THIS is what's wrong with this Drawing

So Duncan was the one to find the second major problem I put in this drawing. Its twinning, that's when your pose is symmetrical or the same on each side. People love to argue with me that SOMETIMES they do pose symmetrically, but we are creating the illusion of life here, when you pose your character in a way that can be interpreted as mechanical then its a clue to the subconscious eye that we are looking at a drawing (puppet, 3D Model etc) instead of a real character.

By the way, this is what my friend Matt said in an email to me after seeing the Blog..... "what's wrong with this drawing?.. You mean apart from the major twinning and the fact that he's about to fall on his face? :D"

So how do we fix it, well to some extent we can kill two birds with one stone. Bringing on leg forward helps with the balance and breaks the symmetry in the lower part of the pose. Often when I notice a pose twinning I use it as an opportunity to get some foreshortening in, bringing the the near side arm back so it points more toward us also shifts the upper body weight back a smidgen and makes for a more natural look. A slight tip of the head and I'm done. There are many other ways you could tackle it, the most important thing is that you find the issue in the first place and do something about it.