I gotta say, it's always nice seeing wholesome fat-positive sonic fan accounts like yours!
Any advice for other artists drawing up round, plus-size STH redesigns and ocs? 🦔🔵❣️
[HIIIIII! I’m so glad you think so!!!
My advice is, PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE! It IS going to be difficult, but don’t let that put you off! I mean, this was one of my earliest attempts at trying to make it look like Sonic was fatter than Shadow…
Yikes! Where are their organs! If they saw this now they would cry at how skinny they are!
If your style is very STH, I would recommend looking at fat characters in canon (Big, Storm, Eggman… etc) there may not be many but it can help you break down base shapes and how the weight fits in that style.
Otherwise, play around until you figure out what works with your style!
For Sonic, I took inspo from Classic and Eggman, so he’s very much Egg Shaped. I truly just draw an egg. But from angles where we see his back/hips/side he’s kinda based on my fiance lol. My Sonic’s fat is quite full and rounded, and sits mostly in the torso, but he has thick legs as well
For Shadow, he has a squishier distribution of fat, and it’s mostly in his lower belly/hips/thighs/ass. It’s softer. If Darkness stepped on Sonic’s belly it’d be like stepping on a mound, whereas if she stepped on Shadow’s her peets would sink into the fat. That’s the best way I can think to describe it lol. Like you can see in sitting poses, Sonic’s belly has more mass and kind of sits in his lap, whereas Shadow’s folds and squishes more.
Having multiple fat characters with different ways of wearing the weight means you get to play around with different ways of drawing fat! I love that they don’t wear it the same, they have very different shapes
It takes a little extra work to figure out how to pose your characters. A lot of refs out there will be based on skinny models or weightless mannequins (i recommend adorkastock for more body diversity but even then, I don’t find the refs super easy to work with). You will find that some positions are physically not possible with the fat there.
For example, when I was trying to draw Shadow sitting on Sonic’s lap, I was having a really hard time because there’s… not a lot of room. Sonic has short legs and a big belly that takes up a lot of his lap! I unfortunately don’t still have the original sketch, but I was trying to draw Sonic sitting quite upright with Shadow in his lap and it just wouldn’t work logistically, so I made Sonic lean back to accommodate his belly.
As a general bit of advice, try to avoid drawing concave (inny) curves on the body (even on skinny characters). Most concave curves are actually two convex (outy) curves overlapping. This will help give more form/weight to your characters and is most obvious on Yuri Sonic, and especially in areas where her clothes actually impact the distribution of fat on her body. Also, I don’t know how to explain this one, but with how weight folds, it often reads better if there is a big curve on one side and two intersecting curves on the other… see below!
Manipulation tools like Liquify in Procreate are also an awesome way to fix it if you’ve drawn a character and feel they don’t look as fat as you intended! I do this quite often (more when I had just started drawing Sonic fat, but I still use it from time to time when I’m like hold on why he lookin skinny), it can actually be really useful to be able to push and pull at your sketch and play with the weight distribution. It helped a lot with figuring out Shadow’s body particularly. I even sometimes use the expand tool and just literally enlarge the belly area until it looks right in the sketch, then ink over (or sometimes I use it to fix a finished piece I suddenly decide doesn’t look right)
Here’s me flicking from before and after on this quick adjustment! It’s actually really effective for experimenting with weight distribution or pushing your chubby characters just a little bit further
Beyond all that, just practice drawing! If you’re fat, draw yourself! If you have fat friends, family members, draw them! Or take a look at references (the Snag Tights website uses, gasp, ACTUAL fat people for their plus size models, and because they make a lot of tights and underwear, there are loads of photos of fat people (mostly afab, I’m afraid I don’t have many good fat amab refs) wearing not too much clothing so you can understand what you’re looking at.
Have fun and don’t give up! Hope this helps!]