Atlas of Foreshortening: The Human Figure in Deep Perspective [Paperback]

John Cody (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1984

A valuable reference for fine artists, sculptors, illustrators, designers, and others. This unique collection provides more than 500 photographs of nude male and female bodies in all degrees of foreshortening and a wide variety of poses.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

A unique visual encyclopedia for artists and illustrators

Like its acclaimed predecessor, the Second Edition of this outstanding photographic reference offers illustrators, fine artists, and animators immediate access to the human form in deep perspective, that is, foreshortened. With all-new photographs, the Atlas of Foreshortening features:

• Over 530 high-quality photographs
• Both male and female nudes
• Poses with slight, moderate, and marked foreshortening
• Detail shots and full-body photographs
• Many poses shot from multiple angles

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 290 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (September 15, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471290130
• ISBN-13: 978-0471290131
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,541,996 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bad for Illustrators looking for reference!!, July 25, 2001

By 

Siju Thomas (India) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Atlas of Foreshortening: The Human Figure in Deep Perspective (Hardcover)

This book like It's title clearly indicates is not an illustration reference book.It's extremely useful to students and practitioners of the fine art of figure drawing ,it provides poses which are very diffrent from what we are used to seeing in normal life thus forcing us to see how many familiar shapes change when viewed at an unfamiliar angle,for a figure artist struggling with foreshortening a book like this one and Burne Hogarths Dynamic Figure Drawing used in tandem could work wonders.This is the only book of its kind and is in one word "BRILLIANT" .

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very useful, June 11, 2004

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Atlas of Foreshortening: The Human Figure in Deep Perspective (Second Edition) (Paperback)

There are lots of visual reference books out there. It would be easy to populate a bookshelf with them. After a while, though, they start to look the same.

Not this one. Heavily foreshortened poses are the hardest (for me at least), so this book devotes itself to genuinely distinctive views. It may sound like distortion to describe an arm or leg as being a third length of the other. In fact, it is distortion if they are the same length, when viewed from some angles.

This book gives an uncommon perspective - it has earned its place on my shelves.

[review of first edition]

//wiredweird

67 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars interesting poses, bad position and poor quality photographs, September 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Atlas of Foreshortening: The Human Figure in Deep Perspective (Paperback)

The poses in this book are indeed very dynamic and interesting but the one MAJOR draw-back is that they are all with the models laying down on the ground. Definitely not a very practical figure reference book for an illustrator like myself. I mean lets be honest, how many times are you going to be drawing a figure contorted on the ground verses standing and engaged in some sort of action. It may, however, be possible too adapt some of the poses for a standing position and yet gravity affects the body completely differently when it is horizontal instead of vertical. The photographs themselves are very poor in terms of quality in that they are: muddy, bad resolution, slighty out of focus, badly lit etc. etc. etc. Basically this was a very disappointing purchase. The "Fairburn System" series is far better than this book for photographic figure reference material; however, very hard to find.