No shortcuts

I've come to terms with the notion that there are no stock shortcuts to getting a good pose. You simply have to have your eyes aimed for the prize and hack at it until the pose really sells the story. It may slow you down at first, but going for that extra subtlety every panel really pays dividends.

To me, sometimes you have panels in your storyboard that are just throwaways- your stock "auto-filmmaker panels", you put it in because it works and you leave it at that. But it's ONLY the PANELS YOU SWEAT OVER that really ARE the story.

The pose itself has very little to do with stellar draughtsmanship (it helps though). Rather it has everything to do with one's intuition about how a character is feeling, and really carefully thinking about what they would do in the given moment.

I think the hardest poses I was having trouble with at work was heroic characters standing around listening to instructions. Why was I struggling to make it interesting?? It's not that I couldn't draw them standing. It's that I kept on drawing once stance- erasing, another- erasing. I couldn't decide what that particular stance IS.

I'm starting to think I need to focus less on drawing and more on acting . . .