Anatomy
I probably should have searched this, but does anyone know a good website for learning and studying human anatomy. I did a Google search and found nothing but rubbish. I will probably splurge and end up buying a book, and if anyone has an suggestions on a good book, I would also be grateful.
Replies
Anatomytools.com
Loomis books
Bridgeman.
THEIME atlas of anatomy.
Bodybuilder websites
First and Foremost - Atlas of Human Anatomy:
http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Human-Anatomy-Artist-Galaxy/dp/0195030958/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1292011229&sr=8-3
In my opinion, the best anatomy book for artists.
I suggest using that to get a good handle on anatomy as a subject, familiarise yourself with the human body, what it's made up of, how it's put together, and also how it moves.
From there, I personally love the Loomis books. They are all available online at various places for free download... they went out of print long ago and whether or not they should be freely available is kinda debated, but some people make them available so see if you can grab them. I'd happily pay for them if I could, but grabbing a PDF from somewhere was my only option.
Some don't like Loomis' way of teaching, but reading through his figure drawing books was a great help for me, and I really liked his approach to teaching figure drawing.
If you intend to go into 3D at any point with your studies, I highly recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/ZBrush-Digital-Sculpting-Human-Anatomy/dp/0470450266/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292011463&sr=8-2
It's basically one big anatomy lesson in a book (and DVD). If you see it as a tool for learning anatomy rather than 'how to sculpt a human' then you'll really benefit from it. Awesome awesome book and I actually had a chat with the author about how good I found it... he's a really nice guy and his approach to teaching the subject is great, as shown on the accompanying dvd.
Other than that, I'd just say practice practice practice. Sketch as much as you can, learn the importance of value when representing forms as early as you can, try to shy away from 'outlining' your figures too heavily and you'll start to understand surface forms a lot quicker.
This site was linked recently too, a great little site for doing studies:
http://www.pixelovely.com/tools/gesture.html
Good luck, it's a huge subject you'll never stop learning, but once you begin to get a hold of it, it'll show in your work.
Not sure if you're familiar with his work but he's pretty much the king of the stylized human form in my opinion. Note that there's a fair bit of NSFW on all 3 sites.
www.autodestruct.com
http://autodestructdigital.blogspot.com
Also he has some great tips on anatomy for pinup on his Babelab site:
http://babelab.blogspot.com