✍️ A POST ABOUT SOMETHING THAT’S BEEN BUGGING ME ☝️
Short version: please stop policing stylization. Allow distortion for the sake of a compelling image - not just anatomical “correctness.” 🙂
Sorry if this comes off a bit harsh - I don’t have an academic background, but I do have a point, and I want it to land 💡
A rig will never be anatomically correct in motion.
Character design is probably the thing I’m most passionate about. For years I was terrified of the “same face syndrome” and tried to fight it by pushing stylization further and further. Some people praise my designs, others say they’re overcomplicated or have “non-functional” limbs. I personally think there is no absolute truth here - any design is just a point of view.
I always aim for strong, recognizable silhouettes. For example, my World of Warcraft characters Mika and Eugene - their hairstyles, ears, body shapes, limbs. Or, going into something more complex: the goat-like demon legs in my WATG (Who Are the Gods) project, which I actually borrowed from the Draenei race in WoW. I even showed how Draenei run in-game and in animation just fine… and still got confused reactions and dismissive “that’s not how it works.”
And I’m saying - it does work 👀
For academically trained artists, it may be “incorrect,” but here’s the thing: stylization has its own anatomy. We’re not rotating a realistic mannequin and bending it like a Barbie doll. Stylization follows different rules 🤓
Good stylization doesn’t mean something is “broken.” It has structure - just a different one, where geometry can (and should) be pushed for the sake of style. But I keep hearing the same question:
“How would you even animate this? The rig won’t bend! Can you even imagine Zixel walking and bending their legs?”
My answer: you don’t. Or rather - not the way you expect 🌸
Let me approach it from another angle. If you really want to force a design into a rig and animate it without in-betweens - without breaking it down into shapes instead of a rigid skeleton - then let’s talk about 3D animation, where rigs are anatomically structured.
In animation (from classic squash-and-stretch to modern 3D), characters are constantly distorted, stretched, compressed, and pushed into unnatural poses. Even in 3D, with “correct” rigs, artists still break geometry for the sake of the shot. Because animation has always been about visual impact - not about placing a “perfect mannequin” in a scene, bending it, and recording the result 🤬
Yes, I’m self-taught. My anatomical mistakes come from lack of formal training, not from “non-functional design.” And the question “how would this be animated?” (even though I don’t even plan to animate these characters - though I could if needed) kind of misses the point.
Animation isn’t about moving correctly. It’s about moving in a way that looks good.
Relax. The people who need to handle complex geometry and extreme angles will handle it. Watch breakdowns of something like “Encanto” to see what really happens behind the scenes - it might shift your perspective. In animation direction, characters almost never stay in their original anatomical state 👀
As for my little gremlins - they’re just unstable and drawn the way I feel 😑
May your characters be crooked but visually striking - not stiff and “correct” with every bone perfectly in place.
tangentwithtanner
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theartofmadeline
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