Gee, she's really...um, fat. REALLY?

This was my first time of actually trying to figure out how fat is distributed across the body. Once upon a time, I thought if I just added a gut onto a character, they'd become believably fat. Sadly, this is not the case...for anyone.

Fat is distributed pretty much all across the body. In this chart, the male remains the same height and head size, but they grow wider all over. It would look odd if the person had a large belly, but well toned arms. What's most especially important is that the legs remain proportionate enough to hold up the body (when a morbidly obese person becomes tired due to walking and running though, they will feel it in the legs, but this is also due to the metabolism and energy level; the legs--though fat is weaker than muscle--are still proportionally sound). You might have heard of the term "big-boned." Everyone knows this is just a joke, but while drawing this diagram, I found it interesting that the skeletal structure is basically the same as the body grows.

One thing I want to also point out is something I noticed a few years ago in art school. While the idealized human body is a beautiful thing, there is also a sense of beauty I can't help but love in the way the human body adds fat. When fat grows on a body, the body has large gentle curves as opposed to the various bends and knobs that muscles accentuate. With more weight, rolls start to form, which form incredibly beautiful lines across the torso that would never be seen on a lean figure. Artists have focussed for millennia on the idealized human figure (which changes from time to time), but perhaps one of the most under-appreciated forms of beauty is the obese figure.