Marla Structure + Weird Anatomy Guide

Anyone trying to draw a four-armed humanoid character? This one's for you!

I based Werespider anatomy off Thark anatomy from 'John Carter of Mars' , one of modern Disney's many (many!) sci-fi stillborns; but, hey: Disney's loss is our gain, because the Thark's in 'John Carter' were computer generated; so, they had to be animated; and, for that, they had to be rigged; and, for that, they had to have complimentary muscle groups, ligaments, and a functioning skeleton to support all of the above: so, I swiped it. Why re-invent the wheel, when I can use one someone threw in the trash? Especially a wheel this damn good! A smaller secondary pair of arms just makes sense; it keeps her appendages from bumbling into each other. (It also avoids the awkwardness of stacking two shoulders on top of each other.)

The biggest challenge for this drawing was, tbh, keeping the silhouette clean! Compounding the dilemma, I couldn't decide if her secondary arms should just amplify what her primary set emote, or, if they should betray what she's feeling subconsciously; or if they're acting in concert, accomplishing two tasks to accent a general action and/or sentiment. I didn't know, honestly, at the time what her arms' MO was, and, I'm not great at drawing hands, so, I just used a royalty free pose as a mask for my character's design. It's not what I wanted to do, and, now that I actually understand what her arms are all about, it's certainly a goal to move away from pre-existing gestures; which I resort to primarily to avoid drawing crusty fucking hands.

I hate to say it, but, as complicated as emoting with her arms is, what motivates each arm is a bit of column A, B, and C. Sometimes the right hand doesn't quite know what the left one is doing; even the left hand, in the top corner, doesn't know what its sister downstairs is doing. That said, they do generally operate sympathetically. For example, if she were running in a long skirt, obviously the secondary pair of arms would be pinching up her skirt while her primary arms would be pumping in tandem with her legs. If she were leaning down to smirk and point at you (because she's about 7ft tall), her secondary limbs would both be bracing her knees, while, from the primary set, one hand would be on her hips and the index finger, on the other primary hand, would be trained inches from your face.