Category: Tutorials

Action Sketching: Handling a fully-jointed mannequin

Posted in Tutorials - 11/06/2019
By using a fully jointed manikin, soccer coaches, trainers, players, and very involved parents can better describe, photograph, or draw their instructions.
While stop-action video is an extremely useful training tool, still images also are important, especially when you need to print instructions. By using a manikin to envision a body, you can show a single play from many angles.
The COLOR-LILIJ Body Figures discussed in my previous blog is a fully jointed manikin, popular with the Japanese who are experts at creating hand-drawn stories. American sports enthusiasts can do the same thing, although probably not as stylized as Japanese manga.
Out of the box, a fully jointed manikin is stiff and if you force a position, easy to break. To prepare one for positioning, warm it up first by exposing it to a hair dryer.
Heating a plastic manikin
It only takes ten seconds or so to warm up an area, but you probably will have to repeat “heat treatments” until your manikin is fully flexible.
Warning: Be gentle! Use heat, not force!
Take time to understand the manikin’s joint system. You’ll find ball joints and/or slots at each pivot point, and sometimes two types in one place, like on the shoulders. The documentation explains all this, but it is written in Japanese, so you’ll need to be extra observant to figure it out.
Manikin joints
After flexing all your manikin’s joints, check out the remaining parts in its kit.
Recommendation: Pour the parts on a table
using a towel as a tablecloth.
The interchangeable parts that come with your manikin allow you to use it to play-act many scenarios. The thing is that these parts are very tiny and if you pour them out on a hard surface, they will probably skitter all about. To keep them from rolling around, cover your work surface with a bath towel which will slow down their unpredictable movement.
Store the parts, like the six sets of tiny hands, in a sandwich bag or small food container. If your main interest is to depict soccer moves, you will probably concentrate on feet and legs, not specific hand positions, so storage organization won’t be an issue.
Manikin parts
The most important parts in the kit make up the manikin’s stand, which are bagged separately from the other items.
manikin stand
Use a jewelry sized, Phillips-head screwdriver to tighten the stand’s screws. The stand also has snap connectors. If they are stiff, use heat from a hairdryer to soften them. Do not use force!
The stand snaps into a hole on a platform. This platform also doubles as a storage box cover, but does not fit tightly and is worthless for that use.
staged manikin
As you can see above, a staged manikin looks very lifelike! By rotating the manikin in front of a camera, one pose can demonstrate many positions and a lot of information about what happens to a soccer player’s body when executing a play.
Examples of poses
In my next Soccer Sketching blog, I’ll discuss different ways a manikin can be used for a drawing reference.

Links Worth Repeating

  • General reference on Amazon to body figures by COLOR-LILIJ.
  • General reference on Amazon to body figures by Body-Kun models for Artists.
  • Really Worth It? Drawing With BODY-KUN & BODY-CHAN, a video by “mikeymegamega.” This 18 minute video is very complete and demonstrates how the manikin is used.
  • While the Japanese art of cartooning focuses most on the upper body and stylized features, Video Drawing Tutorials for Anime Manga, it will stimulate your imagination with respect to drawing action characters and story telling.

Action Sketching: Learn action movement with photos and mannequins

Posted in Tutorials - 10/30/2019

The best “stop action” photos are taken with cameras with shooting magazines that can take dozens of photos at a time. This is similar to video, but with slower and larger frames. These photos, like the one below from Active.com, make a wonderful sketch reference, but leave many unknowns.


Photo of a soccer player
Based on this picture, do you understand the position of the player from his sides or back when in this pose? How about the position of his shoes or the relationship of one leg to the other?

While a COLOR-LILIJ Body Figure mannequin cannot duplicate every pose, when used correctly, you can position it into similar poses, which, in turn, reveal unseen mysteries as you rotate it in front of you.

The mannequin is small, which is a perfect size for taking photos of it with your cell phone. Even though it is small, its body is fully jointed, and its toes move, something of interest for every soccer player.

Sketch manikin compared to a pen

Its joints all rotate on ball and sockets, as seen below. Everything is extremely stiff when you first use it, however, so if you are not careful (or yank at a joint), it can fall apart. Because it is so delicate, do not let children play with it!

Manikin split at the waist

Below is an example of the mannequin’s flexibility! Pay particular attention to its legs and feet and imagine positioning it similar to the photo of the running soccer player.

Drawing manikin with legs and feet in different positions

The mannequin kit comes with extras, such as arms, lower legs, hands, and accessories that fit in the hands. It also has a mannequin holder used for positioning it upright as though it was running or jumping.

Manikin kit with extra body parts, accessories, and model holder

My next blog will discuss how to position the mannequin in reference to a soccer player photo and what you can learn from it. I’ll also discuss how to handle the mannequin and what to do when things get loose or worse, drop off.

 Links

Action Sketching: Get more out of the game by creating action stories

Posted in Tutorials - 10/23/2019

Japanese of all ages create manga, which are graphic stories (novels) involving highly active characters.

In America, potential artists might claim they don’t have the skills to create graphic stories, but that is only because they haven’t learned the drawing tricks related to action positioning.

To accomplish their craft, Japanese manga artists rely on photography and sets of miniature manikins, popularly sold as COLOR-LILIJ Body Figures.

Japanese manikins used to draw action figures

Everything about their manikin sets are described in Japanese, so don’t rely on the directions that come with these sets (unless you read Japanese).

The manikins are very small, as shown here relative to a standard sewing scissors. Each manikin comes with extra hands, feet, arms, and other implements that could be used to illustrate a story.

Here is a COLOR-LILIJ manikin set showing its relative size against a scissor

Below is a picture of one of my older manikins next to a new one being unpacked. If you think they look delicate, you’re right! They are easy to break, and, in fact, my old manikin is missing an arm because of that.

Size comparison of the COLOR-LILIJ manikin

In order to keep the manikin stands and other items tight, you’ll need a tiny screwdriver as one does not come with the kit. Equally important, you’ll need a camera (a cell-phone camera will do), and perhaps additional reference photos. My next soccer sketching blog articles will discuss how to work with these things.

Links

Americans are probably not aware of just how seriously the Japanese are about action art and because of that, skipped seeing tutorials on the subject. Spend time getting acquainted with them (even if you can’t understand a word they say) so you can start imagining your own soccer mangas.

Action Sketching: Use a fully jointed mannequin to help you draw your game

Posted in Tutorials - 10/19/2019

Many players and fans are enchanted by the motion of soccer players. While watching a game, a good time to put that interest to work is to sketch the plays!

Of course, games move too fast to observe any single action, but acquainting one’s self with soccer movements while at home will demystify action when watching the field.

Among the many ways to improve observation and resulting sketches is to draw from photos, slow-action video, and even learn from many YouTube videos on How to Draw Human Action.

An even better way is to pose a highly detailed mannequin in a similar position to what you see in a photo. In this way, you get a 3D view that stimulates your imagination in ways flat pictures do not.

Unlike wooden models, these flexible (and very reasonably priced) plastic mannequins are sold with numerous parts, such as extra arms, hands, shoes, and even swords and shields for more posing options.

Mannequins like these are used as reference for drawing comic book heroes and ninja figures, but they can also be used to enhance your understanding of how the human body is contorted while kicking.

In the future, I’ll demonstrate how mannequins can be used to learn more about soccer moves. In the meantime, you might want to buy one for yourself and start experimenting.

Links: