Sasha’s Cali Leg Posing Guide
Jan 18, 2024 4:02:51 GMT -5
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Alex@Marvel, Arie, and 2 more like this
Post by Sasha on Jan 18, 2024 4:02:51 GMT -5
Hey everyone ^^ I wrote this cali posing guide a while back. Posting it here now as a member, not a moderator. Hope that’s okay? Well without further ado, on to the guide!
Have you ever wondered how exactly to align your Calico?
In calico leg alignment there are two main points of interest. The back of the foot (in teal) and the inner elbow (in pink). In this stage we are mostly interested in the elbow. We are looking for a reference of what the elbow region looks like without any underlying pixels from the other leg, this is demonstrated in the two sample images. The left images shows quite a bit of the back foot, but there are no extra pixels visible in the elbow region, this is the one we're looking for. The right image shows a lot less visible foot, but as you can see the line in the elbow region appears to be thickened.
The teal pixels in these images represent the actual measuring.
Have you ever wondered how exactly to align your Calico?
Ever been stumped by vague guidelines such as 'they may show a bit of foot'?
Have you often wished there was a more measurable step by step approach?
Well look no further! Because today I am going to endeavour to create just that.
Have you often wished there was a more measurable step by step approach?
Well look no further! Because today I am going to endeavour to create just that.
Meet Bleeper! An adorable little calico mixie belonging to Arie . Today she is going to help me demonstrate my pixel measuring method!
Before we move on I would like to clarify that this guide does assume basic show posing knowledge. Common showing terms will not be clarified or explained in this guide. If you are new to show posing I would recommend this guide to start out with.
Step 1
Your initial photographs
For the first step you're going to want to take a few photos of your cat in a few random alignments. Don't think about it too much! The eyelids don't matter, and neither do head tilts or tongue bleps. I do however like hold down the space bar to capture the optimal tail curve (=breathing point). Does it really matter? To be perfectly honest I'm not sure. But since we're going to be doing some careful pixel measuring every bit of standardisation helps.
A few sample pictures you might take at this stage.
Step 2
First analysis
Now we're going to open some of our initial pictures in an image editor. In this stage it's most important that you select at least one image with a lot of the back foot showing, I will explain in further detail in the example below. Step 3
The measuring
In the final and most important step we are going to be looking for two specific alignments. Using our reference elbow as a guide.
The left image shows the same elbow as in our earlier reference image, but significantly less foot! This is ultimately what we are aiming for. In the right image we see less foot, but we're already starting to see the elbow line thicken. This is mostly a process of trial and error. I often take many pictures, just as I did in the first stage. Then I zoom in and measure as follows:
What I do is I measure the amount of back foot showing at it's widest point, not including the leg outline
In the left image this is 2 pixels, in the right image this is 1 pixel.
Then I measure the amount of back leg showing in the inner elbow.
In the left image this is 0 pixels, in the right image this is 1 pixel.
In the left image this is 0 pixels, in the right image this is 1 pixel.
The pink in these images showcase a small amount of fuzz. An important note about fuzz is that it resets every time you open the game. During one session it should remain constant, but if you want to do multiple posing sessions it's better to pick a non fuzzy area to measure. Therefore I am disregarding the pink area and instead I will be counting the teal pixels.
As you can see, when less of the back foot becomes visible, eventually the back leg starts to show in the elbow region, appearing as a thickened line. In general we want to avoid seeing any of the back leg in the elbow area. This means that as there are no half pixels, to find the optimal alignment of our calico, we need two consecutive images:
One image with only one pixel in the elbow area, like the one above. This image will have a certain amount of back foot showing. In this case that is one pixel. One pixel in the elbow area means we are one pixel off from our optimal alignment. So from this we can conclude that our optimal alignment will show two pixels of back foot.
Once we have found our alignment with 2 pixels of back foot, looking in the elbow region will give us confirmation that this is indeed the correct alignment. There are no more pixels visible in the elbow region. We have now found the best possible alignment for this particular calico.
When you have a smooth coated calico like Bleeper here you can do an extra measurement between the legs to confirm. The 'off' image should have exactly one pixel less space between the legs than the 'optimal' image. As you can see here the optimal image has 6 pixels, and the off image has 5. This is an extra confirmation that no in between or more optimal alignment exists.
And thus, this is the final pose we have chosen!
I hope this made sense, if you have any questions feel free to post below or message me on Discord! Comments, feedback, etc. also welcome.