Introduction of the Penguins

It's time I teach you how to use 3d models to draw...penguins!

Why penguins? While drawing humans is absolutely critical, drawing animals is just as an important skill to have. It's also useful if you can draw the most perfect human being, but then you draw their dog like this:

Also, everyone loves penguins.

Basic Shape of the Penguin

To help us demonstrate this tutorial, I like you to meet Noot the Penguin:

I used this 3d model for demonstration:

Of course, if you can't afford it, this alternative works great too:

Let's look at Noot with the texture turned off:

Penguins actually have a different skeletal structure compared to other birds. Since they can't fly, they have much bigger and heavier bones than the typical bird. Here is a skeletal and muscular plan of a typical penguin:

However, this looks complicated, and we all want to draw penguins easily, so we'll break the body down into basic shapes.

Let's go back to Noot again:

After getting Noot into a standing position, I sketched a basic outline of their anatomy, using the 3D figure as a guide. A good rule to follow is that the shoulders are located at the start of the ribcage and the feet start where it ends:

I also did a profile sketch, following the same guidelines:

Once I'm happy with the sketches, I get onto inking. How you draw the penguin is up to you. You could either render a realistic penguin or a slightly cartoony one like I did:

Here is the final result:

One more thing before we move on. Using the 3D penguin model, we can draw other types of penguins! You can see the types of penguins I can draw using just the head:

Poses of the Penguin

Now comes the fun part: drawing the poses for Noot!

Oh sure, you CAN use the poses that came with the 3D model:

But more often than not-either the posing options are limited or the model doesn't support poses- you have to pose them yourself.

Let's demonstrate this with Noot's cousin, Jeremy:

Jeremy here doesn't have posing support, but he DOES have some basic posability.

Let's do a classic waddle pose. I'm going to position his arm like so:

You're probably wondering what these controls are. The red line is the X axis, the green line is the Y Axis, and the blue line is the Z axis:

With that in mind, I moved the other limbs into the position I want:

Be careful when posing, though. You don't want Jeremy to look like he broke his neck!

Here is the result:

Back to Noot again.

I start by tilting Noot's head:

Aaand here is what I end up with for Noot after posing the other limbs:

Here is a collection of some penguin poses I drew. I recommend referencing actual penguins to make your penguin look authentic:

Side note: if an animal model comes with poses, it will look weird if said poses are used on a human:

Enemies of the Penguin

Now let's talk about designing the important factor: the natural enemies of the penguin.

Although penguins are used (if you can tell by reading thus far), the same techniques can be applied to other animals. You just need to find the basic body structure of an animal and where certain limbs start and end.

This is shown with the shark:

The octopus:

And the most terrifying predator of all: the bee:

Of course, you can use any animal you want. For 3D models, I recommend looking up Clip Studio ASSETS. Whether you typed 'animal' or something specific, you are guaranteed to find something:

Conclusion of the Penguins

With this, you are now ready to draw penguins (and other animals!) using 3D models. Once you are confident in drawing them without the 3D model, I recommend doing research to get them just right. Reference photos of real penguins. Go to a zoo. Do whatever's necessary to perfect the body of the penguin.

Until next time...