A Cosplay Study (Patreon)

Not exactly an advent calendar thing but still something of a treat.

Refrence came from the gorgeous kaybearcosplay. And while I'm here, I figure I might as well talk about tracing and stuff.

I included the picture on the left because that was important to the study. I originally tried to freehand a draft of the pose but it wasn't coming out right. So I decided to do a quick tracing of the subject. It helped me understand a bit more where she was arching or how she was putting pressure on her arms and hip.

Then for the picture on the right, I attempted to recreate the same stuff using the analysis of the pose on the left. Looking at it again this morning, I didn't succeed as well as I thought. Her arch is better in the photo and leans in much harder creating a very energetic pinup pose.

Reference is okay. It's a great idea to use reference when creating original drawings. Your original drawings can come very close to the reference. Sometimes people think you've done a tracing! And yeah, sometimes you draw so exactly close to the original you might as well have used a photo. But I wanted to focus on the educational aspect of doing a tracing.

It's a very good way to learn somethings! I just think you have to be open and honest about what you did and share where you got the reference. The creators of these photos take a lot of pride in their work. And that's on top of the pride of the models who work very hard to achieve their look and physique. It's easy these days to just rip material because you found it online and photoshop makes copy and pasting easy and retweeting. But because it's so easy, that just makes it all the more important to provide credit where it's due.