to wherever I want it to end up in the pose.



From here, the process is the same as connecting the arm to the body, but now, its editing the leg to stay attached to the body while still connecting to the foot.  Again, standing up and making the pose yourself might help.



Now we can just add a little bend to his other knee (just add a pixel or two to his leg where his knee would be), paste a sideways looking head (from the charaset), and there you have it, a pose for battle.



That’s all for now.  I hope this tutorial will help anyone to begin making poses.  Tune in next time so learn a few ways how to make a very commonly requested pose:  the dead pose.  Thank you and good night!

[maxine]

Ok i will start making a climbing pose for mines right away.. Ill see if it works.. But a question. When you are gonna paste something from another picture (just the head in this case) how do you do that?

do you like open a picture, select the head. Then right click copy, then paste into the other?.

[Bobb]

Good Job! This should help a lot of people, including me. It's really good!!!!

[InsaneJP]

yea i agree with bobb....this is only the beginning of many great tuts to come...then everyone will be able to do there own character poses battle characters and everything!!! you did a real good job in this tut....i hope you intend to make more pose tuts!!

[Tomi]

Originally posted by maxine
Ok i will start making a climbing pose for mines right away.. Ill see if it works.. But a question. When you are gonna paste something from another picture (just the head in this case) how do you do that?

do you like open a picture, select the head. Then right click copy, then paste into the other?.

You just select the head, from either the same or a different picture, and copy and paste it into your pose.

EDIT: And Insane, yes, there are going to be more tutorials.  This was just the bare basics (as you know) and I'll get to more advanced stuff later.

[lonewolf]

Tomi as you now or may not now i make poses
its good to see that you helping to
keep up all the good work you do

[Drace]

Nice tutorial Tomi. Good job!