You may or may not remember that I was super excited a few days ago because I’d discovered a new art tool. Now I’m not very good at drawing yet, I’m practising and trying to improve whenever I have time but for the moment I still need references.

Making poses look natural, lighting etc. – it’s hard! I was using Design Doll to make custom poses but you can’t save anything without spending money and the default models look more like aliens than people. You can’t clothe them, you can’t add other realistic 3D objects (just boxes so far as I can tell) – it’s limited.

Anyway, a few days ago I discovered Fuse.

It’s a program made by Adobe but it’s currently in beta so it’s absolutely free. This programs makes making 3D people an absolute doddle.

(I would recommend not playing around with the customisation too much. My first attempt I tried to make the model look like Jemma Simmons and when it came time for poses her teeth were sticking out through her skull)

But that’s fine because the face detailing can come later during the drawing phase. What I’m talking about is big picture posing/lighting.

Once the model has been made in Fuse, upload to Mixamo (the program website). This is for two reasons: 1) to be able to download it again in another format, 2) for animation.

Hang on, we’re talking about poses not animation? Well with this they are kinda one and the same. Next step is to download UnrealEngine, which is also free, looks intimidating but is actually simple enough even I could do it. Although admittedly that was because of the incredibly detailed and thorough instructions on this tutorial here.

Basically follow that tutorial and you are pretty much done. All that is left is to import the chosen animation from Mixamo (it references downloading it in the tutorial). Then double click on it in the program to open the animation editor, scan on the frames for the pose that is most like the one you want and then manually adjust the limbs.

Then don’t do what I did and try and export the pose and have to remake it 3x. Just use the dragging sliders to make the viewing area as big as possible and take a screenshot. That’s all you want from this – a reference.

Dada. Done 🙂

One day – obviously – I hope this won’t be necessary. I’m practising sketching in odd moments to try and get my eye in, and steady my hand, so one day I’ll be able to just draw without needing guidelines. That’s the hope anyway.