#that depict fat bodies realistically

[maked-artyshenanigans]

So, I saw this image on Facebook, and it was supposedly showing what Queen Nefertiti would have looked like in real life:

Now, I thought this AI generated garbage was just truly terrible on a number of levels; first off, she looks wayyyyyy too modern - her makeup is very “Hollywood glamour”, she looks airbrushed and de-aged, and as far as I’m aware, Ancient Egyptians didn’t have mascara, glitter-based eyeshadows and lip gloss. Secondly, her features are exceptionally whitewashed in every sense - this is pretty standard for AI as racial bias is prevalent in feeding AI algorithms, but I genuinely thought a depiction of such a known individual would not exhibit such euro-centric features. Thirdly, the outfit was massively desaturated and didn’t take pigment loss into consideration, and while I *do* like the look of the neck attire, it's not at all accurate (plus, again, AI confusion on the detailing is evident).

So, this inspired me to alter the image on the left to be more accurate based off the sculpture’s features. I looked into Ancient Egyptian makeup and looked at references for kohl eyeliner and clay-based facial pigment (rouge was used on cheeks, charcoal-based powder/paste was used to darken and elongate eyebrows), and I looked at pre-existing images of Nefertiti, both her mummy and other reconstructions. While doing this, I found photos of a 3D scanned sculpture made by scientists at the University of Bristol and chose to collage the neck jewellery over the painting (and edited the lighting and shadows as best as I could).

Something I see a lot of in facial recreations of mummies is maintaining the elongated and skinny facial features as seen on preserved bodies - however, fat, muscle and cartilage shrink/disappear post mortem, regardless of preservation quality; Queen Nefertiti had art created of her in life, and these pieces are invaluable to developing an accurate portrayal of her, whether stylistic or realistic in nature.

And hey, while I don't think my adjustments are perfect (especially the neck area), I *do* believe it is a huge improvement to the original image I chose to work on top of.

I really liked working on this project for the last few days, and I think I may continue to work on it further to perfect it. But, until then, I hope you enjoy!

Remember, likes don't help artists but reblogs do!

[lackadaisycats]

Hello! Would you happen to have any recommendations for realistic anatomy books on humans (for art purposes)? A lot of the online anatomy references are very exaggerated and the models have only 'ideal' body types and don't depict any others (E.g. Online male anatomy references are extremely buff for no reason). Thank you for the help :)

I do have a small collection of anatomy-for-artists books, but honestly, those are also populated predominantly with people who look like living Greek sculptures. So, I asked around a bit for both book and online sources. Here are a few things:

Height Weight Chart -- A library that people have contributed multitudes of their own photos to. Some people took turnaround photos in form-fitting clothes. Some are just one-off snapshots of people in street clothes. But, both of those things can be useful in their own way, and there certainly are a lot of body types here. (Thanks for the link, Fable).

------------------------------------------------------ AdorkaStock -- Features a whole free pose gallery containing a really excellent array of varied bodies. The photos generally focus more on form than costume, and if anything, the extremely sculpted bodies you tend to see in other stock libraries are de-emphasized here.

------------------------------------------------------

Satine Zillah -- An expansive library of downloadable photo packs. Most of them feature athletic or thin body types, many are heavy on costuming, but there are some that focus on more variety if you take time to scroll through (elderly bodies, plus-size bodies, people with dwarfism, etc.)

------------------------------------------------------

Morpho -- I know a lot of people swear by these books by Michel Lauricella. Morpho: Fat and Skin Folds in particular seems to cover some ground that a lot of other anatomy/pose lessons just skip right over. Looks like it's available as an ebook too.

I hope that helps some! I'm sure there are other resources out there, though. If anyone has some solid recommendations, please leave them in the comments!

[bonefall]

Warrior Bites: Dietary Needs

[ID: A fish carcass, bird carcass, and mouse carcass on a stone slab.]

Are you wondering how much prey a Clan needs a day? What they should eat to stay healthy? Why food processing is useful at all? All the answers to these questions and more, contained within a general guide to dietary needs for your Warrior Cats!

As an obligate carnivore, a cat's entire diet revolves around processing meat. More specifically, the ideal diet should be 55% protein, 45% fats, about 1% to 3% carbs, with the remainder being various micro-nutrients. You can expect the average 10-pound warrior to need 350 calories per day, about 3.5 mice on average.

I've also included a section talking about obesity, which dives into how canon's depiction of it is both harmful fatphobia and wouldn't make sense from a cat perspective. It also discusses obesity in realistic cats; and how you're free to choose the realism on that aspect.

Below the cut;

Caloric Intake

Nutrition

Food Processing

On Obesity

Caloric Intake

The general rule for how much a cat needs to eat is that an active, non-neutered tom will need about 35 calories per pound of their own body weight, per day, just to remain the weight they are.

That means that the average warrior, assuming they are 10 pounds, will need 350 calories a day.

Kittens, pregnant and nursing cats, and large warriors will need to eat more than average. Neutered cats, elders, and clerics/medcats will eat less. There are calculators online for determining how much an individual will need, but you can estimate how much an entire Clan will need just by taking 350 and multiplying it by population!

Assuming the average population is about 30 cats, that's 10,500 calories to feed a Clan for a day! To put that in perspective, that many calories would feed 7 large humans. If you felt like fighting a group of angry cats to steal their day's worth of mice, I mean.

Generally speaking, land prey will have a caloric value around 5 calories per gram. Aquatic prey is significantly lower, around 4 calories per gram. Birds will be just below 6 calories per gram. To find out how many cats a piece of prey will feed, or how many pieces a cat will need that day, take the category and multiply by the prey's weight in grams.

So for example, the average house mouse is 20 grams and it is land prey, meaning its caloric value is around 100 calories! A warrior will need 3 and a half mice a day to stay healthy, and a Clan will need 105 mice daily to support 30 cats.

105 mice may seem like a lot, but remember that a wild rabbit is 1,800 grams on average which means 9,000 calories. 2 big pieces of prey will feed the whole Clan, with leftovers.

Those estimates include every part of the animal. Cats eat organs, small bones, and even skin. Skeletal muscle, or "fillets" in reference to fish, is so low in calories that it's typically somewhere between 1 kcal to 1.5 kcal per gram. That's what you're buying in the supermarket; but wild animals don't usually cut their food into choice strips.

(unless you're writing a clan that does food processing of course!)

QUICK FACTS

Average warrior will need 35 calories per pound of weight

10 pound warrior needs 350 calories a day

350 x 30 cats = 10,500 calories to feed a Clan for a single day

Birds provide the most calories per gram, land prey the middlemost, and aquatic prey the least.

Calculate calories in prey by taking the weight, converting to grams, and multiply by 4, 5, or 6 depending on broad category.

If you're having trouble feeding a Clan on small animals, look at bigger prey like rabbits and trout.

Muscle fillets are inferior to organ meats and have a much lower caloric value.

Nutrition

Not all food is the same. The more important thing to consider about any particular meal is NOT its calorie count, but its nutritional value. This is especially important to cats because protein is not stored as fat. If the body has no immediate use for it, it's flushed out.

Since cats should not eat more than 3% carbs, ALL of their fat stores will need to come from fat.

The ideal piece of meat would be at least 55% protein and 45% fat. Every individual species will have a different ratio, and more importantly, individual cuts will have a different ratio.

Skeletal muscle has a higher ratio of protein to fat. Organ meat, also sometimes called "offal," will have a more balanced ratio. That said, nearly all meat skews towards protein. PURE fat is very hard to find on the sorts of animals Clan cats hunt, and must be carefully divided, collected, or processed to make sure all warriors are getting proper nutrition.

I'll be going more in-depth with dietary fat at some other time, as this guide is meant to just be an overview! Just know that some Clans will need to eat MORE food to stay healthy because of this.

Cats need more than the "macronutrients" to stay healthy. They can't JUST rely on the juiciest cuts of meat to keep their health intact, they also need several vitamins and minerals to support their body functions, and avoid getting a deficiency.

Here's some of the important micronutrients, where to get them, and what happens they don't get enough;

Vitamin A: Livers, mealworms, eggs This is one of the most important micronutrients in a cat's body, used for practically everything. Without this, their coats will grow dull, and their joints stiff, and they'll start to go night-blind. In a severe state, they'll start to lose the ability to heal skin lacerations and die. Pregnant cats and kittens need more of this than usual, but it IS also possible to get vitamin A poisoning from getting too concentrated of a dose.

Calcium: Bones, eggs With a calcium deficiency, the warrior will feel stiff and sore, and experience painful muscle spasms. Most cats will simply crunch the bones of small prey and never have to worry about this, but if your cats cook or scavenge, they have to be told to NEVER eat the bones of a roasted bird. Because bird bones are hollow and cooking makes them brittle, they can splinter and cause fatal internal bleeding.

Thiamine: Trout, boar meat, mealworms, eggs Called a Fish Seizure because raw carp and raw bream contains thiaminase, which will destroy thiamine in the body. Lack of thiamine will cause neurological issues, such as the aforementioned seizures, general confusion, memory loss, and muscle weakness. This can be counterracted by eating trout, which is so high in thiamine that there's a theory that carp evolved it specifically to eat salmonids better.

Potassium: Trout, boar meat, mealworms, eggs As cats get older, they begin needing a lot more potassium for their bodies. It's a very common micronutrient found in most meat, but elders should get the first bite of special snacks "out of respect" which helps keep their potassium level up. Without it, they become very weak.

i feel like that evil struthiomimus from land before time with how many times i typed eggs

QUICK FACTS

The ideal ratio of a cut of meat is 55% protein 45% fat

Organ meat > Muscle meat

Micronutrients are important

But micronutrients can also cause poisoning if, somehow, they're too concentrated (very hard to come across concentrated micronutrients without the science of chemistry tho. Like if a cat swallowed a vitamin gummy.)

Food Processing

"Food Processing" is when you do something to your food before you eat it. Just a little bit of care is going to go a LONG WAY when it comes to health of the warrior.

Cats that eat raw meat the way canon warriors do are almost guaranteed to get worms. Roundworms, hookworms, and tapeworms are all passed through the infected tissue of rodent prey, and in fish, roundworms, tapeworms, and flukes can pass through raw meat.

All parasites do something a little different, but most digestive worms aren't fatal unless the cat is sick or a kitten. However, nearly ALL of them screw around with digestion, making the cat need to eat more just to stay healthy, or causing stomach irritation. Some of them can even pass in milk, infecting a suckler's nursing kits.

The easiest way to reduce this kind of infection is simply to slice the prey open from mouth-to-butt, Tigerstar-style, and hook and lift out the GI tract before eating. There's nothing in that worth eating raw anyway. It can just be discarded, or cleaned out and used to case tiny sausages! But it's only a reduction; there's still a risk of catching worms from raw meat.

There's also always the possibility of getting salmonella poisoning.

Many believe that cats are immune to this, but that's not true! Carnivores just have a shorter GI tract than omnivores and herbivores, so salmonella spends less time in their gut and ergo has less chance of causing an infection. It still happens, ESPECIALLY when cats hunt songbirds.

Nothing can be done about salmonella in raw meat, besides eating it as quickly as possible. It's innate to the bodies of birds and reptiles, and usually found on raw eggs too.

Some animals are small enough to be dried and carried around as rations, such as minnows or grasshoppers. Others could be sliced up into strips, and marinated in spices like valerian or catmint for an extra boost of energy. It could also be worthwhile to cut the pelt off a particularly soft animal, like a mole, to dry and keep as bedding material.

All of the above examples of food processing are possible without fire, but if your cats DO have fire, they will have a DRASTIC increase to the quality of their health.

Such as;

Cooking will almost completely eliminate those foodborne parasites. Their eggs don't survive extreme heat.

No more salmonella poisoning! GONE! Cooking is the only way to eliminate this!

It can increase caloric absorption from anywhere between 20% to 50%. Our example warrior who needed 3.5 mice a day could suddenly need one less mouse; and even a meager 20% drop in how much the entire Clan needs saves 2,400 calories a day. 24 whole mice!

I HAVE TO STRESS HOW BIG THAT IS. You save anywhere from 2/10 to 5/10 successful kills.

Thiaminase is destroyed by cooking, making bream and carp healthier and reducing "fish seizures."

It allows for fats to be processed and stored as tallow, lard, and oil, so it can be added to other dishes to make them both healthier and tastier.

Most food preservation requires fire in some way; by heating, jellying, boiling, etc. The only other two ways to reliably store food is by having access to a ton of salt, which is hard for most non-coastal clans to acquire, or vinegar, which is so acidic it's a notorious cat-repellent.

While cooking can also destroy some micronutrients, its benefits FAR outweigh any potential "strengths" of raw food. Destroying micronutrients is also not always a bad thing; as TOO MANY micronutrients can cause poisoning. Fire-using Clans will be more likely to "seek" micronutrients than non-fire Clans as a result, though they probably won't recognize the science behind a hankering!

QUICK FACTS

Worms. Basically unavoidable if your cat's eating like a canon warrior.

Some parasites can spread through milk.

Slicing and lifting out the GI tract can significantly reduce the chance of catching worms.

Salmonella can only be eliminated with cooking

Cooking will drastically increase the quality of a Clan's health, if your cats are advanced enough to figure out fire.

Warriors need to hunt a LOT less prey, and can store that prey, if they have fire.

Fire-using Clans will intentionally try to put more types of food in their diets and get 'cravings.'

On Obesity

Warrior Cats is not a realistic series. The boundary that any particular writer draws between humans and warrior cats is completely arbitrary. The series itself follows no sense of realistic genetics, regularly shows the cats using herbs that would poison them, and gives the characters human-centric morals like monogamy and paternal involvement.

So when it comes to being fatness in your project, please keep that in mind. You do not need too follow realistic cat weight distribution, if that's not what your project about. That said, let me tell you about humans vs cats in this department!

Humans have a massive diversity of weight distribution, with varied genetic predispositions to gaining and losing weight. The shame, bullying, and medical discrimination that comes with fatphobia is a LOT more harmful than being fat itself, and the causes of the "obesity crisis" are ridiculously more complicated than "ppl r snorking 2 much food".

Realistic cats aren't the same way.

When REAL cats are fat, that's VERY bad. It's a sign they are being fed the wrong things by humans, or live somewhere that they are able to eat what they shouldn't. They just don't have that same diversity in fat distribution that humans do. Because of how adipose tissue secretes certain hormones, feline obesity is like a chronic inflammatory disease which can cause arthritis, bladder stones, hepatic lipidosis, and more.

But with that in mind, fatness should be perceived very differently even in the most realistic settings. In comparison to humans;

It is harder for a wild cat to put on weight. Most of what they're eating is raw protein, actively trying to fill the 45% of daily fat intake they need to stay healthy. Protein isn't stored as fat, it's immediately discarded by the body if there is no use for it. A cat would need to be taking an INSANE amount of prey to start becoming dangerously overweight. Housecats are often fed human food, which has carbohydrates. Low-quality cat food will also use carbs as filler. High carb food is VERY bad for them, since they're only supposed to have 3% carbs at most. This is one of the reasons why it's easy for pet cats to become overweight.

Realistic cats don't look start looking overweight until they are significantly obese. Most of their fat is stored around their ribs and internally, unlike humans with our thick hips and round bellies, and they are covered in a naturally sagging pelt of fur. It's not as obvious with them. Visually, weight will be noticed best from a bird's eye perspective, unlike humans where it's apparent at every angle.

Putting on the fat that CAN be acquired is ridiculously important 3.5 raw, whole mice a day, per cat, are needed to fill their basic dietary requirements. There are going to be days or months especially during winter where they might be below that number, and that stored fat is going to be lifesaving. Bulking up is actually a big deal!

So not only is how canon treats overweight characters full of malice, it's full of lazy malice. It makes no sense from a realistic standpoint for wild cats to develop an association between fatness and greed or laziness. It's important, hard work for them to acquire it!

Though the Clans are notoriously xenophobic and kittypets are more likely to be overweight, it still doesn't make sense from a realistic cat perspective to be fatphobic in the same way as canon. It's more likely they'd see fat housecats as having "unearned" weight given to them by humans, like they're cheating, or they might be disdainful of how much junk food they eat, or pitiable because it's a sign of a bad twoleg... or just "sour grapes" variety jealousy ☕.

Bottom line is that there's a LOT you can do here which is better than canon's vicious bullying. The writers just lifted British cultural disdain for fat people and put it into the books. They simply did not think it through.

So please do what they didn't, and just put a little extra thought into how your project is going to view fatness! Consider if fatphobia is even a theme you need in your text.

As stated, you do not even have to write weight in your cats as being realistic in this way! I encourage you to pick and choose what's most fun and fitting for your own work. I personally give my characters a more human weight distribution, simply because I want to spite canon and be more body-positive. I am a fat people and you can take Bumble's big chunky bod from my cold, dead hands.

You can choose to make your work however you'd like, and now with this guide, you can have an easy reference for what your cats should eat! Thank you, StarClan, for this prey <3

[nebulousmedic]

Hihi! Love your art! I'm quite curious though. If there a specific reason why you draw sniper the way you do? For instance you have more darker skin, is that perhaps to make him look Maori? Either way I freaking love the way you draw him! (sorry if this offends you any way)

I'm not Maori or even remotely dark skin (I hate the sun), I have nothing to be offended about lmao

About his skin color: I just imagine that he... Spends time in the sun, but I'm too lazy to draw the tan lines or I just think that they don't fit the drawing, so I leave them out unless I'm going for a more realistic style

His eyes: the most striking feature of his design, I think. Besides from me thinking that heterochromia is really cool, I find it would make quite a bit of sense, like why always hide your eyes (even indoors, god) from other people? it's my headcanon that he kind of got bullied for it on his childhood, and when he was gifted a pair of shades he not only found himself looking very cool, but he also found that people didn't really notice his condition, so he just decided that he'd wear them pretty much all the time. He uses his shades to hide that he's high as well but, yknow

Facial hair: not much to see here, really. giving him a couple longer hairs on his upper lip and chin just kinda makes him look more rugged and feral

Hair: Come on, how could I not give him a mullet? in the game and the comics he already has a sort of.... mullet-y thing going on, so I just like to make it way longer, it makes him appear even more rugged and feral in my opinion. I will usually vary the length depending on what I feel like drawing, no particular reason for that specifically

Clothing: I want to make him look like a cowboy most of the time, but his comfortable and very casual attire is more dad-esque, I think? I want all the outdoor vibes, honestly. The hat and the shades are always a must, but you may notice that I tend to depict him with a fang pendant, I just headcanon that it's a trophy he kept from a particularly arduous hunt

As for his body, I like to make him sort of... Sharp-looking? To make him stand out from the other mercs a little more. He's tall, and a little gangly, but not skinny, he has muscle and a little fat on him. I also like to make him the hairiest out of all the mercs, because he deserves it

Color palette: I really like giving him a very warm and cozy sort of color palette, it just kinda fits with his vibe, I guess? certainly fits with the "cowboy" theme that he has going on

I want to note that my style for him specifically is inconsistent at times because I just cannot make up my mind on how to draw his facial features, but the one thing that I do keep is his nose and his ears, long and sort of triangular

Overall I think I just kinda took the canon Sniper and exaggerated him even more? Cowboy-ified him, maybe? Anyway, yeah, that's it that's why I draw him the way I do

I have changed how I draw some of the mercs since I made this but these are my pseudo references for them, if you're curious.

[wachtelspinat]

I have a serious question! What references did you use to learn to draw Roadhog's body type? It's my first time trying to draw a body like his and I'm STRUGGLING. I'm using your art as reference because your depictions of him are godly, but I could use any tips you have. He's my babygirl and I want to be able to do him justice 💓

hey ! good question and thank you very much for your kind words <3

i've been drawing body types like his not enough to say very comfortably that i know what i'm doing, this is mostly due to me not having done a lot of studies in this regards (i wanna change that)... but i've been trying to push it ever since the midnight crew days (since i love drawing our fabulous boy hearts boxcars and he's kinda the same category)...

i kind of looked at various references through out the years, starting with concept art from bioshock 2...

... to pictures of strongmen (they sometimes lack roadie's gut but pictures of them are amazing for arms, the chest area, necks, backs and all that)

(these are dennis kohlruss, eddie hall and rongo keene as examples)

this is older but you get the idea, just to see how things flow when there is more than just skinny muscles and skin.

sometimes it helps just tracing their ingame models, altho i'm more often changing a bit here and there (mostly roadie's giant hands... they’re just not... they just don't go with my stupid idea to go more realistic lol) but i think it's a good way to get a feeling of his body dimensions, especially length of legs, torso etc.

as a general tip i'd say don't be afraid to experiment! you know how to draw a skinny leaf of a guy? try adding more volume to it, try defining muscles through layers of skin. always google ref if you need, you don't know how a double chin rounds exactly? or how some skin folds at the sides move when twisting the torso? google it, or make ref yourself, see what your body does. because in the end we're all consistent of the same parts, it's just a matter of dimensions and volume i think

there are also a LOT of amazing artists out there i draw inspiration from drawing the best, beefiest bears... and yes i mean that in a literal way... they are mostly furry artists on the nsfw side of things, hence i'm not linking them here (i'm sorry)... but in general... idk if you're on twitter or what your preferences are, but a lot of artists specialize in drawing roadhog-type-o-guys and they're so much better at this than i am. and it's not just artists... to be perfectly honest a lot of people upload very good ref on twitter in form of photos of them it's just... mostly... nsfw x') last but not least, i can always recommend the book "morpho fat and skin folds" for certain things

hope this helped a little and if you got any more questions or idk, need help with a certain pose?? feel free to ask

[drill-teeth-art]

How do you draw fat, thick, and Chubby bodies?

I hope this helps you out as a solid starting point!

But basically what you need to know is that good stylization of fat (or anything) involves a solid understanding of it. This doesn't mean you have to go out and paint super realistic portraits of fat people for years and years. You don't even have to work super realistic if you don't want to! But I would strongly encourage you to start with reference instead of work that's already stylized. You can work up to studying and incorporating the way other artists you like draw fat once you have a bit of observation foundation done. Just basically look at your work, references, and figure out how to depict the subject better using your references.

And I'll be real mainstream media is really really bad at showing or depicting fat bodies in live action and cartoons. So you'll likely gain a better appreciation of fat bodies when you actually spend some time observing and learning about them in references.

[squeeneyart]

I’ve always been really impressed by how well you handle proportions and anatomy and realistically depict people with different physical traits. (And your art just keeps improving in that respect!) I also love how you convey emotion through the characters’ expressions and body language. Even in a simple pose, or a thumbnail sketch, there’s always such a clear sense of what they’re feeling, which I think is really cool.

Took me too long to answer this, but thank you!! I find gesture and expression to be some of the most fun aspects of drawing people, so I'm glad to hear that it comes across! Hopefully I'll continue to expand the variety of things I can draw, haha

I make no promises that this sketch has any of the characteristics you were complimenting me on, but have some dudes! Thanks again for the nice ask!

[Image description: A greyscale digital sketch of Jonathan Sims, a slightly chubby, darker-skinned man with various scarring and short-cropped light hair, and Martin Blackwood, a fat light-skinned man with long light hair. Martin is laying on top of Jon with his head on Jon's chest. Jon is up against a pillow and looks down at Martin while poking at his cheek., his other hand on Martin's back. Martin blushes with a sweat drop on his forehead.

Jon: Can I help you?

Martin: No.

Jon: Need a lie down?

Martin: ... Yeah.

End ID]

[iocity]

I just saw someone call Baroque the “fat lady period” on yt and it pissed me off. Let me begin this post by saying idgaf if someone is fat, I AM FAT. Being fat is not inherently bad and evil and blah blah blah whatever fatphobes say. The problem with the post is that 1) women specifically were targeted and 2) the female bodies portrayed in the Baroque period are very normal and typical female bodies. Nothing was said about the depiction of MEN in Baroque, which also widely had softer features and forms, and more fluid expressions and movements. So why are women the only fat ones?? Despite the bodies depicted being very normal, and them being flatteringly anatomically realistic (despite being AT TIMES softer than real bodies around the shoulders and such), their bodies are fat because… ?? Because the artist or viewer reviewing the work doesn’t have the skill to draw a real woman, and thus they draw the form that they think a woman’s body should take? Yes, drawing a muscular fit body is nice and takes skill, but muscular and fit does not equal unrealistic and idealized. A woman can be muscular with a tummy, or with bigger arms, or with skinnier hips, or saggy boobs (or, hey, with a body bigger than a size 0 because being muscular comes in more weights than 100-110). Just because someone has never actually seen a woman’s body in its natural state, doesn’t automatically make the person being viewed fat. It just means the viewer needs to get better at their craft, and fix their fucked up perspective of what a woman’s body should be. If anything but rigid and stiff (ex. boobs that are perfect semi-circles that sit oddly high) is fat, then maybe just fucking get good noob.

[bluegekk0]

could you explain how you draw fpk? he looks like a very shaped beast /pos

Hm, I'm not sure how to explain it exactly. But I suppose I could talk about my thought process for his design and how I portray him.

My main sources of inspiration for him are reptiles and mammals, as time went on I definitely started to lean more into the latter. Because he's covered in skin instead of scales, his body is very soft, and I try my best to emphasize that in my art. With his additional fat, I also look at fat reference to make sure it has the proper shape, softness and physics.

It's also worth mentioning that his design changed over the year, he was a lot more reptilian and sharp when the AU started, so that also affected my drawing process for him. A big change was to his proportions - his head used to be a lot bigger, his legs shorter and his arms smaller. His tail was also quite thin, and his belly was closer to what you see on kittens than how I draw it now (which unfortunately also made him look swollen, or even pregnant, and since that wasn't my intention, I decided to change how I depict it). His proportions are a bit closer to a small person, and that also affected his posture. He's more upright now, has longer legs and arms, and a smaller head.

The tail is also much more thick now, he drags it behind him almost like the very old depictions of dinosaurs, and it's very important for counter-balancing his large head (even if the head is not actually very heavy). The tip is much more flexible and almost prehensile, so I make sure to put emphasis on it in my art. I imagine it would wiggle around a lot so I want to make that apparent when I draw him.

A big part of how I draw him is his crown. I make the horns very short compared to his canon design, and they're more spade like with round tips, they're also much closer to one another. This is both a stylistic choice and also part of his design, and it gives him a more streamlined look. The two spikes on the sides of his head are probably the only sharp part of his design, and they're very stylized. Realistically they make no sense, but he's a cartoon character so that's fine. If I were to draw him more realistically, they'd be positioned on his cheeks, I don't think they'd actually go all around (so you wouldn't see them on the top of his head in the profile view).

His face is salamander like, flatter at the bottom and rounder at the top, with a significantly more pronounced nose and snout than before. No nostrils or earholes though, he does have them but they blend in so well they're not visible in my art. And there's of course his eyes. Big and reflective, I pay extra attention to making them look alive and "wet".

His colors are also very important, I intentionally made him leucistic so that he has a pink undertone to his colors, which gives him this soft marshmallow look. The pink around the face, elbow/knee joints and at the tip of the tail really emphasize it.

I don't have any specific "guide" like images for this, so I'll just add my most recent drawing since it illustrates everything I said the best.

In short, the soft colors and the roundness are definitely the biggest factors to his design. He's meant to look very approachable, and the cushion-y marshmallow/dumpling vibe is definitely something I really enjoy about his design. So I pay attention to the weight distribution, the color palette, and all that, my goal is to make him look as if he was very soft to touch. It is a relatively recent direction, but one I'm much more satisfied with than his older, more gray/blueish design with sharper traits.

I hope this was somewhat informative, I wasn't sure how to approach this ask but hopefully you enjoy the answer!

[hometownrockstar]

little pet peeve of mine is when theres a backlash about a "fat" character or someone saying "omg fat rep" about a very obviously skinny character and people go "its just an average body wtf" because well 1. i don't believe in there being an "average" body at all and i get people are pointing out that the idealized form of hyper-thinness is so warped that even slightly more proportional bodies being called chubby is dumb but that doesnt change the fact that the "realistically-proportioned but still skinny with no protruding tummy" is not "average" or "normal" anymore than a thin or fat body is.

and 2. weight perception within society is subjective and constantly shifting due to fatphobia and to uphold thin and white supremacist values. thats why multiple people can see the same female character in a game who is realistically and proportionally skinny and all separately call her "average-sized" or "chubby", its about what they are comparing it to, which in this case is the ideal hyperthin body that dominates art depictions, particularly animation ones if we are still using the fictional and stylistic example. but this also extends to real life, in how people compare their bodies relative to what they see on tv and what they see in real life, causing warped self-image, and a disproportionate amount of fatphobia and violence being lobbied at bigger fat people compared to "average" chubby people

[gayestcowboy]

i feel like when people learn to draw people in a stylized way (like “anime style” in middle school or any other imitation of a cartoon style) we spend so much time perfecting stylized faces and neck placement but so frequently just gloss over HOW the head and neck connect to each other, especially the neck. and that’s how we end up with basically no “anime style” or commonly-seen stylized art that depicts double chins or loose skin or any facial features that are extremely common.

it’s something i certainly never spent much time drawing until the past year or so. knowing how the head and neck connect is a really important skill when you’re trying to draw people, and it’s something i always struggled with until i started to focus more on drawing people’s necks differently rather than just their head and face shape. we as artists spend so much time trying to perfect the face, but the neck affects the face so much. the neck has so much character.

and, of course, the reason you never see people draw double chins is because they’re considered “ugly,” which is of course a result of a beauty standard based around thinness and a hatred for fat people. obviously not everyone’s neck looks the same, and stylized art doesn’t have to be as realistic as possible, but it’s frustrating to see so few depictions of double chins, especially when artists go out of their way to try and draw the rest of fat bodies as well as possible. i think there’s a discussion to be had about how a lot of artists online nowadays draw so many more diverse body types (which is wonderful!), but there’s still such little variation in neck shape, because the neck affects how the face looks.

this is a really long way of saying the neck is a really cool part of the body that i think we as artists don’t take enough advantage of!!

[damnfandomproblems]

4378 When I was a kid, I tried to draw fat people and failed miserably at depicting them in a realistic way, because I spent most of my life slender, and used my own body for reference (poor teen growing up with shit or no internet), so I understand why some people focus on characters who aren't fat. I'm better now, but even then, I'm nervous about actually posting them. I've also seen people harassed for trying to draw fat people and not having the skill to draw them "realistically" (even for cartoony styles), and they were called fatphobic, cancelled, that whole ordeal. It was some of the most pathetic bullying I had ever seen and it feels like drawing fat people is scrutinized under a microscope, so I'm just like "nah" now, I don't want the headache. THAT SAID, that's just two explanations, and I know a lot of fandom refuses to go anywhere near fat characters for more ridiculous reasons like "ew gross", which is sad and stupid. Some of the coolest characters I know are heavier.

Posting since this is a response to a previous problem.

[scarlet--wiccan]

Do you have any thoughts on Wanda being depicted as a plus size woman? I've seen art of her like that.

As a matter of, like, personal praxis, I think more characters should be fat, and I think that most characters could be fat if you wanted them to be. Broadly speaking, I think there needs to be more body diversity in comics-- the overwhelming majority of artists still only draw one stock body type for men, and one for women. I think that should change, and that means more plus-size characters.

My approach to character design is usually to match a character's body type to their powers and fighing style. Obviously, that involves a lot of generalizing, so it's not perfect, but I think it's a decent starting place because it discourages you from drawing everybody the same way. But my point is, for characters that have non-physical powers like a spellcaster, there's no logical reason for them to conform to the standard superhero build, and in fact they probably shouldn't look like that. So, I don't know if that was a weird of problematic way to frame this, but, yeah, I think more magic characters, specifically, should be fat.

Basically I think artists should think about these things more realistically AND ALSO just be more inclusive in their imagination.

This is very anecdotal and speculative, but I think there's a vague idea in a lot of people's minds that Wanda is on the curvier side because a lot of artists were drawing her that way for a while in the 2000s an early 2010s. And when I say "curvy," I mean curvy by superhero standards-- i.e., mostly just big boobs. So, if you want to know why I think fans draw her this way, that's all I got. There's nothing else I can really point to in the text.

Personally, and this is just my headcanon, I tend to imagine all of the Maximoffs with a very slim, angular, almost pointy look. That's partially because the Romani side of my family are all very petite so that's just where my brain goes, but I also think of Pietro and Tommy as being kinda lanky and wiry because they're runners with super-accelerated metabolisms. Wanda and Billy just follow suit in my imagination because... twins. I picture them both looking kinda like ballerinas. And I'm not saying that skinny representation is as important or whatever, but for male characters specifically, it's not nothing. And I'm saying that as someone who's been underweight for most of my life, and specifically was living as a gay man when I was at my thinnest.

[cobacou]

When you first started drawing Wukong and macaque was it diffrent from the one you have now or the same? And if so how long or how did you wanna start drawing them like that : D! I LOVE LOVE LOVE UR ART BTWS HAVE A GREAT DAY OR NIGHT OR AFTERNOON 😋‼️‼️‼️

even in my earliest and oldest shadowpeach art I tried to depict them as plus sized and old, I didn't really know much about anatomy or how to depict someone looking old (I still struggle with it a lot) but it has always been my vision since the beginning!

literally spent months learning and studying muscles and body form to be able to draw them fat just because I really really wanted to do it and it just didn't look like that initially, so I spent hours studying just because of it.

when it comes to their designs now appart from their body types I've always seen macaque as having more rough shapes like rectangles, spikes, triangles, while wukong a more softened shape like circles, spirals, squares, that's just how I've always liked it but I was still studying realistic anatomy for me to start stylizing it, so I put a pin on that and came back to it later once I felt comfortable enough to explore more fun shapes to depict their bodies and figures with.

I adore their hair a lot, I love how spiky macaque's hair and how it has moon shapes, I originally didn't do moon shapes until I figured I could literally add them so I did. as for wukong, I've always done his hair in a rounder way, eventually just deciding to straight up draw cartoony curls and it developing into a cloud, his cloud shaped hair is still my favorite thing I've come up with design wise.

one of my biggest inspirations to how I draw wukong is literally the original Akira Toriyama style from the dragon ball manga, I'm not a huge fan of the anime and new style due to how much the roundness and chubbiness of the style is taken away, which was literally my favorite part of it.

right now I'm pretty happy with how they look, I still want them to look like old men and feel like I don't nail it well enough yet, but I'm still figuring it out! I just experiment a lot with them, they're my favorite.

btw thank u so much!! I appreciate:)c

[olderthannetfic]

RE: 722387734208118784/apologies-if-this-is-a-weird-ask-basically-im-not

If memory serves, the stereotypical "anti" artstyle tends toward, if it's realistic, performative, cutesy ugliness. For one example: there's a particularly infamous Doki Doki Literature Club fanart that gave all the main girls stereotypical Japanese features and very yellow skintones in the name of going "see? I can make them realistic-looking/ugly. That's body-diversity, right?" Except I find all it does is reveal what the artist thinks is ugly, and I gotta ask what that does psychologically to people who actually have those features (especially when said artists use commonly non-white features).

Not to say more proship artists have flawless art but given that a lot of them also draw smut, they tend to 1) have more confidence in their anatomy skill and 2) a lot of them aren't afraid of making characters who aren't conventionally attractive look good while keeping their interesting designs. I think a lot about how fat characters drawn in an anti artstyle tend to be blobby and inoffensive (usually in a cutesy way. Can't go """fetishizing""" anyone (read: depict someone in any light that isn't clinical)) where fat characters drawn by proships look like people, and attractive regardless of size

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[asterthistle]

hi hi !!! made a new art blog so i could post more nonfandom stuff / broadly try and reach more folks :3 still gonna be very silly and chaos mode, but i also do wanna try and take art(tm) a lil more seriously. Sometimes. i'm a fat, queer, nonbinary grad student who loves drawing silly little gay people and fucks hard with warm tones and static overlays xx i vibe very much with cute / "cottagecore" aesthetics but also don't stray away from 18+ themes in my art. i like to depict realistic, intimate queer bodies and relationships <3