Secrets of Drawing Action and Fighting in Comics/Animation: Today's Lesson: Path of Action

Cartoon Action Fight Force and Momentum Is Always Visually Horizontal

Fighting Poses are always more intense and dynamic when They're Horizontal

Please refer to How to Draw Comics: The Marvel Way: Page 59: "Action"

Always lay out anatomy poses with a path of action.

When Drawing Action and Fighting, Keep the Path of Action Sideways and diagonal (Horizontal)

Nearly All Major Action Panels & Camera Shots feature a horizontal path of action

Striking an opponent is a sideways force, NOT a vertical force, unless the characters are in flight. But even then they're throwing punches, kicking, and striking horizontally the vast majority of the time.

No matter what kind of action scene or sequence your watching in animation or reading in comics, whether it's manga, superheroes, or TV action cartoons and anime, punches, blocks, and kicks, their force will 99% of the time be horizontal.

And that's all there is to that...Oh. Wait. Come to think of it, art students like visual examples, don't they.

Very well. Here are some poses I drew to demonstrate my theory. Note the curve of the torso / path of action / spine...

For more information on this comics fight drawing technique, check out the most classic book on comic book fighting: How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way. Though the artwork is a little dated, it's a must read for any artists who wants to portray action in their comic book illustrations and sequential art. If you want to draw Shonen or Seienen manga, it's also useful. Action is a universal language in comics and animation, so really, people shouldn't care if you're using a Marvel academic book to help you draw manga, indie comics, or anything else for that matter. Action is a universal language, regardless of filmmaker, illustrator, publication, country or genre. Fists move at the same pace in any language. 

LINK TO THE BOOK

Character Design Time! Here's one of my older characters...

Tome Title: I love  being 1/4th Chinese & 1/4th French: Episode 222.

Juh Juh Juh Juh Jah Jah, Jah JEN.

R.I.P. - Moebius

Jean Henri Gaston “Moebius” Giraud

Genius

May 8, 1938 — March 10, 2012

How does one Moebius’s younger and newer fans go about writing an article on Moebius exactly?

His Works in comics and production design for science fiction films, of which he became a visual grandmaster, are vast and numerous. The art team that worked on Blade Runner took much of the inspiration for Blade Runner's city and architectural design from Moebius' illustrations, comics, and books. As did George Lucas in many of his Star Wars works.

Moebius primarily lived and worked in France, primarily in the subgenre of French Comics, but through his vast amount of detail-and-imagination oriented artwork, he attained an iconic status among the comics community, as one of the Grandmasters of Architectural design and detail, primarily acknowledged for the most part by fellow creators, authors, manga-ka, production designers, and authors in France, America, and Japan. While alive, he maintained open communication with such famous Japanese and iconically respected creators as Hayao Miyazaki and Katsuhiro Otomo, both among many others of whom his work influenced…heavily. If it’s cinematic and hyperdetailed, chances are Moebius had a hand in its creative design influence in origin, considering he was one of the originators of the postmodern and contemporary detailing-&-perspective technique.

It’s not easy to quickly describe Moebius’s visual style, seeing as it encompasses so much and covers so much ground.

For the last decade or so, Moebius practically went off the map, in terms of PR. Hardly anyone was publishing new articles about him. Translated American editions and art books of his work have been notoriously expensive and hard to find online, let alone in a bookstore. I was well aware of Moebius prior to his death by at least 2 to 3 years, which makes the timing of his passing seem all the stranger to me.

Moebius was truly a God, Pioneer, and Revolutionary of both comics and animation. I still remember first reading about him being described that way by Scott McCloud when I read Understanding Comics in the year 2000 or so, completely unaware of how obsessed with his work as an artist I would become in my adult years. But he was humble, and people do not consider him one of the egotists or boasters, precisely because that is NOT what he is. With Moebius, it was always about the design, the architecture, the perspective, the vision, and the art…for starters.

Here’s to many more years and many more awakenings to getting lost in the imaginative and vivid worlds Moebius created. Under many different names. Moebius's literary imagination of Visionary Creativity in sequential art, animation, literature, and filmmaking (for both television and cinema worldwide) (i suspect) is destined to live on, for many decades, if not a lot longer, whether it's in Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, or any other world cultural megahub for that matter. When you're as good as Moebius was and is (and Moebius was that good) history will not forget the legend your vision attained.

It's ACTION TIME! OEL Action Manga Prop Study!

Random Handgun study, for an OEL Action Manga series I'm working on...