Monday, December 29, 2014

Curse You Frank!!! You already did it!!

Don't you hate it when you're sketching along, creating random poses, and suddenly you realize you've seen them before - in Frazetta paintings!!



I've been using my reiteration technique, starting with just a random pose and then looking at it and making modifications to eventually arrive at better ones. Weirdly, I developed 2 very different strains of images from that first dark pose - one for somebody with hands bound overhead and the other crouching low defending against an overhead sword attack.

And suddenly I had to facepalm because I recognized - not only are they both Frazetta poses, but they're both from THE SAME PAINTING!!!


Even right down to the curve in the background behind the 'hanging, bound' figure!! It's the freaking BRAIN!!!

Oh well hey, at least I wasn't dumb enough to put horns on the top dude - how the heck is he gonna bring his sword down past them huh? Are they spring-loaded or something, they'll just fold out of the way and then pop right back in place? Or maybe they're like really soft and bendy? Heh yeah, it's good to know that even Frank wasn't perfect.. (as I sit here inadvertently copying him because most of the really great action poses in my visual library originally came from him... )

I think the way to get around this is to either keep on modifying until the poses are completely different, or start by thinking about something like movies I've seen.

Oh, and my first reiteration on the original sketch is also a Frazetta pose:


Well ok, a little different now that I check. At least I can take some comfort from how many times Frank himself used this Robert McGinnis arm thing..



Can't find the original by McGinnis, but I know I've seen it, and in fact I've seen somebody else acknowledge that Frank indeed took the gesture from him. So I guess it aint the end of the world, we all gotta start somewhere, and keep modifying and developing our pose libraries.

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