Human models for drawing

Screw you, Internet! For a while now, I have been after some means of helping with the drawing of the human figure. Thanks to a demo of a program called 3D Human or some such from a company called Cloudstars, I learned the joy of speed sketching, wherein you are presented with a pose for X amount of seconds, and you work fast, trying to get the flow and structure down in the time allotted. However, the demo was silly and painfully slow, while the full version was/is outside my budget. I had even tried my own version, using nude images from around the web, and running them through some slide show freeware that had an adjustable time per picture. That worked, and I was getting decent results, but was also very limiting, as I was not finding the poses I wanted.

I have seen sites that sell 'still life' images, or you can download them through a subscription. One such site I found through a Blender tutorial, where they got high-rez images from all angles, and used them as a background model for 3D modeling. That site sells the images for ridiculous amounts! I don't care if they had to pay a model to stand in the same position while a professional photographer took shots from every angle! Also, they allow the subscription service, and if memory serves it's like $30 a month for a maximum of 15 pictures or some such. I extend my middle finger in their general direction!

Last night, I had the crazy idea of seeing if there was new software available, or perhaps some free downloads for bundles of similar pictures. And wouldn't you friggin know it?!

http://www.posemaniacs.com/archives/1545 Has a blog style interface, with a category list running down the right-center. So far I'm only finding "skinless" poser/DAZ style figures, but they have a HUGE assortment of poses, from many angles, and with the visible muscles the structure can be examined easily. Also, having just tried it out, when you blow up a pose, it open a flash applet, in which you can rotate the figure (turntable style), activate a proportions grid, and even go full screen!

http://www.quickposes.com/pages/gesture There's more to this site, but my googling took me directly to the gestures page. You set the time limit you want for each picture, set some other details (gender, clothing), and it starts an in-browser slide show of real people pictures in various poses! Speed sketching!

Many years ago, I purchased a large Spider Man figure. Stands about two feet in height, and everything is articulated... each finger joint (even thumbs), wrists, ankles, toes, shoulders AND shoulder blades, and so on and so forth. If you can't get this into the pose you want, I don't know what would. Here's a link to the same figure on E-Bay...

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=18%22+spider-man+67

Last month I bought from Wal*Mart one of those wooden mannequin drawing aids... truthfully, it doesn't have the flexibility I thought it would have.

I remember seeing a book at BookWorld last year in the drawing section, full of real life models in many common poses. The cool thing about this book is that it came with a disk with over either 30,000 or 3,000 poses, building up on what was already presented in the book. Since this book had a fantasy theme about it (I can't remember the artist's name off-hand), it would be definitely something to look into. Just wish I could remember what it was called... but I did find this...

http://www.parkablogs.com/comment/5404

and a whole line of books entitled "Comic Artist's Photo Reference". Just google those words, and you'll find a crapload of material.