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robotechtiger
This tiger's in his combat gear and ready to 'play'. You know you want to spar with this beast. :D
Character © robotechtiger
Art © Hoshi Kitsunuki
robotechtigerThis tiger's in his combat gear and ready to 'play'. You know you want to spar with this beast. :D
Character © robotechtiger
Art © Hoshi Kitsunuki
Category All / General Furry Art
Species Tiger
Size 1280 x 1006px
File Size 1.5 MB
Listed in Folders
One of the curses of being a swordsman is every time I see like... literally any art involving sword stances or combat I can only see the mistakes of techniques. This includes my own commissions XD
But hey, here is some constructive criticism in case you ever need to do something involving katana stances again:
The hands are a bit too close together. If you are familiar with fly fishing the distance of the hands is about the same. You want one right up against the gard and the other nearly at the end. The pinky should be about half on the little brass cap you have there. You want as large of a pivot fulcrum as you can in order to build up power in the strikes. The majority of power from a sword strike is generated by the snapping of the wrists and the inertia of the blade through the striking point.
If you can draw a line across the character on both sides of the sword, it's not a useful block. In this case the ear is beyond.
The extension of his stance here is extreme. You can see that a line can be easily drawn from the tip of the sword straight down that would intersect with his leg, which means that it would not deflect a blow away safely.
You don't want to lock a joint straight (this is in reference to the character's left leg) in any martial art because it locks the joint. This diminishes your mobility and prevents your muscles from being able to act as shock absorbers when an impact is put across the system.
You also do not want to over extend, as this weakens the stance and again reduces mobility. In general you don't want to see the kneecap past the ankle.
You also don't generally block with the edge of a katana (there are exceptions in a few supported blocks, however these are quite rare), it's made of a hard but brittle steel that will easily crack and shatter.
There really isn't such a thing as a static stance in Japanese swordsmanship other than the standard 'threatening' ones (chudan no kamae, gedan no kamae, hasso/ino kame are the most common of these types, you should be able to find a lot of references by those names). The closest thing to this particular stance is a small transitional motion for a counter attack in kenjutsu. It has survived as part of a rather standard kendo partner drill. The idea with this drill is to step off of the center of a straight up and down cut to the head with the sword at a high angle off to the side partially as a wind up for an oblique cut to the attacker's neck and partially to act as insurance if you are unable to step out of the way in time.
For this stance you would want the flat or back of the blade presented, usually we try to present the back of the blade with the blade itself tilted at a 45 degree angle but really you just want to keep the impact of the block as far from the brittle blade on the front as possible. The stance would also be far less pronounced. At the very least you don't want any bits sticking off the end like the leg there. Ideally you want the stance to transition with minimal movement into one that would be conducive of an oblique cut from the character's right to left. That is a thinner profile, front foot pointed more tword the front and back foot straight but on the ball.
I would also recommend against looking at kendo specifically for interesting references. For more dynamic/varied sword stances you're probably best looking at some of the ko-ryu or old schools of iaido and battodo. I'd recommend picking up a book on Eishin-ryu iaido (flashing steel is a good one for theory, but you'd probably be better served with still photos of events for reference shots) or looking at some of their demonstrations. I also have some older books from one of my more obscure schools that has a lot of KSR techniques described in it I could probably scan a few pages for you.
All in all, sorry for the rant XD
You have no idea how much of a tick this is though :P
But hey, here is some constructive criticism in case you ever need to do something involving katana stances again:
The hands are a bit too close together. If you are familiar with fly fishing the distance of the hands is about the same. You want one right up against the gard and the other nearly at the end. The pinky should be about half on the little brass cap you have there. You want as large of a pivot fulcrum as you can in order to build up power in the strikes. The majority of power from a sword strike is generated by the snapping of the wrists and the inertia of the blade through the striking point.
If you can draw a line across the character on both sides of the sword, it's not a useful block. In this case the ear is beyond.
The extension of his stance here is extreme. You can see that a line can be easily drawn from the tip of the sword straight down that would intersect with his leg, which means that it would not deflect a blow away safely.
You don't want to lock a joint straight (this is in reference to the character's left leg) in any martial art because it locks the joint. This diminishes your mobility and prevents your muscles from being able to act as shock absorbers when an impact is put across the system.
You also do not want to over extend, as this weakens the stance and again reduces mobility. In general you don't want to see the kneecap past the ankle.
You also don't generally block with the edge of a katana (there are exceptions in a few supported blocks, however these are quite rare), it's made of a hard but brittle steel that will easily crack and shatter.
There really isn't such a thing as a static stance in Japanese swordsmanship other than the standard 'threatening' ones (chudan no kamae, gedan no kamae, hasso/ino kame are the most common of these types, you should be able to find a lot of references by those names). The closest thing to this particular stance is a small transitional motion for a counter attack in kenjutsu. It has survived as part of a rather standard kendo partner drill. The idea with this drill is to step off of the center of a straight up and down cut to the head with the sword at a high angle off to the side partially as a wind up for an oblique cut to the attacker's neck and partially to act as insurance if you are unable to step out of the way in time.
For this stance you would want the flat or back of the blade presented, usually we try to present the back of the blade with the blade itself tilted at a 45 degree angle but really you just want to keep the impact of the block as far from the brittle blade on the front as possible. The stance would also be far less pronounced. At the very least you don't want any bits sticking off the end like the leg there. Ideally you want the stance to transition with minimal movement into one that would be conducive of an oblique cut from the character's right to left. That is a thinner profile, front foot pointed more tword the front and back foot straight but on the ball.
I would also recommend against looking at kendo specifically for interesting references. For more dynamic/varied sword stances you're probably best looking at some of the ko-ryu or old schools of iaido and battodo. I'd recommend picking up a book on Eishin-ryu iaido (flashing steel is a good one for theory, but you'd probably be better served with still photos of events for reference shots) or looking at some of their demonstrations. I also have some older books from one of my more obscure schools that has a lot of KSR techniques described in it I could probably scan a few pages for you.
All in all, sorry for the rant XD
You have no idea how much of a tick this is though :P
Holy god you know way too much about this subject.
I DID use a pose reference for this, that's exactly what the pose looked like. The model however, was my brother in 'badass' sword stances he made up himself, because they 'look cool'. Which they do, they're just not made to be accurate, obviously. He watches a lot of movies. All I wanted was the anatomy of the figure to be correct, I wasn't at all trying to make anything 'combat accurate'.
I appreciate the rant anyway, because good lord. I imagine there's a lot of inaccuracy in sword stances is purely because no one knows any of these things. When I'm doing art however, I'm not necessarily going for being realistic (I'd like to, but I am just not that good at it yet.) I'm going for emotionally moving. So while it may not be how one would really hold a sword when preparing for actual combat, it matches the reference that I used. Which in this case, is the important part. Thanks for the tips, even though it makes finding references even *harder*... XDDD
I DID use a pose reference for this, that's exactly what the pose looked like. The model however, was my brother in 'badass' sword stances he made up himself, because they 'look cool'. Which they do, they're just not made to be accurate, obviously. He watches a lot of movies. All I wanted was the anatomy of the figure to be correct, I wasn't at all trying to make anything 'combat accurate'.
I appreciate the rant anyway, because good lord. I imagine there's a lot of inaccuracy in sword stances is purely because no one knows any of these things. When I'm doing art however, I'm not necessarily going for being realistic (I'd like to, but I am just not that good at it yet.) I'm going for emotionally moving. So while it may not be how one would really hold a sword when preparing for actual combat, it matches the reference that I used. Which in this case, is the important part. Thanks for the tips, even though it makes finding references even *harder*... XDDD
Well...
https://www.google.com/search?q=iai.....s&tbm=isch
:P
Here is a basic reference of stances, which would provide good search strings for starting points: http://llsvt.pagesperso-orange.fr/C...../04_kobudo.jpg
Specific stances as I mentioned:
https://www.google.com/search?q=chu.....s&tbm=isch chudan no kamae: the most common stance.
https://www.google.com/search?q=has.....s&tbm=isch hasso no/ino kamae: an advanced stance that shows a large amount of confidence.
https://www.google.com/search?q=iai.....s&tbm=isch
:P
Here is a basic reference of stances, which would provide good search strings for starting points: http://llsvt.pagesperso-orange.fr/C...../04_kobudo.jpg
Specific stances as I mentioned:
https://www.google.com/search?q=chu.....s&tbm=isch chudan no kamae: the most common stance.
https://www.google.com/search?q=has.....s&tbm=isch hasso no/ino kamae: an advanced stance that shows a large amount of confidence.
Yeah... See here's the problem for me with using those for references. While they are all great to see how the stance should really look, the anatomy is all obscured by hakama (or whatever is the right word for what they're wearing, I forget) so you can't see their legs very well. So in an instance where I need to see what I am looking at, of the character isn't wearing a hakama, I have a hard time using it for a reference because I need to see HOW the knees bend and HOW their hips are angled. In the reference I used, my brother was wearing shorts... So it was much easier to see. Really just means we need someone who knows sword art to take photos in their boxer briefs. XDDD
http://www.howcast.com/videos/50687.....Sword-Fighting
That's about the best you're probably going to get for various stances without a hakama. It's quite rare for someone to practice iaido specifically without traditional clothing because it is largely what keeps the saya in place.
That's about the best you're probably going to get for various stances without a hakama. It's quite rare for someone to practice iaido specifically without traditional clothing because it is largely what keeps the saya in place.
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