Resources

Ben asked me about human figure tutorials on Twitter, and that I should post some links in my next post. So I thought, hey, why not make a post right now and gather some great resources? Feel free to throw in some links in the comments too if you want.  

Before we move on to online tutorials, I’ll talk about the books I’ve read on the subject.

How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way – Not that I want to draw the “Marvel way”, but there are some great tips in this book, from how to draw stick figures and flesh out the anatomy, to how to lay out a splash page in the right way. Some of the dialog in it is a bit cheesy, but that just adds to the charm (Keep in mind it was written back in 1977).



How to Draw Manga: Sketching Manga-Style Vol. 2: Logical Proportions – Boy, let me tell you about this book; I LOVE this book. It’s big, thick and got soooo much awesome stuff in it. And it’s just ONE of the books in that series of a million other books, just look at wikipedia! God. If all those books are as good as this one… well, I need to read them all. This book that I got covers the proportions of the human anatomy (just as the title suggests). 
Even if you don’t wish to draw manga (I don’t, really), it’s still a great book. Manga is just a style, after all. 



The Everything Cartooning Book: Create Unique And Inspired Cartoons For Fun And Profit – (what’s up with these long ass titles?) By Brad Guigar, who also co-wrote How To Make Webcomics (which is another book that I recommend if you’re into drawing comics). Some new, interesting stuff here, and some things are covered better in the previous ones imo. Still a great read that I recommend. 



I’ve read some other books too which I like very much, but I won’t mention them because I’m not sure if they exist outside of Sweden and - if they do - what they are called. 

I'll let you judge a book by its cover, for once:



Ok, enough about books. Let’s talk about online resources. 

The first one I’ll mention is this one, written by Athey Nansel-Moravetz. It’s all about drawing the human figure, and talks about muscles and the difference between convex and concave lines, among other things. It’s great, read it. I actually printed out that entire page and read it like that, I prefer reading on paper. 

Now, another tutorial I would be amiss if I did not mention is this one, by my fellow Swede Arne Niklas Jansson. Granted he doesn’t talk about figure drawing or anatomy, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t the best tutorial on coloring I’ve read so far. Read the entire page, let it sink in, and then read it again. And again.

Actually these two sites are the only ones I can think of right now, that I’ve specifically used for drawing resources (that still exists). However, when I talk about tutorials, I always like to bring up DeviantArt. It’s great. Just type in whatever you want to learn + “tutorial” and you’ll see that there’s something for everything. (Except for now apparently, dA is being stupid and telling me that there are no anatomy tutorials. I know there is! Here’s one! I guess the search function is acting up.)

The best thing on deviant art is probably this thing, which contains a shit load of links to almost every damn reference and tutorial on human anatomy there is. That post itself makes this thing I’ve written entirely useless. Just go browsing though all those links. I mean, Jesus Christ that’s a lot of links. That’s all you need. Bookmark that!

Also, to end this I'll give you a few links with Photoshop tutorials. I'm sure they'll come in handy, and if you are looking for good anatomy tutorials, you're probably looking for good Photoshop tutorials too (or any good tutorials of any kind, really).

Adobe Creative Suite Podcast
Photoshop Killer Tips
PSDtuts
Tutorialized

And, like I said at the beginning: if you've got any tips on great tutorials, feel free to leave a comment.