Clip Studio Paint
Jolene Yeo explains how she sets up her action scenes, from finding a pose to adding excitement with elemental effects
Action scenes can be daunting, as these illustrations tend to lean on the more complex side with so many factors to consider. Developing an understanding of movement and anatomy, coupled with framing and lighting, can help bring a scene to life, even in a 2D still. Together, they can create a suspenseful atmosphere.
At a young age, I tried to draw a couple of action scenes, but quickly realised it was not as simple as I thought. The character’s pose had to be impactful enough, and it ended up looking lackluster and lacking any action at all. I realised I needed to study movement, and how real people or animated characters moved in battle in films, cartoons, anime or games. Breaking down the movement frame-by-frame helped me understand how the human body functioned in those scenes.
With that in mind, do note that you may need to do some posing yourself! Studying poses or watching action scenes may be helpful, but your artwork will need a personal touch. Often we try to look for stock images online, but sometimes they don’t seem to fit our needs. You can be your own best model, especially with dynamic poses as it can be tricky to find someone executing the same pose and angle you need.
This tutorial will be fun as we dive into creating a dynamic action scene. While we’ll focus on a more anime art style, these tips and tricks will still apply to other art genres.
1 Practise your posing
Having an interesting pose is key to capturing the viewer’s attention, as well as expressing the action. Most importantly you need to have a base story, scenario, or setting. Here I want to draw a dual-wielding girl fighting off some marionette enemies, so I start sketching action poses with this in mind. It’s important to try a few poses to warm up and explore. For these, I use myself as a reference. With the self-timer on my phone camera, I take a photo of myself doing the action. This helps me understand the action and anatomy, and gives me a reference point.
2 Find the right pose
After selecting your favourite pose, start to roughly sketch the scene’s other components. It’s great to have an idea of what the enemies look like, as sketching a human is different from a fantasy creature. Think about how the actions of the main character affect these enemies. Are they falling back from a punch? Getting impaled by a spear? Or perhaps being sliced in half?
3 Begin to make refinem
