headspace-hotel:

“But NORMAL People’s Bodies Didn’t Look Like That!” …right?

Some of you may have seen my post about Baroque artists and their realistic depictions of human bodies as having skin and fat.

I’ve had a lot of negative and frankly fatphobic comments on that post, calling the people in the paintings “fat” and “obese,” mostly along the lines of this:

“It’s because the artists are depicting rich people, who were fat and lazy. Normal people didn’t look like that!”

The idea, of course, is that these artists wouldn’t have ever drawn bodies that looked like those in the Baroque paintings, if they weren’t painting super-rich people that stuffed themselves with food all day.

Supposedly. We’ll see how well that holds up.

Today I was in the library looking at a collection of drawings by Albrecht Dürer, and learned that in the early 1500’s, Dürer tried to put together essentially a “how-to-draw” book, showing how to draw people. His work was controversial, because of his technique of “constructing” figures using rules about proportions. (A quick and easy method of inventing realistically proportioned bodies out of thin air? Cheating!!)

However, in his “constructed” drawings, Dürer had to figure out how to handle the range of variety in bodies, and ended up breaking down how to create a variety of body types in correct proportions.

I’m showing the women, to contrast with the post on Baroque paintings. Here are some of his drawings that I thought y'all should take a look at.

These are a couple of his more “average” women—the one on the left is from his drawing book, and the one on the right is one of his drawings.

Here’s a “strong woman” and “A very strong, stout woman”

This is what he refers to as a “stout woman.”

Here’s where it gets interesting: this is what Albrecht Dürer refers to as a “peasant-type” woman

^That. That’s what a “peasant” body type looks like.

He labeled this one “A peasant woman of 7 head lengths”

in case you missed it: this figure drawing by a guy in the 1500’s is literally labeled as being of a peasant woman! this is what a “peasant woman” body type looks like!

He did draw similar amounts of thinner figures, but they’re not particularly emphasized over the “Strong” and “Stout” figures. Nor is there exactly a “default” figure. He’s just…going over the range of variations that there are?

Here’s another “stout woman,” covered in notes on how to draw the proportions:

now that’s too technical for me to make any sense of but

this was in the 16th century!! This body type was apparently not incredibly rare in the 16th century. This body type was important enough for you to be able to draw, as an artist, in the 16th century to be handled in detail in a 16th century artist’s drawing advice

In conclusion: yes this is just what people look like, yes it’s important to know how to draw fat bodies, even this dude from the early 1500’s is telling you so, Die Mad About It

all of this is from “The complete drawings of Albrecht Dürer” by Walter L. Strauss

today-only-happens-once:

theishvalanalchemist:

i-am-mother-universe:

theishvalanalchemist:

strawbebehmod:

theishvalanalchemist:

dylanyonah:

theishvalanalchemist:

Their boobs move. Like…realistically move. As in, the way actual breasts would motion if a woman made that movement without an over the top exaggeration and the camera is framed in a way so that it’s clearly not supposed to be sexual the way most anime would stage it. The scenes in question are meant to be taken seriously so the animators and direction is take things seriously. Either it’s just a character walking down a hall or clapping her hands. 

If this were any other action/adventure anime, the camera angle would’ve been something like this for Winry’s introduction:

This is weird, but what I find so sexy about Riza is, well… How she isn’t sexualized. Like, she isn’t a pure sex object in nonstop sexy outfits. She’s a beautiful military woman, and she dresses appropriately for the role. Along with that she’s NEVER used as the ‘sexy distraction’ trope that women often are used for. She has a good role, she’s a fighter, but also has a kind heart for her friends.

That and more are reasons Riza is my favorite female anime character, and FMAB is my favorite anime.

Well said my friend.

I think there was only one instance of jiggle physics and that was with lust but that was when they were trying to make a joke about havoc having a thing for boobs and the joke was more about havoc than lust having big breasts.

“You fell into my booby trap” (proceeds to paralyze Havoc afterwards)

What I also love is that their boobs are in equal proportion to every other body part. Like, yeah, a character might have bigger boobs, but she also had a big waist/hips/legs/etc to go with it, so the largeness doesn’t feel fake. Plus, they never draw attention to the sexual stuff, and the only exception was the joke with Havoc. And it was posed in a way that made it feel like less of a raunchy boob joke and more of a joke on Havoc and how his attraction to boobs is what led him to be deceived, which doesn’t leave female viewers uncomfortable, or feeling like their body is constantly the butt of a joke, like some other animes do

That’s a good point that I didn’t realize. All of characters in the show have equally proportioned bodies. 

Ed’s muscles get larger as he gets older but never reaches John Cena level of jacked since he’s still under 6 feet tall. He’s always presented as ripped and not ‘bulky’ like Sig or Alex. 

Riza is about the same height as adult Ed, but they have different body styles thus the word for her would be toned. She’s still lean but her muscles and body shape are the same aren’t ‘compact’. 

Fmab follows the basic body designs for males and female characters and doesn’t exaggerate a specific feature to the point where it’s comedic. It makes it’s bed, and lies in it.  

Every time I see a girl in just about any other action/adventure (shonen) anime I just think:

“is your back okay? You need a doctor? Hey Thomas! Call Lucy a chiropractor!”

or better yet:

“Good Lord! Get this man a sandwich!”

The only real exception to the whole body proportion thing is ALEX LOUIS ARMSTRONG

But his ridiculously bulky muscles are used largely as a comedic element, in which the overly toned nature of his body is commented on as the “freak of nature” kind of idea and definitely not presented as if that’s some kind of expectation for anyone else in the show.