Pose Composition

One important part of cartoon composition and something very important and vital to making a great cartoon is pose composition. Good pose composition is one pose causing another pose which is also often called acting and reacting because it is an action pose causing a reaction pose.

I have noticed lately that pose composition is one thing on which I needed to improve, so I havve done some studies and I am happy to say that I have improved greatly.

Here are to of my characters that I have posted here before...

I used these two characters to practice pose composition and that study is below.

In the picture above I have also incorperated squashing and stretching, combining it with pose composition.

This tool make characters come alive, to seem as if they are real and that they affect one another.
Here, in the picture above, you can clearly see that his wife is angry, and shaking her fist and leaning forward to convey dominance, and she is also in a very intimidating stance. In turn she is causing him to lean back eith a cautious, intimidated, and slightly frightened expression which also has an "apologetic" quality to it.

They are interacting just like real people would.

Next is another pose composition study I did using my same old man character. It is the original followed by one where the characters are colored.

 In this one, the beautiful, sexy woman comes out and gives a flirty, "sexy" pose which causes major surprise and lust in the old man, therefore his jaw drops in awe, his toung flies out of his mouth, his little bit of hair even flies up in surprise, and he is stuck pointing, ogling, and drooling over the woman.

A typical reaction of a man when he sees an extremely attractive woman.

In fact, this could be exactly what lead to the first picture with his wife... Maybe he saw him ogling this other, much younger, woman and she "wasn't too pleased" with it. Actually, if we put them together, they tell a bit of a story.

"How dare you stare at and ogle that other woman?! Don't try to say you didn't! It's bad enough that you do it, but then you lie about it! You pig! Is it necessary for you to ogle every young hussie you see to get your jollies?! You bloody men!"

In fact maybe we can even go back further using another example of a more subtle example of pose composition... Let's track back before he went and ogled that other woman... Let's say they are on vacation, they arrive in the hotel room and it has been a long trip, so they are squabbling and getting on each other's nerves and have a bit of an argument in the hotel, so they go off in different directions so they can both simmer down abit, but then his wife sees him "getting his jollies" ogling that other, much younger woman, and it sends her over the edge with rage.

(above) arguement in hotel shortly after they arrive. They each go own their own to try to simmer down a bit.

ogles (and courts) young, attractive woman (which his wife can see)

"How dare you stare at and ogle that other woman?! Don't try to say you didn't! It's bad enough that you do it, but then you lie about it! You pig! Is it necessary for you to ogle every young hussie you see to get your jollies?! You bloody men!"

Here you see how pose composition in which one character is reacting to another's pose can bring a cartoon to life and give it believable personality.