pauladrawsnstuff:

A friend recently pointed out that I have a lot of poses that I overuse. He called them “Paula-isms” and they’re evidently sprinkled throughout anything I’ve ever worked on. I went and looked at every animation I’ve ever done, every comic I’ve drawn, and have made some discoveries about how I pose and animate. So let’s go on a journey together and find out why I am a hack fraud. 

The first pose that was brought to my attention is the hands up together pose. I do this one a lot. And I’ll fracking defend this pose with my life. You can pry this pose from my cold dead hands. 

The second pose that I found quite frequently was arms crossed over the chest, specifically with the chest puffed out and weight shifted to one hip. It’s sassy. It’s attitude personified. And apparently… it’s overused. 

Third pose…. and this is a default of mine… is hands on the hips. Hands always on the hips. I have an aversion to putting them idly at the side for some reason. Put those hands on the HIPSSS. Bonus points if the character’s torso is leaning back. EXTRA BONUS POINTs if they’re leaning forward. 

The next pose is one that I do so much that even I am sick of it. Both hands up. Gesticulation is everything. HANDS UP and don’t you dare use a shred of foreshortening on those forearms. What even is foreshortening… never heard of her. 

The last pose is one that I found so often that I didn’t even include all of them. I missed a few. It’s the one finger thinking pose/ scratching the face pose. This one is just animation shorthand for “I’m perplexed/I’m thinking”. I don’t think I’ve ever done this one in real life but you’d better believe that everyone does it. 

Don’t even get me started on the things I do after posing. In animation I have two favourite things to do. The first one is having a character facing the camera in the foreground, only to have them turn to face the opposite way. Extra credit if the turn is on a hard cut, to disguise the fact that turning a rig is hard when you only have 2 views of the character. I’m notorious for only having a front ¾ and back ¾. Profile views suck, and you can take that to the bank. 

Last thing that I do that is in about half of m animations is crash zooms. All the crash zooms. I love crash zooms, and I’ll give them up when hell freezes over. 

Thank you for going on this journey with me. There are probably way more mannerisms that I do that I didn’t find enough of. These poses are staples of my animation repertoire and if I got rid of them well…

i mean, these are realistic poses people do for emphasis. its just natural human body language.