Pro tips for drawing characters in movement: Let’s talk about battle scenes!

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Next in our series on drawing moving characters, I’d like to talk about battle scenes. These are an important part of many anime series, and it’s vital that we learn how to draw the characters’ movements in a natural way that doesn’t break the immersion for our viewers.

Pulling hand up to punch

Here our character is really winding up their strength to put everything into that punch. For scenes like this, it helps to add in some extreme perspective and foreshortening like we have here.

Pro Tip 1

I’ve added some motion lines to make it clearer how the fist is moving. These manga effects can really help up with giving a sense of speed and strength.

Pro Tip 2

By making this front hand very large, and the far hand smaller, we’ve created a really nice sense of distance. This helps add drama to a scene, and make all the movements look bigger and more dramatic.

Karate roundhouse kick

When drawing a leg swinging up like this, adding in some lines to show the trajectory of the movement is always a good idea. This will add even more drama and movement to the scene.

Pro Tip

For a roundhouse kick, the character swings their leg up and around at a great speed. This speed is necessary to whirl the leg up, and to make sure the character stays balanced. Using movement blur lines like these ones to show the route the leg has passed through, will really help with this speed. It’s like the leg’s moving too fast for us to see!

Controlled punch

This punch, unlike the huge, powerful punch we started out with, is a lighter, more controlled punch. This might be used in boxing or sparring.

Pro Tip

To how a smaller, more controlled movement, we can add movement lines to just the hand area. This will give the impression that just the hand is moving quickly.

I hope you enjoyed today’s lesson on drawing moving characters! We’re looking forward to seeing all of your awesome fight scenes! Good luck with your studies.

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