Original subtitles

In this lecture we're gonna be talking about something called for shortening.

So what is for shortening.

Well let's have a look at a few photograph examples.

So for short it is basically perspective when it comes to the human form or any type of form early but

for shortening is basically when things get larger as you get closer to the viewer or smaller as you

get further away from the viewer.

So in the case of this hand for example reaching out for the camera you can see that the hand is it's

much bigger than it would look if it was down to her side.

It's actually bigger than her face when you're looking at it in terms of 2D.

And so this is for shortening another aspect for shortening is that things become shorter.

So for example her arm here her arm would be considered kind of a cylinder so if we're to kind of draw

that out like that you can see that that cylinder is kind of shrunken and squashed down.

If we saw this arm from the side the cylinder probably much longer and looks something like this right.

And so those are two aspects for shortening is one that things get squashed when they're kind of moving

directly towards you and the other part is that they get larger as they get closer to the viewer and

smaller as you get further away.

So let's have a look at another example.

So here's a photograph of some runners and there's a few examples of for shortening going on here.

We can see an example here in this girl's arm you can see that even though there's not a lot of scale

difference going on so this hand doesn't look at that much bigger because it's you're not close enough

as the viewer to her hand for it to be that much larger but you will notice that her forearm is being

foreshortened and to kind of a stub your looking cylinder even though it's not really it just appears

to be because you can see right here it's very short it's about that distance right there.

But on this arm up here.

Let me switch to a red maybe easier for you guys to see it.

Her forearm is really about that long when you're looking on it straight on but over here it's a lot

more foreshortened.

Same thing applies to their leg.

So for example this girl's leg right here.

This has a little bit of foreshortened going on

so if we're looking at this from the side her front knee would be coming out like this towards the viewer

and then her calf would be going back like this away from the viewer and so what's happening is the

knee is the closest part to the viewer so right there and this leg right here is gonna be foreshortened

so rather than being completely extended downwards so we can see the complete length of it.

It gets squashed just a little bit.

Now an even more extreme example of this is right here you can see that this is basic the her leg is

doing basically the same thing but it's being foreshortened so it's been a lot more squashed than that

because it's angling away even more from the view if we looked at her leg from the side probably looks

something like this

right.

So much more angled away from the viewer.

All right.

So let's go ahead and let's talk about what kind of exercise we can we do to have a good understanding

of foreshortened.

So right here I've drawn a torso and the head and stuff of a male.

So you can do the same thing it doesn't have to be as detailed in fact it could just kind of be some

very simple rectangles and stuff.

But basically we're going to take the torso and we're going to draw an exercise that helps us understand

the for shortening of the arm.

So if we had the arm extended directly straight out.

So what I'll do is I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to just kind of sketch out

an ARM

AND I'LL JUST KEEP THE FORMS nice and simple so for the handle just kind of do a form like that.

It's would be kind of a cylinder.

This will also be kind of a cylinder

All right.

So there's our arm.

So what we're gonna do is we're gonna make kind of a pivot point right here at the end of his arm on

the inside.

So from that pivot point if we're kind of looking at a down shot a little bit what we would get is we

could kind of draw a big sort of circle and perspective like this around it and we probably want the

other end of the circle to be.

We wanted to be about the same distance as his arm.

So we wanted to kind of go out to their

it's just something like that.

And from this what we can do is we can kind of pivot the arm around this.

So for example I can draw another one of these I mean add a new layer bring down the pass through a

little bit so we can see a little bit better and so you'll see that I can for Shorten an arm I can make

the arm facing straight out from this point by having it follow the circle because as the arm rotates

around the body I would kind of stay within that circle.

So what I can do is I can start by drawing the cylinder for

the biceps and I'll move this in a little bit actually so somewhere right about there.

So is a cylinder for the biceps and we want this kind of be moving outward.

So because of perspective it's gonna be going off to a vanishing point so we can kind of follow some

guidelines like that.

So this is the bicep cylinder so this one right here but we're seeing it in more of a front view and

it's been foreshortened next is going to be the four arm for an arm tapers and so because we have to

angle these lines outwards what's going to happen is it's going to kind of counterbalance.

So it's actually almost just going to look like it's straight line coming out because as it tapers it

actually gets larger.

But at the same time it's getting smaller because it's tapering next let's go ahead and draw the hand

in so just kind of draw this form in like this

then the shoulder could kind of be drawn right there.

All right great.

So you can see that there's this extended out arm one that's extending out towards the viewer.

What if we wanted to go ahead and draw one that was extending out about halfway or the 45 degree angle.

So what we can do is we can just start by drawing in the cylinder for the biceps and again because of

this angle it's going to be foreshortened just a little bit and what you can do is you can actually

draw another ring circle inside of this just to kind of give you an idea of where the end of that bicep

is and so should each one should kind of follow that circle.

Same with the fore arm if you wanted to do that.

It's getting a little messy looking so don't worry about that right now but you can see that it can

go ahead and draw out the fore arm which kind of gets squashed a little bit as well because of for shortening

and then it can draw

the form for the hand.

Just kind of a rectangular shape like that and the shoulder.

All right great.

So there's kind of three versions of the foreshortened arm.

And so that's just kind of a good exercise to help you give an understanding of how for shortening works

and how to think about especially on the human body because the main things that are gonna be for shortening

are the arms and the legs more than anything.

Now let's go ahead and let's try one more thing.

Let's try it with the leg.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna draw a quick sort of character just kind of sitting on the ground

and we'll just do a simple kind of shape like this just to represent his torso

an arm there aren't there

all right.

And so one kind of leg socket is gonna be right there.

The other one will be right about here

right.

So there's just a nice simple little sketch.

So coming off this what we're gonna do and maybe I'll actually move these leg sockets over a little

bit so many race that come put one right here put another one right over here.

All right.

So we're gonna try drawing the legs in two different angles with like two different forms of force shortening.

So what we can do is we can go ahead and we can kind of draw another one of these sort of helicopter

ovals like that and then is just kind of a circle and perspective.

Just to give you an idea if we're drawing prospective lines the circles kind of laying on a plane that's

in perspective like that.

And so what we can do is with this we can draw all kinds of different leg so we can have a leg coming

out like this right where we can have it coming straight forward.

We're just using that circle to kind of tell us how long it should be based off of where it's angled

and you're going to want to do the same thing for the other leg.

So another thing is when we're drawing we can kind of try this coiling effect where you kind of just

draw circles like this out and they kind of get smaller as you taper down to the bottom of the foot

that and they kind of work as construction lines so it kind of gives you a good feel for what the form

of the leg is and also kind of how it's moving out towards the viewer.

So then we can go and draw kind of a foot in there and as you can see because of for shortening our

foot is a bit larger than it's larger than our head if we were to take this distance from top to bottom

put up by the head it'll be bigger than the hat which generally isn't real.

But with for shortening it appears that things that are closer to us are larger.

All right then so from this we can go ahead and kind of sketch in the calf sketch in a kneecap in the

shin and thigh that we can do the other thing for the other leg so for the other leg let's have the

leg kind of extending out this way.

We're not gonna use a circle.

We can carnies as a guide but because it's the other leg it should kind of be shifted out the circle

should come out here.

So we'll kind of keep that in mind as we're drawing.

So again we can kind of do the same thing we can just kind of use these coils but since we're looking

at the coils from this side now you can see that kind of changes that form

just something like that.

So then we can use those as a guide and it's OK if you don't follow exactly what the coils.

Because maybe your coils didn't maybe you didn't draw them exactly like the form of leg.

You just want to get them kind of close

right.

So there's his legs

all right great.

And honestly this foot right here this could actually be a little bit larger.

So just using Photoshop tool just go ahead enlarge that a little bit

like that so there you go.

There's kind of another exercise you can do to learn for shortening.

So a lot of the times for shortening is just kind of intuitive it's not necessarily a science or there's

not really necessarily proportions you can follow.

You can kind of go into the real nitty gritty details of drawing actual perspective with a vanishing

point.

But typically when you're drawing characters you just wanted to be quick and fast.

And so it really just comes down to drawing a lot of reference that has for shortening going on in it

so that you can gain an understanding kind of just build that into your muscle memory and your visual

library so you can just kind of draw it whenever you want.

But these are two techniques that kind of help you along as by either one thinking of the four shortening

as a bunch of forms so cylinders coming towards you for example and then maybe the forearms right here

right.

So you can think of for Shorten in that way.

And you can also think of for Shorten as kind of these coils.

So if something's coming out towards you

and the coils just kind of get bigger.

And then what you get is you kind of get this warm like form that's kind of moving out towards your

viewer but it's incorporating for shortening.

So I think that those are the two easiest and best ways to work with for shortening.

That brings us to the end of this lecture.

If you have any questions about for shortening make sure you post them to the Q and A section of the

course.

And if there's a drawing that you're drawing and it involves for shortening especially exaggerated for

shortening like we have right here with his foot then definitely post that and see if you can get any

critiques because for shortening is kind of one of the hardest things I think for a lot of artists to

get good at.

And so it's something you really want to practice and it's something you want people to constantly be

giving you feedback on so that you can get really good at it.

Thanks for watching this lecture and I'll see you in the next one.