[Help] Problem with making a pose of a model holding a chair above its head.

[GinkTheInkle]

Hi, I'm having issues making a model holding a chair (or every other object) above its head using both arms, when I get it's hand up, the shoulders seems to break like this:

https://i.imgur.com/44xRud8.png

Now... I searched around and found a video that tells me that the problem is that I don't use the collar bones, so I moved a bit and the issue seems to be fixed, but now another thing is still bothering... the hand.

https://i.imgur.com/W1Yhv9B.png

What I usually do to fix the hand problem is to move the elbow and it works... but now the shoulder is broken again!

https://i.imgur.com/F2Wq2D5.png

So... I use the collar bone again to see if I can fix it, but it doesn't work... here is a GIF showing what happends:
https://media.giphy.com/media/JpvTcKzT3wIAvVoFNm/giphy.gif

I make the hand go that high for the character to look like it's holding a chair or any other object above it's head.

How can I fix this? I tried many ways but I always fail to get the hand with it's arm achieve the pose I want... maybe the model's arms are too short and that's why this happends?

Thanks in advance!

[Zappy]

Have you tried "rolling" the collar by about 20 degrees or so, the lower arm bone by about 20 degrees or so, and the hand by about 20-30 degrees or so, rather than having the whole "roll" applied by just a single bone?

[GinkTheInkle]

Yep... I usually do that when I need to change the position of the hand (since we don't just rotate the hand, we also move the arm a bit and the collar I think).
I forgot to mention that I use a rig (so I don't fully rotate, I use the move option and move the hand like a marionette, also the elbow doesn't do anything if I rotate it, I just can move it).
Doing what you told me gives me the same or very similar results, maybe I'm doing something wrong so here is a 2 minute video showing what I'm actually doing:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BcRtebRMtzVDi6L0K3FP7ZYysz9EWaAW/view?usp=sharing

I tried doing with the steps you gave me (first coller, then elbow and last hand) but I feel I'm not doing it right.

Thanks for the reply!

[R234]

I'd say the main problem here is that the arm is overextended, i.e. the hand IK handle is too far away for the actual hand to reach. I know this can be a bit difficult with a character with such cartoony proportions (tiny arms, huge head), but you'll want to give the arms a bit of a bend anyway by moving the handle down.

Posing is a matter of observation. Try miming holding a chair above your head, and pay attention to your posture. You don't just raise your arms straight up. Your back arcs, your shoulders are raised and rolled backwards, your arms are slightly bent with the elbows pointed mostly forward. And if your character is also going to be visible from the waist down, the legs should also be spread apart, knees bent, one foot ahead of the other. There's a lot more to a pose than the "key" idea, the whole body should work together.

[GinkTheInkle]

Originally posted by R234:

I'd say the main problem here is that the arm is overextended, i.e. the hand IK handle is too far away for the actual hand to reach. I know this can be a bit difficult with a character with such cartoony proportions (tiny arms, huge head), but you'll want to give the arms a bit of a bend anyway by moving the handle down.

Posing is a matter of observation. Try miming holding a chair above your head, and pay attention to your posture. You don't just raise your arms straight up. Your back arcs, your shoulders are raised and rolled backwards, your arms are slightly bent with the elbows pointed mostly forward. And if your character is also going to be visible from the waist down, the legs should also be spread apart, knees bent, one foot ahead of the other. There's a lot more to a pose than the "key" idea, the whole body should work together.

Sorry for the late reply.

Yep... the arms barely reach the chair, here is an actual screenshot of what I'm doing (the other screenshots were just testing how to reach the chair):

https://imgur.com/ckJslPd

The arms are extended to it's limit, of course that pose it's not the final, the fingers dosn't even touch the chair, is more like a "base pose", but before adding details I wanted to fix the problem with it's arms.

I did what you said and I watched myself holding a chair above my head in a mirror, the pose I wanted to do is pretty similar to what I saw there, I also wanted to flex the arms a bit since as you said, I don't extend my arms that much when I pick up a chair.
So considering that I edited the photo, it would look like this:

https://imgur.com/rzgxPLh

For now I'm just focusing on the arms and not the rest of the body since that's my main problem now.

So I tried that, but everytime I want to flex the arms a bit, the arms shoulders breaks:

https://imgur.com/Np49079

Finally, considering that the arms were overextended, I decided to bring the chair closer to the head, but here comes another problem and that's clipping with the hair, the chair starts clipping with the hair and the character that is above, but I took the hair out to see how the situation would be without the overextended arms and seems to be better (it's not well posed, but it seems that now it's possible to make the pose without breaking too much things).

https://imgur.com/H3lrX6L

But I can't do that since the character would be bald, and that's not the idea.

So, the problem here is that I know the pose I want to do, but I don't know how to achieve it, I tried many times but still can't get the pose I want, I will keep trying though, but I still don't know how to achieve it, do you know what I can do?

Thank you!

[R234]

Originally posted by GinkTheInkle:

But I can't do that since the character would be bald, and that's not the idea.

Yeah, that's definitely because of the model's cartoony proportions. Hmm... Maybe have her bend her neck down and/or her head to the side a bit?

Also, it actually doesn't look too bad in those images. Since the arms are mostly inside the "hair", you could probably remove the IK rig and stretch the arms ever so slightly, it would probably be subtle enough to not be noticeable, and the hands would reach the chair.

If this is for a movie, you could even have a shot where the scene is filmed from the elbows up or higher, and just squash the head inside the body so it doesn't clip through the chair.

[GinkTheInkle]

Well, again, sorry for replying almost a day after.

I kept trying to improve the situation and I think I got to a point where I can't do much more, but I think it's better than before (Still... It doesn't look how I would like, but it's better than nothing I think, I can't believe this silly thing is taking forever to get fixed or at least improved).

Anyway, here it is the current state:

https://i.imgur.com/LKBqqDw.jpg

And yep, this is for a movie project, I will change the camera position and the shot, now It will be zoomed to the chair and then it will show who is below holding it.

So... do you think this is at least good enough to continue? I didn't use any kind of trick like streching the arms, but I guess I will need to use that the next time I make this kind of characters hold something above it's head...

EDIT: I managed to improve the thing even a little more! Here it is it's updated version, I'm starting to like it!

https://i.imgur.com/Od5HbPq.png