Shake them Hips!

The pelvis has finally been brought into play, and so have all of the problems it can create. Just as doing a lot of quick gesture drawings with the spine and rib cage, adding in the pelvis helps create a foundation. But again I felt as if the extremely fast gesture drawings were so quick that I really couldn't get a good grip on the proportion between rib cage, spine and pelvis. The pelvis like the rib cage provided more structure to build off of, it helped flush out the connection between the stomach and legs and provided a base that allowed for depth. A problem that became common when the pelvis was introduced was the elongation of the spine and creating too much of a gap between the pelvis and rib cage. This created figures that had elongated torsos and looked way too tall. Similarly the angle of the pelvis versus the angle of the rib cage provided sense of movement and made the figure look organic. However this relationship also made it easy to twist the two far apart and make the figure have an unnatural twist. The hips obviously help compliment the spine especially when the figures back is facing the viewer. The combination of the two gives the obliques, lower back, and butt a defined shape instead of a big blob of transitional mass from the legs to the back or to the stomach. The pelvis also is important as it creates a visual reference for the midpoint of the body and helps seperate the torso from the legs.