AM Tutoring Tips and Tricks part 11 - CG-ish poses

It's very important to make a CG character not look CG-ish. This means we need to eliminate the CG-ish movements and poses. Since we already discussed animating characters from the inside out in Part 5, let's go for posing this week.

I quickly made 2 poses, before and after, so we can compare them side by side. The pose on the left, even though it's a bit exaggerated, shows an example of how a CG-ish pose looks. The pose on the right is refined, and it feels more organic and interesting.

So, the question is, what exactly makes a pose CG-ish?

In most cases, dead straight lines cause the CG feeling. Computers create perfectly straight lines or geometry, they're mathematically correct, but lifeless and boring. Like the picture below, you can see there are a few dead straight lines I drew in red, which show the stiffness. Plus the negative space between the screen right arm and the body is a regular triangle. Those perfect angles and lines here are the main reason this pose looks lifeless and uninteresting.

After refining, you can see there are more curves around the body, which also make the pose more interesting to look at. Bent arms are not only for creating curves, but also make them feel more organic and fresh.

Let's look at more details.

The hand on the left, doesn't have much detail and the spaces between the fingers are very even. The hand on right is more polished, I moved the middle finger closer to the pinkie to breakup the even spacing. Using a little bit of cup, tweaking the finger joints and bending the thumb outward make the hand feel more organic.

Let's take a look at the hand on the hip. The hand on left feels like it's not supporting the weight of the arm and hand, because the wrist and hand are perfectly straight and the fingers are parallel to each other. So I bent the wrist a little, and made the fingers overlap each other. Now we can see the weight being supported, and the contact is more believable.

In sum, breaking the perfectness made by the computer is key to eliminating the CG-ish feeling. I usually use the different attributes as much as possible to make the pose more alive. Let's take a hand for example, don't forget to use palm cup, finger twist and spread, every joint...etc. If penetration is a necessary evil to make the pose more organic, then go for it. Think making poses more graphic, don't be lazy, do whatever you need to do to kill the monster!! :)

Article created by Erik Lee, refined by Joseph Taylor.