POSEBOOK

POSEBOOK

I've been using Posebook by Stephen Silver for the last few months.

Mainly during my commute, holding my phone in one hand and drawing with the other on a more or less bumpy train ride.
There are two versions of the app: one with male poses and one with female versions. Besides the pose references there are a number of short instruction videos from Steven and some other info.
The functionality of the app in displaying the references are a bit weird. They are stored in sheets. So you view about 9 poses at the same time and have to zoom into the one you are interested in. This takes a bit of time. Not much, but if you do it many times on a daily basis for months, it adds upp. The references as such are mostly rather good. The poses are expressive and fun to draw.  However many of them are less interesting since each pose have been shot as turn arounds, making many angles less useful. There's also facial expression references as well as hand references. Same goes for those, some useful some not.

Besides the galleries there's a potentially great functionality of timed poses. This part lets you pick number of images (1-10) and the amount of time (30sec to 10min) each image should be displayed. I use this all the time for warm ups. Doing ten of them at 30sec is a great way of loosening up. However, this function could be improved in so many ways. For example by adding choices for which albums to include or to upload your own images.

The app is fairly expensive at $9.99. It also has a seriously annoying bug that shuts down all music you might have playing in other apps. It does this just for playing a warning sound during the timed poses. Even when exiting the timed poses it still blocks other apps from playing music.
Still, despite the negative aspects I find the app to be a good tool for improving my drawing skills.

(examples of 30sec warm up drawings)