Shoulders and Hips

Something that I've noticed crop up from time to time is that lots of people have no clue how the human body is put together. The character creator, for the most part, keeps people from creating oddly distorted characters. (This is in my opinion, a negative thing, since I think players *SHOULD* be able to create characters that run the gamut of beautiful to deformed.) However, there are some common mistakes that people make when adjusting proportions. For example, I can't count the number of female characters I've seen that have very broad shoulders and very narrow hips.

I am a VERY amateur artist, so I thought that I'd share some of the things I've learned:

It's important to remember that males and females have differently shaped skeletons. If you're trying to create a certain appearance, it helps to keep in mind that what makes a man look one way does not necessarily make a woman look the same.

Take a look at the following Wikipedia pages. (Note: These pages contain images from certain classical artwork pieces that might get the viewer in trouble in very puritan situations.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_shape

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_body_shape

You'll note that, in general, men have shoulders that are somewhat broader than their hips. Women generally have hips that are somewhat broader than their shoulders. Musculature, bodyfat ratio, and total weight don't really do a lot to change those proportions.

If you're trying to make a very lean male character, you should consider keeping his shoulders a bit wider than his hips.

If you want to make an exaggeratedly muscular male character, minimize hip size and broaden the shoulders in addition to boosting the physique slider.

If you want to make a very muscular female character, do your best to keep her hips larger than her shoulders, and add muscle solely with the physique slider.

If you're working with a very feminine character, boost her hip size and minimize her shoulder size. You can do a lot to visually indicate femininity this way, even if you have the chest slider minimized. Read about "Hartman Hips" for an example of how some artists use this to indicate femininity and even motherly-ness.

You can also use these ratios to make characters that suggest cross-dressing or transgender appearances. A female model that has shoulders that are wider than her hips is perceived as more masculine.

Just a few thoughts. Share your variations if you have them.

The margin that I always went by was this:

Women: Hips are equal to shoulders
Men: Shoulders are about half to 3/4ths an arms width larger than hips.

But I don't let those margins restrain me fully. For women, wider shoulders means a more masculine build, wider hips goes for older builds, and for one of my characters I actually designed her to be overly masculine and quite ugly.

For men, I only pay attention to the most basic dimensions, like how "wide" they are and how tall they are or if they are supposed to be stocky or lanky.

I tend to increase physique on my female characters at least a little, increase shoulder width a bit at least, and increase hip width substantially.

I tend to Timmverse my male characters; max shoulders, min waist and hips. Female characters I try to go more realistic than comic book (yes I mean the boobie slider).

On my male characters, I tend to increase the physique a fair amount, then reduce shoulder width and chest a lot, and hips a little. To make 'em buff, without the Sponge Bob proportions.

The Hip slider does not work how it should.

It should scale the whole "brief area" but it doesn't.

Currently, it just adjusts 'leg spacing'. So you can scale it down and it'll look OK in a front view, but from the side you'll a have a massive butt in proportion.

In fact, you really have very little control over butt size. Much like arm and leg thickness, it's governed by the overall Physique slider. So trying to adjust for it results in a freakishly proportioned monstrosity with a massive trunk, spindly arms and legs and even tinier hands and feet.

It's bad enough the base male model has wonky proportions to start with. Tiny hands and feet, big thunder thighs, waist much smaller in profile, weird chest. Yes, I know it's not supposed to be 'realistic.' Super heroic proportions are one thing, but our base model is pretty Liefeldian.


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This'd be one of those times we should grumble about getting the character creator updated, yeah?



S.

First I should point out that all NSFW images have to be secondary linked. Forum rules (from the Fan Art and Multimedia area) specifies that you cannot link directly to such images.

As for the sliders, I look at them depending on what the character is. Does the character have wings? What kind? Generally, those with wings get wider than normal shoulders to make up for the additional skeletal and muscular deviations.

People really do come in all shapes and sizes. I have one character I min/maxed on the sliders as I was making an alien. For her, it works. On others, it really all depends on what the image is in my mind on how they look.

For the most part, yes, I do have shoulders and hips at about the same size, but it's all in the eye of the beholder. Make the character however you want to design it. I'll make mine as I want.

The beauty of this game is choice. We aren't fixed into a "perfect" model and can alter them as the CC allows however we chose. There really is no right or wrong.

Slightly off topic, but am I the only one bothered by the shin/calf area on females in the game? That area just seems to be way too long.

I guess I should be the one to point out the obvious here:

Take a look at the anatomy of characters from any comic book, cartoon, manga, or anime* over the past 10-20 years. Now come back and try to argue that people shouldn't make unrealistically proportioned characters. Look at this man's chest and shoulders. Holy crap, that's not natural. And when I was a kid, I didn't care because it made him look strong and stylish.

Conclusion: Anatomical distortion is older than the comic book. Why are we even having this discussion?


* ZOMG He said anime! He must be sacrificed to keep our All-American animation styles pure and untainted by scary foreign influences!

A practical tip for making a more muscular looking women's arms:

Use the Witch gloves set to black and the Barbarian Leather shoulder piece also set to black. The end result looks like a woman with solid biceps wearing black opera gloves.

Lighter colours tend to reveal the trick you're using, which limits your costume options, but this can work if you really dont wan't the default skinny girl arms.

All my female characters get max shoulder slider, max waist slider, min chest/breast slider. The whole wasp waist thing looks stupid as hell, especially on people who are meant to be powerful. Also, this game does an absolutely horrible job of modeling breasts on women.