References
I was thinking about references today. I think that these days, most artists have at least a folder if not several in their computers harboring various images we’ve found and grabbed over the years. But where do you go when you’re looking for something new? Sometimes you just need a kick, some bit of inspiration, or some anatomical reference that your own collection just doesn’t cover.
So here are just a few sites that I like to look at for such matters.
Please comment with your own favorites if you have some that you’d like to share.
I suppose the obvious one, is Vanessa’s Think Anatomy site which highlights all sorts of cool new things and links to a lot of good anatomy references.
http://thinkanatomy.com/
Tsvetomir Georgiev is doing some really neat work with 3ds Max and ZBrush that will get you thinking about just what all can be done there.
http://ceco.cgsociety.org/gallery/
A friend sent this link to me a long time ago, and I still keep it bookmarked for any time I want to look at interesting faces. These are mostly older faces, with lots of wrinkles. Some of them are exaggerated just a bit with use of a wide angle lens, or just by letting the model’s own glasses affect the look of their face. They are great character shots though, and I’d be happy to sing praise of the photographer if only I could read Russian well enough to know which of these strings of letters was in fact his or her name.
http://www.interesno.dn.ua/interesting-photo/interesting-photo-people/8-photo-interesting-people/242-homo
Another site I’ve been getting a lot out of lately is the LiveJournal blog of Riotclitshave. As the name suggest’s, not all of the images are exactly family or work friendly. They’re not particularly anatomical in nature either, but I have found her posted collection to be really helpful at times with more than a couple projects now.
http://riotclitshave.livejournal.com/
When looking for skeletal reference, I often come back to some photos I took myself, back when I had bones lying around the apartment for a class. I did one shoot with a box of bones, and another with a skull I had over here last semester. These shots don’t so much utilize the upper left hand light rule, but they are good clear shots of bones, and bone features.
http://snapshotgenius.com/gallery/bonebox
http://snapshotgenius.com/gallery/skull-A188