Book Description: The next best thing to working with a live model, Virtual Pose(r) 3 provides professional and student artists with an accurate and convenient method of viewing the human form--without needing access to a live model and studio sessions.
Digital artist Mario Henri Chakkour has created a CD-ROM and companion book that features models in 70 high resolution poses, images which can be zoomed in on and rotated 360 degrees. Painters, sculptors, and other artists will welcome the opportunity to study at length each detail and subtlety of the human form, giving them a deeper understanding of shape, form, and gesture.
really good, but not perfect i really love using this book (and the CD). i want to mention that i have a Mac with an operating system that isn't updated (OS 10.2), and i purposely got Virtual Pose 3 because i assumed (rightly) that a more recent version of these books would come with a CD-ROM that's not compatible with my operating system. so thankfully i CAN use this CD, which is the best part of this book.
in my opinion, the book itself would be improved by 3 things:
1. more dramatic lighting (although i believe the author has addressed his reasoning for this)
2. a spiral binding (easier use for drawing from the book itself)
3. larger pictures (at least some)
i do like the models in this book very much, and the poses are great. i'm a bit of a beginner, and i only get to go to a life drawing once a month or so, so this is a great resource for me to just do lots and lots of gesture drawing, along with some more detailed work.
Better, but still not understanding the artist I am going to be critical, but I'd like to open with saying that this was a really cool and thoughful project for someone to come up with and offer to the artist.
I get quite a chuckle at all the people who are angry about there being airbrushed vulvas and anuses. In your usual life drawing class you are not going to have the model eyeballing you with their privates. Its not like there is a shortage of vulvas and anuses online if that's what you want to draw. And any artist who has developed true capability with the human form can use the suggested form shadow as a base from which to draw a glorious sphincter and beautiful floral labia to make any viewer blush. Until then get over yourselves. The models, used to having a choice of what they want to show the students; are entitled to keep four square inches of themselves private from the world.
Virtual Pose 3 is a good step up form Virtual Pose 2. And I appreciate the creativity of the poses and opportunity to see a pose from all sides. However I am still disappointed that these poses aren't lit properly to describe the form. Generally they are top lit so in standing poses you get some minor indication of core shadow and somewhat overly bright reflections on the skin on they upper torso,and everything below is pure ambient light and this obliterates form. While some poses are better with lighting than others; on the whole, the lighting is uninteresting and lifeless Virtual pose could take some cues on how to light their models by checking out an artistic soft porn site like Met Art. But hey, I suppose you are going to often be faced with the difficult challenge of illustrating people in ambient light. So Virtual Pose 3 will give you a real work out as you figure out how to describe form with even lighting all over!
I'd like to see a Virtual Pose V or VI, but with artistic form light. As with Muybridge what a cool thing to attempt.But it won't be the ultimate reference series for the artist until the lighting loses its sterility.
For practice only I bought VP2 and VP3. At first, it was quite a novel idea, to plug in a disc and "rotate" the model 360" and draw from that. It was actually good practice for figure drawing. One gets a feel for the outlines and general proportions of the body, and with much practice, this book will help one improve one's drawing skills. However, there are some flaws. First, even though the photos are in full-color, the harsh lighting and poor resolution of many of the photographs make any serious, interior study of subtle shadows all but impossible. Look at a master figure drawing, and you'll see that the fine interpretation of shadows is paramount for a good figure study. Otherwise your figure will look "solarized" and crude. I found myself blocking in whole planes with singular, unnatural tone, trying to use my imagination to "figure out" what the tone should be. Worse, the arbitrary and non-dramatic lighting cast sharp secondary shadows on the figure which were quite displeasing. You could leave those out, but then you are left with a single-tone figure with no interior "body" shadows. Secondly, most of the poses are quite useless for artistic purposes. Unless you paint people doing yoga (see the cover), the poses will be only good for practice in studying the body, that's it. It's too bad, because it actually takes less effort to pose the model in natural sitting or standing poses you can actually use, than it does to pose them like a pretzel, but the author is obviously not a serious artist, and does not realize this. He is only concerned with giving a variety of dynamic-looking poses, most of which are actually quite useless for finished art. Thirdly, the Quicktime utility the disc comes with is sort of flaky. I wanted to "zoom in" certain areas (like I was able to do on VP 2, although the resolution is even worse in that edition), but VP 3 did not allow me to zoom in, even though the control was there. That was quite disappointing, because then I had to really lean forward and squint at the computer screen and draw--not very pleasant for a 1 hour figure study!
In all, a decent idea and useful for the artist wishing to get the basics of figure drawing down. But for the serious artist, I suggest working from live models, or pose your friends and photograph them and then paint them, for a more serious, artistic figurative work. Posing the model so that you bring out the art of the interior, subtle shadows, and selecting a suggestive pose is paramount to becoming a good figurative artist. I have since sold both my VP2 and VP3 to a used bookstore, and have no regrets.
Virtual Pose 3 This is more than helpful for my art class. This is great!
About Worth The Price -- So Don't Expect Much I was hoping for a little bit more than this. I'll just sum up where I feel it is lacking:
1. No lighting variation. The lighting is the same in every pose and it's not all that neutral a choice even, it's like noon sun where a lot of the anatomy doesn't cast a shadow. I would have liked the same pose with a few differently lit versions - this would teach a LOT about the anatomy.
2. Resolution. It's the digital age and artists want material several times higher res than the public. You won't get any extra detail zooming in which is disappointing for people trying to study a subject better.
Others have complained about the censorship... I didn't notice it for awhile, but it does appear any area very near the anus or vulva visible was covered over digitally. (Penises however, are displayed without any alterations.) Maybe this was necessary to not make the product too controversial or appeal to the wrong crowd... but on the other hand when you buy reference material you expect accuracy not this sort of thing.
So I would say this is a pretty limited product overall, but you could use it as a basic pose reference for some basic poses (mostly sitting or "artistic", almost nothing that looks realistically dynamic).
Overall I would rather pay more in the future to get a much more complete, useful product.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
