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However, after owning it for a while and attempting to draw from it, I realized this book is not good for beginners. You can't learn much about basic anatomy when your references are all squished up so that the shoulders look giant and the legs are half an inch long.
If you already have a very good understanding of the human body, you may find this useful for very specific poses. Plus, the models are pretty short, considering the references are intended for a comic artist.
I was pretty excited about this book when I first checked it out. Many shots are, as one reviewer said, at extreme or odd angles instead of more natural ones.
The most positive thing about this book is probably the lighting, which was done very well. I needed to learn a lot about anatomy and don't exactly have the space or means to hire models for my own reference photos, so I figured something like this would be perfect.
If you're just starting out and are not adept with anatomy yet, you'll probably find many of the poses useless.
The one positive thing I can say is that for the money you are getting quite a bit of content. Comic artists rarely draw women of this body type. This book is truly a good idea but between the selection of models and less-than-good photography it falls short. The female models in this book are beautiful, but unless you are looking for short and slightly thick this is not the book for you.
And two of them don't take their socks off. I'll list the GOOD, then I'll list the Not-So-Good (aka. BAD) things about the photograph are as follows:1) The images are SMALL. I'll keep it now that I have it, but my recommendation is to look elsewhere for a good reference book.
Bad because sometimes parts of the model cast shadows on their face/etc, and obscures expressions and such.All in all, it's OKAY. Frankly, I wouldn't buy it again. Good because you get some nice play of light across muscles/tendons. This could be good or bad.
Seems like the largest they get is around 700-800px on the longest side.2) The camera's focal length causes the subjects to look distorted (ie. There's a lot of important detail in the tendons/bones/toes that is completely missing from half the images in this book.4) The lighting creates strong shadows. BAD).The best two things about this book are:1) A decent amount of images therein show the models in clothing (cloaks, some street clothing).2) There's some decent reference of models holding weapons in "battle" poses.That's it, really.The *not* good (ie. It may seem like a small thing, but not showing the feet is kind of huge.
For example:http://is.gd/21M03) Only 4 models total. Even the ones on the enclosed CD-ROM. Huge hands close to the lens, tiny feet far away).
While the CD is helpful, leaving the computer on the whole time to draw from it wears your eyes out quickly. The book would be ideal if it was wire-bound, and you could flip to a certain photo, then lay the book flat to draw from it. Otherwise, it's hard to keep it open to one page without clips, clamps or otherwise incovenient tools.
Not worth the full price that's printed on it. The "extremely positive" reviews here are no doubt either people who fall into this newbie category or friends of the author looking to help him out by placing positive reviews. Pass on this one or get it used / discounted somewhere. I was very disappointed after purchasing this book. I was suckered. You can do better by finding image references through Google Images and those are free. The content is average at best and the CD doesn't even contain ALL of the images found in the book which I thought was very misleading to the customer - you have to scan the images not on CD that you want - what a waste. This book has some value, perhaps if one is just starting out, but hardly a top resource for anyone else.
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