a curious little mouse · 5d
i am looking at your reference for a feral gangbang comm you did, along the bottom you wrote the sizes of all the critters (19 in, 15 in, etc), hooooow do you go about using that in the actual comm. i have a really hard time understanding sizes when someone tells me them, like i have noooo idea how something that is, say, six inches would look, until someone puts it in front of me. so, yes, is this just an innate understanding on your part, and any tips for someone wanting to get better at understanding this in particular?
I don't feel I'm really the best at size consistency, or necessarily accuracy...however...... if you like what I do, then I will do my best to explain it...
scale individual BODY PARTS to one another, not the entire animal. Suchas "okay, the linsang's head should be about as big as the Clouded Leopard's paw" or "the shetland pony's foreleg is about the same length as the total body of the ferret hob" or "the hummingbird's total body should be the size of the stylized cat's eye". Taking the entire body of everything into account IS very difficult, but chances are if you can at least start at the comparison of one part of each, the rest of the body will follow logically in reference to each individual, or at least be somewhat obviously wrong if completely messing up. You don't necessarily need to start drawing the entire bodies at once or even necessarily imagine so, you can build it starting from one small area, suchas a paw next to a head! I actually find drawing interspecies very stimulating because of this, I'm not always able to really imagine in my skull what they will fully proportion out to until I draw it. It can be shocking.
I also tend to just start VERY loosely and generally....
I honestly have an incredibly poor grasp of numerals and sizes in general!! I only use the inches dimensions for the purpose of that initial reference (AND I DO NOT DO IT VERY CAREFULLY), but past that point, it doesn't really matter what is 3ft or 55 inches long, only what they look like interacting, and perhaps how large/small the environment around them should feel. And even so, it's only an impression. Something like, "the hoof should FEEL so big, capable of crushing every organ in the other" is enough to start anything.
The other tip is veterinary footage is very useful, when accessible, if you can stomach surgical things partic. I really watch a lot of whatever I can get my hands on, when plotting out a size comparison, I trawl flickr a loooot, until SOMEthing is in the shot that helps me with scale--!! I'm not innately good at it at all, but I am innately obsessive, I guess? I feel like UUGHHH I WILL FIND THE VIDEO OF DIFFERENT SPECIES OF MONKEY COEXISTING IN A ZOO EXHIBIT OR FOREIGN PARK!!! and then I like fall to my knees when i find it. The time it took to find a single video of a resplendent quetzal next to a person..... (because I was AGOG at dimensions listed on sites VS my impression... also sometimes different sites have opposing dimensions...)
In this way however I would say naturalistic environments are a lot more forgiving, I would have an infinitely harder time trying to ground a bunch of ferals inside of a domestic home environment where I have to consider the scale of a BED and CHAIR and COFFEE TABLE. I think in this scenario I would Little Nightmares the scales to hell.... I'M lucky I'm so not interested in an impala running an onlyfans from her apartment, LOL
