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Try this! Great way to warm up before animating or drawing.
Go to http://www.posemaniacs.com, click 30 second drawing. Start a new TVP project. And start drawing, draw every new pose into a new frame. That's it.
You may also want to use the recording panel to record the whole process.

I know it is not nearly as good as the real thing, but works well as a warm up, and you'll be getting some unexpected angles of the poses. I mean how often are you under a glass table drawing people walking on it?

My tip would be to use a big bigger brush and less lines than I did Here's a sped up recording of my drawing, it was done a good while ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVix8eGhoho

have fun!

Wah, it's a really great idea for people wich cannot have a real model O_o

I think I will personally use it very often =D

Thanks Joonas for sharing this website ^^

Thanks Joonas, very handy

I don't think it's a good way to learn neither drawing at all nor drawing people.
Doing it this way (by using books, 3D posing of more or less muscled men) results in most inflexible, cliched, and all over stiff heartless drawings.

If I may give a tip: sit down in a cafe and start drawing people in motion. After doing this for a while you will have a library of forms and motions in yourself and you can grab it from there every time you want. Most times you don't even need your sketchbook for doing that.

I agree with you Klaus, it's also really useful to draw real people in a cafe, or in the train... But it's boring, stil drawing the same "faces" the same "poses".

That's why I think this website is not bad when you only want to train quickly ^^

Klaus Hoefs wrote:I don't think it's a good way to learn neither drawing at all nor drawing people.
Doing it this way (by using books, 3D posing of more or less muscled men) results in most inflexible, cliched, and all over stiff heartless drawings.

If I may give a tip: sit down in a cafe and start drawing people in motion. After doing this for a while you will have a library of forms and motions in yourself and you can grab it from there every time you want. Most times you don't even need your sketchbook for doing that.

I do agree with you Klaus, this is not the right way of learning to draw, or to draw from life. And I don't think that one should learn to draw on computer anyway. Computers are great tools, but wacom tablets and cintiqs can't beat the real thing -drawing on pencil and paper. And by all means you shouldn't stop drawing in public and stay home and draw from these 3D poses. But I think they are a fun and quick warm-up. And even if the 3D model is stiff and lifeless, there are things you can learn, like proportions and negative space. How ever stuff like gravity and masses, are not at all present in these cg-poses.

I do personally prefer sketching from TV if I'm stuck at home. But I still think that drawing those 3D poses is a fun exercise.

And I don't think that one should learn to draw on computer anyway. Computers are great tools, but wacom tablets and cintiqs can't beat the real thing -drawing on pencil and paper.

Be careful with such swooping pronouncements, because I consider this is a ridiculous statement. Wouldn't this depend on what you want to draw with? How would learning to draw on a computer be detrimental to a person who wants to use a tablet as their primary drawing medium? In my own experience, my drawing skills have much improved ever since I've been drawing on a Wacom tablet. Besides, my drawing improvements escalated at a far greater speed compared to my past when paper and pencil was my primary tool.

There is a reason for this; the more you draw, the better you get -- this progress never stops until you are dead. Drawing on the computer goes much, much faster because many of the available tools and shortcuts simply do not exist in the tactile world. I can draw at least four or five times the amount of images in the computer than I ever would have with pen or pencil on paper.

joonasjoonas wrote:Computers are great tools, but wacom tablets and cintiqs can't beat the real thing -drawing on pencil and paper.

Yes it's still true for one static image-drawing. But when it comes to animation this one frame doesn't matter so much. I think tablet-drawing is a good and efficient way to do animation.

But to work with a tablet and monitor doesn't mean that you have to hang on to cliched forms and expressions and that you have to loose contact to real life and true feelings, which also can come from memory.
After all that is what drawing is about, digital or non-digital.

Klaus Hoefs wrote: But when it comes to animation this one frame doesn't matter so much.

I don't agree this. Depending what kind of animation you are doing. If you are doing classical "disney" style I think every frame should be drawn as good as a one still. Off course there is a lot of beutiful syles where one drawing doesn't play that important role.

Disney's style is a good example to see the difference.
For sure such stills (each one) can't compete with drawings of Rembrandt, Brueghel, Beuys, Iseli, Hockney just to name a few more well known drawing-specialists. (Unless you take such Disney stills in a post modernism manner as pop-art. But then we're talking about aesthetic art theory and art marketing).
And Disney's never meant it as art or stills. Same with Herge's pictures from his comic-books.
(There are only a few exceptions: William Kentridge is one.)

So think the other way guess what would happen if Rembrandt would take his style into animation ???