Anatomy give me a headache
Help.....
I am going nuts to be honest with you; Studding anatomy i think is the hardest thing i ever took in my life to learn.
I am not sure what i can do, to actually make my studies more fun and easy to learn. I tried everything, But there is so much to learn and i don't even remember and understand 1% of what i am doing.
Yea i even tried with drawing, but that didn't last long, because i never drew in my damn life :poly118:
About classes, well that can't be done, because we don't have any of it.
I am going nuts to be honest with you; Studding anatomy i think is the hardest thing i ever took in my life to learn.
I am not sure what i can do, to actually make my studies more fun and easy to learn. I tried everything, But there is so much to learn and i don't even remember and understand 1% of what i am doing.
Yea i even tried with drawing, but that didn't last long, because i never drew in my damn life :poly118:
About classes, well that can't be done, because we don't have any of it.
Replies
No classes? If you can afford it, Scott Eaton's online anatomy class is great:
http://www.scott-eaton.com/anatomy-for-artists-online-course
Don't expect anatomy to be something you can learn in a short amount of time. It IS a lot of information to soak in, and it's easy to get overwhelmed. Just try to take baby steps. Give yourself assignments, and break your studies down into small areas.
If you're not so into drawing, taking a clinical approach can be beneficial too... if you memorize all of the names of bones and muscles, it can help you remember them when you go to sculpt them or whatever. But I do suggest drawing them, following along with books and tutorial videos. Even if the drawings aren't good it can help you visualize the muscles later.
When it comes to medical terminology, it looks extremely daunting, and to some extent it is, but once you begin learning keywords they really start to make more sense about how the names are structured.
Unfortunately, I find its very easy to forget the facts (unless you do constant anatomy studies every day, which on top of everything else you do as a character artist, might not be feasible).
Take in a bit at a time. Whilst you might not be able to learn every bone and muscle on the body, you will find it easier to visualise them overtime as well as finding obvious errors that you wouldn't have noticed previously. But, it does take time.
If the cost of classes is too much, I would probably start sculpting a character, no clothing or accessories just the form and get constant feedback on the forum. If your just starting, others will see your mistakes better and ,as a result of their feedback, you will develop faster (faster than noodling on your own anyway).
Good luck
How to break down my anatomy studies? I would like to start with the skeleton, then muscles, then skin or surface muscles, or whatever is called.
About videos, i am not sure, but all of them are time lapse, which is very frustrating me.
Make sure to not go into details all at once.
Knowing anatomy is good for knowing what to look for. It will sharpen your sense of what's off and let you troubleshoot a fix, but the most important thing in my opinion is to start as generally as possible before trying to tackle very specific anatomy details.
Practice making the gesture of the body and forms first before going into detail (and stressing out when it looks horrible). Work with low poly counts when sculpting and make sure to hit the balance of forms at the lowest level. Try to get the major planes of the figure at the lowest level. Keep it clean using something like trimdynamic.
Probably the best way to get started is to practice figure drawing. Proko has a good series on figure drawing. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtG4P3lq8RHGuMuprDarMz_Y9Fbw_d2ws
You don't have to memorize anatomy names as a pro. Nobody's gonna give you a pop quiz at work and fire you if you can't name one of the hamstring muscles without googling.
If its not fun try sculpting more while using references or start from a full body basemesh that's comes standard with most softwares now..
The more repetition you have drawing or sculpting you'll eventually memorize anatomy forms and locations. And maybe even their scientific names.
Holy...Proko is awesome
So with Zbrush, i should start with dynamesh on the lowest resolution level, to match the form and proportions?
http://www.isculptstuff.com/2012/07/new-maquette-sculpting-workflow-in.html
I literally went through an entire packet of paper every 2-3 days, or a sketchbook in a week.
Wolverine, Batman, Psylocke, Spawn, Venom, Ninja Turtles etc.. It didn't really teach me accurate anatomy, but it did give me some understanding of proportions and overall shapes.
I'm not sure if you feel you've outgrown comics, but its still a lot of fun to just doodle a HULK. Oftentimes when I saw a really cool pose by an artist I really liked, I would just straight up copy it (but use it on a different hero).
Just to be clear, this is NOT a good way to learn anatomy. It's a great way to really get a feel for the shapes, and forms. From what I've seen, this has been used as a springboard a lot of us older Polycounters used to develop an obesession for this stuff.
And when you're ready to take the next step from there, studying Anatomy is really the easiest way to improve.
Doing it the other way, is like trying to learn guitar by studying high level musical theory, rather than simply learning how to jam the 3 powerchords to "Smoke On The Water".
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/products/tutorials/zpe_series/
Ryan Kingslien is tha shit. He's got a lot of free material around too (youtube) so you can get a sense of how he teaches. His starter courses on anatomy are tough but well-paced and he makes no assumptions that you have an art background.
Something you're just going to have to accept is that anything worthwhile in life you'll do is going to be a giant pain in the ass. It just is. You have to build up that willpower to stick through the tough parts and it absolutely will pay off. When you're sitting there in the pits of frustration, know that as long as you keep pushing forward, you will get through it and you'll be glad you did.
Wut
I'll my final questions about learning anatomy. I know how much many times has been asked and answered.
Yea will accept the fact that, i should start to draw and learn anatomy in that way.
1.(How someone can learn drawing, if they don't have any art schools/college in the country?) I will take any art book and online course. I am not sure that books will show me how to draw, many of the books i have, has already drawn people, but they are no telling the process of showing how to draw. Even those who show, it is not step by step.
2.How long do i need to draw per day or pet hour?
3.Should i even start to learn Zbrush at the same time, or to spend more time with drawing on paper and less time with Zbrush?
Draw whenever you can. Traveling on the train? Whip out a small sketchbook. 30min break? Get doodling, theres no real excuse not to draw as i've been speaking to a artist that had to use her mouth to hold a pencil for 9 years before she recovered use of her hands.
Get into Zbrush as well, it won't hurt to start learning your way around it.
It can be a little boring on the surface but it's easy to just do. You don't have to think of an idea to draw and it's the basis for everything and they're easy to critique objectively and refine your skills with. Practice drawing circles and ellipses, practice drawing lines and connecting two points, practice drawing cubes from different perspectives, build your hand-eye coordination and your sense of making clean curves.
If you can make basic shapes well you can combine them and quickly mockup a solid underdrawing (the proko vids go over this). That's probably the easiest way to start if you haven't painstakingly built a feel of things already. I recommend using mypaint. It's fast to open to get started and you just hit delete to clear the canvas and keep at it.
On the painting side of things (if you're into that) a useful exercise is to paint thumbnails for greyscale and color studies. Here's a Noah's Art Camp on it http://youtu.be/kQfF-P70V2Q
https://www.kenhub.com/
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Anatomy-Artist-Stephen-Rogers/dp/0195030958/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396935669&sr=8-1&keywords=peck+atlas+of+human+anatomy"]Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist[/ame] - Stephen Rogers Peck
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Constructive-Anatomy-Dover-Artists/dp/0486211045/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1396935710&sr=8-3&keywords=Bridgman"]Constructive Anatomy[/ame] - George Bridgman
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Lessons-From-Great-Masters/dp/0823002810/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396935758&sr=8-1&keywords=anatomy+lessons+masters"]Anatomy Lessons From the Great Masters[/ame] - Robert Beverly Hale
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Human-Anatomy-Artists-Elements-Form/dp/0195052064/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1396936023&sr=1-1&keywords=human+anatomy+for+artists"]Human Anatomy for Artists[/ame] - Eliot Goldfinger
http://www.zackpetroc.com/skull-and-muscles-of-the-face-lecture/
I sculpted along the videos with the same approach. It's the best thing i found to learn muscle origin and insertion. I'd still want to start from there instead of jumping straight into Scott Eaton's lessons.
Draw what is fun, and draw a lot.
If you want to get better, the rest will likely fall into place.
Oh Awesome, I loved Petroc's other tutorials like one on female anatomy, will check these out