melle-d:

one thing thats nice about crossing arms is u can use it to hide hands (sneaky laugh) 

heres a transparent view of how the arms cross and the basic way the weight in the arms reacts to crossing (it will bunch at the elbow and flatten at the crossing

heres how they might work with titties (don’t listen to that last one, i do it all the time, but the boobs will sit on top of the arms so they will flatten out as the weight settles across the plane of the 2 arms, not just hang)

A bit of expression notes, use crossed arms mostly if the character is putting their attention or needs inward, such as thinking or being cocky or scared. moving the elbows further out or upward and having the arms low is a more confident or angry expression, while having the arms high up, more near the arm pits, and the elbows close to the body, is a more scared expression, usually the hands are visibly clasping the arms. now this isnt 100% always the same meaning, like having the hands up and elbows close could be a more shy or i cant keep in all this love expression, but thats the basics.

Crossing legs has another advantage as well because you can usually hide a thigh at most angles, as u will usually see only one leg.

i dont have a good one from the side, sorry. One thing to note is when the legs are crossed it will effect the fat on the thighs, and the will be flattened by each other depending on the contact, but like before, you can kind of hide it if you get good at using it to hide a thigh lol

as for proportions, if its not too cartoony you can usually follow the 8 head rule where you divide the body into 8 pieces, each the length of the head

so you can figure out what the length would be in heads, like if you’re doing the calf for crossed legs, that would be 2 heads, and you can just measure that from your original character’s head. you can even experience with different types of proportion, like 4/3 heads for more cartoony characters. note that this won’t be as easy to figure out if you’re using dramatic perspectives unless you can account for that. 

You can try to figure out how the length would work with the change in perspective by keeping tract of the head lengths and how they would change with the perspective like this 

I hope that helped at all

atalana:

so if, like me, you’ve done all the research on how clothing folds, and you have a decent idea how the physics works, but you just can’t get it to look right?

change all your lines into this

im serious

it makes everything look so much more natural

for added realism, just add random bumps to the line wherever you put one

and there you go!

(please dont judge me for my anatomy i drew this in five minutes)