I was browsing through my deviant watches today when I saw this one drawing (beautifully CGed) but I noticed that while it might have been aesthetically pleasing to some people, the leg length was kind of disturbing to me.
Sure, the trend might be that long legs are beautiful, but there’s a certain point where it starts to look unnatural and weird.
Then an idea struck me; a way to possibly quickly determine the approximately proportionate-looking length of legs.
In hindsight, it has kind of a right-under-your-nose obviousness to it, but by all means, this is the first time I’ve actually thought of it this way:
Given a pose, if one were to imagine the leg hinging upward parallel to the upright torso (hinging shown in orange), on average, the knee would be near the top of the arm but would not shoot past the shoulder.
I’m sure this can vary from person to person. I’m not in any position to give exact measurements… but I suspect that this is a pretty reliable and easy method to check for realistically plausible leg length when drawing poses that aren’t too heavily foreshortened.
It goes without saying that this doesn’t apply to the styles that intentionally distort limb proportions.
