fungii:

Source: x

fungii:

FEETS

nihilnovisubsole:

AK’s Guide to Suits

An introduction to the finer details of menswear, and how to get them right in your… aw, hell, why am I describing it here? Read the intro!

wannabeanimator:

rainmartlet:

I already lost it somewhere in my PC so I don’t want it’ll happen again.

Face tutorial by Phobs.

The high res version is here

talikira:

sandrock:

supaslim:

here, have wings.

Good Resources:

Puget Sound Wing and Tail Collection (where all the wing images I used came from)

Origin of Flight in Birds

Animating Bird Flight (great resource for ALL artists)

Faces

THANK YOU!

Oh good, this actually tells you the purpose of different wings rather than just how to draw them.

fuckyeahcharacterdevelopment:

dyuslovethebeauties:

Vietnamese Costumes Through The Ages

Well this looks useful. 
Hello, costuming reference.  

gabi-hime:

A short reference of the most useful Graphics-sha How To Draw Manga titles in regards to figure drawing.

As I have almost the entire series that was translated into English (what an Easter egg hunt that was), I thought I would share my opinions on the most useful ones when it comes to figure drawing with a particular emphasis on CG.  I will make another post with the other drawing books I use regularly.

Keep in mind these are only my opinions and your mileage may vary.  The Graphics-sha series is the best HTD manga/anime series in English, however.  Most of the titles are pretty dated, except for the Sketching and UML series, but they’re still very much worth it.  You can accept that as truth.  I really wouldn’t any of the domestically produced “anime” drawing books out there, and Christopher Hart is my nemesis if I have one.  There are also a slew of excellent reference books that are only available in Japanese, natch, so if your reading skills are basic you might want to consider those instead, as they will over tips on drawing in much more modern styles.

As you might expect, the secret to anything is a lot of practice.

Brief Notes

How to Draw Anime and Game Characters Volume 2: Expressing Emotions - This book is available in two covers, but the interior content is the same.  One of the earliest books I owned, and still a great one.  Is excellent for indicating how to differentiate characters by the way they express emotions, because everybody’s smiling face is not the same.

HTDM Male Characters: A great basic reference for drawing dudes.

HTDM: Pretty Gals: A great basic reference for drawing girls.  The pretty gals series has a lot of nice stuff on drawing breasts and buns from different angles, and highlighting different points of interest, like ankles and collarbones.

HTDM: More Pretty Gals: This is the second volume in this series.  I like the sections on how fabric behaves a lot in this one.

HTDM: Yaoi: I don’t really know why this volume is called Yaoi, since it ought to be called Bishonen, since it’s just a text about drawing Bishonen and has maybe one page of guy-guy poses.  Conversely, the HTDM: Bishonen book is really the Yaoi book.  I like them both, but if you just want to draw pretty boys and not necessarily boys kissing, then this is the book for you (buy Bishonen as well if you want a lot of great photo references of guys hanging over one another).  This book also has excellent hand and fabric references, as well as a discussion of high and low angle and what they do to effect the viewer and the composition of the shot.

HTDM: Couples: A very useful book in just outlining basic information about relating characters to one another in space.  Has sections on male-female, female-female, and male-male pairings, both friendship and romantic.  Very useful when you need a quick boost on exactly how wide a guy’s shoulders ought to be compared to a girl’s waist, and basically indispensable if you really focus on height disparity relationships like I do. Sure the style of the art is dated, but what you’re really trying to learn from this book is the way you compose romantic poses, not how you draw eyelashes.  Covers kissing, embracing, laying on one another, sexy times in bed, but not a lot of explicit stuff, so safe for your parents to see XD

HTDM: Costume Encyclopedia: The most generally useful of the Costume Encyclopedias, I think.  Covers basic and formal clothing for men and women.  Will give you a lot of ideas for casual wear and also help you understand what you draw and what you don’t draw when representing clothes in anime and manga (for instance, when you draw seams and buttons and when you don’t).

HTDM: Sketching Manga Style Volume 3: I love this series.  It is amazing.  In English it usually costs a fortune because Diamond distributed very few of these late books in English.  Volume 3 focuses on sketching character design, and has amazing tips on character creation and depiction, as well as some great anatomy lessons.  I love this book.  Possibly my favorite these days.

HTDM: Sketching Manga Style Volume Four: Perspective: This is the best manga/anime perspective book that I have found, and I have three or four others from Graphics-Sha.  It is amazing.  If you can’t manage to find a hard copy of this one, please track down an ebook version.  Has great notes on the composition of shots and how you create a picture with many planes of depth even in a flat, stylized artform like manga.

HTDM: Ultimate Manga Lessons Volume 3: This is the UMA on Character Design.  I love this little book too.  It’s more the size of a volume of manga than the other books, but it’s crammed full of lots of useful tips, like how to easily differentiate between heroes and villains, and how to give characters personality by elements of their appearance.  The art style is simple and shounen and cutesy, but it gets the point across.

ALSO, it would not fit but

HTDM: Ultimate Manga Lessons Volume 4: Character Presence: Another small useful little reference.  These are great little books to start out with if you can’t track down some of the earlier or more hard to get OOP titles.  

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There are obviously plenty of other titles in this series that are useful if you want to draw specific things.  I love the robots book, for instance, and the animals one.  Also if you’re into sequential art, these are not the most useful books, since they only go into sequential art a little.  There are other HTDM titles that are totally focused on it.

You can buy all these books from Amazon, generally, or get them in lots on Ebay for the OOP books.  I also buy them locally at used book stores when I find them.

gabi-hime:

The Other Drawing Books I Use: Being primarily anatomy texts, digital painting, and color theory.

Here are my three favorite anatomy books, my favorite digital painting book, and my favorite color references.

An Atlas of Anatomy for Artists - Fritz Schider - Excellent for the nudes of both sexes at several age groups, from children to adults, as well as for all the plates showing the figure drawing of the masters.  Want to understand how Micheangelo’s nudes were different from the nudes of Vesalius?  Well, now it’s easy.  Great images of musculature as well, with simple coloration to show how muscle groups function together under skin.  From Dover publications, the price is always right too.

Anatomy: A Complete Guide for Artists - Joseph Sheppard - Beautiful chalk and charcoal drawings of bones and muscles.  Possibly the best thing this book offers is a very careful overview of all the various parts of the body: feet, hands, knees, collar bones, everything, and how these pieces of our bodies work when they’re in motion, flexed, or at rest.  Also a very nice overview of the various kinds of ears, noses, mouths, and eyes various individuals have and what makes them look the way they look.

Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist - Stephen Rogers Peck - This book is excellent for reading as well as for a drawing reference as it has quite a bit of text in it about the human anatomy.  Excellent pencil drawings as well as photographs of the human body.

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Digital Painting

Digital Character Design and Painting - Don Seegmiller - I am an old fart, so naturally this is my favorite digital painting book.  Wonderful and useful no matter what sort of art you create: fantastic, realistic portraiture, wacky, silly, fun art, this book is really excellent at covering the uses of color in a digital context.  It was written for use with Painter, which I used to use almost exclusively before switching to Paint Tool Sai, but the information can be ported over to any graphics program that mimics real media.

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Color Theory

Color Index + Color Index 2 - Jim Krause - While color theory is one of my strongest suits when it comes to art, everyone needs a boost now and then.  In that case for all artists I would suggest the Color Indices.  I got both of them in a fancy box.  Very excellent if you’re not too good at picking palettes for yourself, or just a useful boost to understand what colors look best together in character design and illustration.  Color choice is incredibly important.  Each of the colors presented always has its “recipe” with it, in RGBHSV and CMK.