Customer Reviews

The Figure in Motion: A Visual Reference for the Artist

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It's a pretty straightforward resource. It is hard to get your friends to peel off all their clothes and suspend themselves in midair, I will grant you that.

Also, it does not fill up half the book with those inevitable chapters telling the reader, "This is a pencil, you can draw with it and use an eraser, too. This is a watercolor brush..."

However, most of the poses in this book are unnatural poses of people making gestures I don't see in real life. A large majority of the images are of women, and skinny L.A. style women at that. (Interesting shave, there, missy.) Some of the photos are very, very dark and don't reveal anatomy at all. Also, they are very grainy. I don't know if this is a function of the film or the printing process (to keep the cost of printing an all-photo book down.)

I have to say, it was one of the better ones in the bookstore, but it leaves a good bit to be desired. It would have been nice if there were more males in it, the poses were more natural, and there were people of different sizes and (hello?) colors in there, too.

I have been using it to draw from, but all the flying in the air spreadeagle poses are not going to make it into my sketchbook. I think I will invest in a good magnifying glass and do some drawings from Muybridge's photo collections of people and animals in motion.

This book contains full-sized nudes in motion and organizes them by the angle of the photograph. Face-forward shots come first, then forward-left, left, backward-left, backwards, backwards-right and so forth until a complete circle is made. This makes finding the perspective you want quite easy.

All of the photographs are black and white, which is great for pencil, charcoal and any medium lacking color. The last 1/3rd of the book has a male figure.

All in all, this book is great due to these elements:

1) All photographs are large and clear, and original photographs. You aren't drawing a copy of someone else's artwork.

2) Sample "thumbnail" sized artwork is provided on some margins to show you different styles of art and ways to draw the figures.

3) The book is organized such that it is easy to find the pose you want.

4) All of the figures are in motion, something that a real-live model can't hold for long, if at all.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the photos are grainy. very grainy. However, left unmentioned was something even more troubling - many of the photos have been digitally cropped in photoshop or some such program. this was done presumably to save ink by not printing backgrounds. The cropping was done extremely poorly and amateurishly - there are toes that come to points, feet that look like blocks, all sorts of bizarre and unnatural concavities. a real hatchet job. the end result looks like someone took a pair of scissors and crudely snipped photos from a magazine. this sort of problem is particularly distressing in a book intended for artists as the accurate depiction of the outer contour of a form is vital for drawing.

On another note, the models are not actually that thin. more average. This would have been a useful book, if not for the botched photos. An older edition would likely be satisfactory.

I've seen several mentions of grainy photos, and they are grainy, however that is the least of the problems with this book.

First of all many of the figures have been traced out from the background the photo was taken with and pasted onto a plain white background, causing multiple problems, like persepctive and flat or squished body surfaces where the models were originally sitting or lying on something. The "cutting and pasting" is sloppily done, and in many of the photos the tips of toes and fingers have been cut off, very annoying.

Secondly, there are several photographs that take up two pages...but this is a bound book, so the entire center of the body is not visible, and because a portion is in the binding even the countour is not usable. In additon to the two page layouts, there are multiple other figures that fall directly in the center of the book, and are rendered unusable by the binding. The only thing I can figure is that this was originally a spiral bound book, or had pull out pages, like a magazine centerfold. I can't imagine someone would intentionally publish a book with such an awful layout.

Lastly, some of the "motion" figures are cheats. One in particular is clearly a man laying on something propped up on a pillow, but he has been cut and pasted as though it were an upright pose...maybe that explains why so many found the poses "unatural". That wouldn't be a big deal if the book wasn't called "The Figure In Motion", and was maybe titled "Some Figures In Motion, and Some Sedentary But Turned To Appear As Though They Were In Motion."

Couldn't give it no stars, as I will use some of the photos, but my money could most certainly have been better spent.

I must say that the photos in this book do not lack dynamism. The photographers have gone to extremes to ensure that the poses are full of motion and gesture. However, as a figurative artist I can not use this book extensively because of the lack of feasibility of the poses. The figures jumping and twisting around are interesting but the poses are generally not useful.

Do it yourself: just jump. You're almost certain to feel different body masses shifting with the motion. Moving figures really are different.

That's why this book is so valuable. Every image is dynamic and unstable, impossible as static poses. But that's true even of someone walking - it's a sequence of unstable positions.

The poses are all vivid and dynamic. The models are chosen to show not only the movement, but the shifts of body masses, tension of muscles, and play of hair, all things that contribute to the dynamics. The large majority of photos are of women - several different ones, and the variety is worthwhile. In this case, the male minority makes some sense. Most men have more lean mass than women do, so women tend to display more shifts of mass when in motion. There are a few male figures, though, and a few images with infants or more than one model.

This book really does show possibilities that other pose books don't, and that even live models can't. If you ever draw figure, this book will be very useful.

Okay, so you're an animator, storyboard artist, illustrator or sequential artist, and you need to find a pose that approximates the appearance of someone falling off a building. Do you A) throw your friend off a building and try to draw him on the way down, or B) find a photo of a figure in motion posed similarly to the image you have in your head, and improvise from there?

Fine artists, BEWARE: this is not the book for you! Artists who need unusual action poses, however, may want to give it a try.

Yes, the photos are a bit grainy, probably a result of using high speed film with dramatic lighting, but this book wasn't designed for people to copy from; it was designed to capture the essence of the figure in motion, display the movement of various body masses, etc. And THIN models help artists locate the skeleton within the figure--essential for rendering believable images of moving figures, images that show real weight. It's easier to add mass to a skinny figure once you've figured out how the skeleton and muscles move than it is to trim down a figure with too much body fat.

This book has helped my drawing tremendously. Where else can you find photos of figures in these kinds of positions?
I am now far more able to depict dynamic tension, flow, balance and proportion.
Sure the photos are a little grainy and the lighting and printing sometimes don't show every muscle, but this is not an anatomy book. No single book will give you everything. I have taken what I've learned in anatomy books and applied it to the figures in this book.
As a result, I am creating images that are more creative and satisfying then ever before.
This book has helped me go from static posed drawings to characters in action and situations.
I take one star off only because with all the use I give it, the binding hasn't held up well and the pages are starting to come out of the book. I guess sprial binding would be the only way to avoid this problem.
Other than that, I like this book!

this book was filled with photos - and that's it. unlike the ones that are filled with instructions and then maybe 2 or 3 photos. this gave me plenty of references to look at while drawing. it has many different positions that - it's really quite hard to get a person to pose like that for you. i highly reccommend it!!

I've had this book for a long time and I used to refer to it quite a bit when I was teaching myself to draw moving figures.It is handy from time to time when you need something a bit different, or to kickstart an idea, but it is far from a general purpose figure reference book. The poses are too idiosyncratic.

The photos have all been taken with very fast film with the result that it looks very grainy, which can be a problem if you need detail.