Rating: 
Summary: GREAT Idea, But Needs Fine Tuning
Review: This book is a great idea. For those who do not have access to live "in person" classes with models for figure drawing, this book is an adequate substitute. I love the idea, but I have some frustrations with this book. First of all, some of the female models are very skinny. There is not enough variation of bodies in the female section for truly interesting drawings/paintings. Also, the poses are kind of awkward at times. The most frustrating thing about this set is that the photos are not very clear in the book, and on CDROM screen, they are better, but the shadowing is not defined enough. I would like more intense lighting for more defined contrasts to draw from. More beautiful drawings would be spawned with more intense lighting contrasts to bring out the contours with more definition. That being said, this idea is a very good one. I appreciate what this book is trying to do, the modesty with which the models are handled, and the efforts made to make the models accessible from many visual perspectives. If some of these other issues were to be addressed in further editions, it would be a fantastic series even more useful.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT Idea, But Needs Fine Tuning
Review: This book is a great idea. For those who do not have access to live "in person" classes with models for figure drawing, this book is an adequate substitute. I love the idea, but I have some frustrations with this book. First of all, some of the female models are very skinny. There is not enough variation of bodies in the female section for truly interesting drawings/paintings. Also, the poses are kind of awkward at times. The most frustrating thing about this set is that the photos are not very clear in the book, and on CDROM screen, they are better, but the shadowing is not defined enough. I would like more intense lighting for more defined contrasts to draw from. More beautiful drawings would be spawned with more intense lighting contrasts to bring out the contours with more definition. That being said, this idea is a very good one. I appreciate what this book is trying to do, the modesty with which the models are handled, and the efforts made to make the models accessible from many visual perspectives. If some of these other issues were to be addressed in further editions, it would be a fantastic series even more useful.
Rating: 
Summary: ultimate solution
Review: This is simply the absolute solution for those who love figure drawing on a tight budget, it is THE answer! I just bought it and it is yet the most helpful tool in improving my skills. I hope mario would put more models on the next virtual pose with a wider range of ethnicity and proportion.
Rating:
Summary: Virtual Pose 2 is a must have for all artists!
Review: This product is a MUST-HAVE for all artists! Life drawing skills are important for all artists... I work in the game industry, often 60+ hours a week; There just aren't enough hours in the day to make it to a life drawing class. And that's where the Virtual Pose series saves the day! Thanks to Mario Chakkour's Virtual Pose series I am able to improve my life drawing skills without having access to live models! It's a quality product all around, but it's really the CD-ROM that shines. You open up a model to draw, spin him/her into the position you want - and draw! AMAZING. GENIUS. And what a great deal! There are other companies selling inferior product for 10, 15 times as much. TIP: If you're a beginner to computers, there's a nice interface to help you through and gives you nice music to listen to while you draw... But if you have any computer skills at all, open up ("explore") the CD-ROM and you can double-click the .MOV files and enlarge them to full screen! That's one more massive plus about this product, you're NOT forced to go through a custom interface to view the models unless you choose to. I highly recommend this product. It is truly rare these days to find such a high-quality product for such an affordable price. Get it now and build your life drawing skills! - Matthew G. Cox...
Rating:
Summary: No access to live models? Get VIRTUAL POSE 2 now! Its great!
Review: This product is a MUST-HAVE for ALL artists! Life drawing skills are important for ANY artist. I work in the game industry... often 60+ hours a week; There just aren't enough hours in the day to make it to a life drawing class. And that's where the Virtual Pose series saves the day! Thanks to Mario Chakkour's Virtual Pose series I am able to improve my life drawing skills without having access to live models! It's a quality product all around, but it's really the CD-ROM that shines. You open up a model to draw, spin him/her into the position you want - and draw! AMAZING. GENIUS. And what a great deal! There are other companies selling inferior product for 10, 15 times as much. TIP: If you're a beginner to computers, there's a nice interface to help you through and gives you nice music to listen to while you draw... But if you have any computer skills at all, open up ("explore") the CD-ROM and you can double-click the .MOV files and enlarge them to full screen without having to go through the interface! That's one more massive plus about this product, you're NOT forced to go through a custom interface to view the models unless you choose to. I highly recommend this product. It is truly rare these days to find such a high-quality product for such an affordable price. Get it now and build your life drawing skills! - Matthew G. Cox ...
Rating:
Summary: Virtual Pose 2 is a must have for all artists!
Review: This product is a MUST-HAVE for all artists! Life drawing skills are important for all artists... I work in the game industry, often 60+ hours a week; There just aren't enough hours in the day to make it to a life drawing class. And that's where the Virtual Pose series saves the day! Thanks to Mario Chakkour's Virtual Pose series I am able to improve my life drawing skills without having access to live models! It's a quality product all around, but it's really the CD-ROM that shines. You open up a model to draw, spin him/her into the position you want - and draw! AMAZING. GENIUS. And what a great deal! There are other companies selling inferior product for 10, 15 times as much. TIP: If you're a beginner to computers, there's a nice interface to help you through and gives you nice music to listen to while you draw... But if you have any computer skills at all, open up ("explore") the CD-ROM and you can double-click the .MOV files and enlarge them to full screen! That's one more massive plus about this product, you're NOT forced to go through a custom interface to view the models unless you choose to. I highly recommend this product. It is truly rare these days to find such a high-quality product for such an affordable price. Get it now and build your life drawing skills! - Matthew G. Cox...
Rating:
Summary: No access to live models? Get VIRTUAL POSE 2 now! Its great!
Review: This product is a MUST-HAVE for ALL artists! Life drawing skills are important for ANY artist. I work in the game industry... often 60+ hours a week; There just aren't enough hours in the day to make it to a life drawing class. And that's where the Virtual Pose series saves the day! Thanks to Mario Chakkour's Virtual Pose series I am able to improve my life drawing skills without having access to live models! It's a quality product all around, but it's really the CD-ROM that shines. You open up a model to draw, spin him/her into the position you want - and draw! AMAZING. GENIUS. And what a great deal! There are other companies selling inferior product for 10, 15 times as much. TIP: If you're a beginner to computers, there's a nice interface to help you through and gives you nice music to listen to while you draw... But if you have any computer skills at all, open up ("explore") the CD-ROM and you can double-click the .MOV files and enlarge them to full screen without having to go through the interface! That's one more massive plus about this product, you're NOT forced to go through a custom interface to view the models unless you choose to. I highly recommend this product. It is truly rare these days to find such a high-quality product for such an affordable price. Get it now and build your life drawing skills! - Matthew G. Cox ...
Rating: 
Summary: Very nice - but could use some simple improvements
Review: This product is very much worth its price- a keeper for someone learning life drawing. The models are beautiful, and the variety of poses is very nice. The ability to rotate the models around in 360 degrees allows selection of the exact pose- choosing the proper lighting and shadow, and allows an infinite variety of poses for drawing practice- or perhaps even sculpture creations. Suggestions/Negatives: The creators of this software should add some classical background drawing music into the program, or scrap the cheezy MIDI music all together. What would be really nice would be a SAVE feature to return quickly to the model, pose, and degree of rotation that you were previously working on. What really irks me about the program is the long startup and shut down times- the producers/authors force you to watch their intro and exit credits & bells and whistles- wouldn't it suffice to only see this during the (one time) installation? A single splash page during startup of the program would suffice- let us artists get on with drawing! Another nice feature would be the ability to import additional models from the producer in the future. Perhaps these suggestions will occur in version 3 or 4 if enough users pester the producer to incorporate them into future versions. More instructional movies than the 4 that come with the program would add to its features.
Rating:
Summary: Lacking Options
Review: Virtual Pose 2 is a useful reference for any artist who wants to draw the figure, but a few features I was hoping for are missing. First off, I had misunderstood things and thought that you had 54 poses with six different models for each pose. Instead there are six models with nine poses each. That is not too big a deal, but just know not to expect things that way. The biggest problem for me is that there is no option to control the size of the display. When you run on a monitor at a high resolution, the workspace for the program is really small. I have to drop my resolution from 1200x1064 down to 800x600 in order to get a decent size for reference. This is not too big a deal for anybody who runs at a lower resolution, but is a big inconvenience for me personally. I do appreciate the fact that the poses are "tastefully" edited when a pose would be too revealing for the female models. I havent' found the instructional videos that helpful yet, but haven't given them too much time.
Rating:
Summary: An OK package for a good CD
Review: When I ordered it I was anxious to receive the book to use it for sculpturing work.
I was dissapointed at first: the poses are no as beautiful as the contents of other artistic nudes books, and the images are rather small. On the upside it provides several angles of the same pose, which is great for sculpture. It was about two weeks later that I put the CD-ROM in my computer. My apprectation for the product really increased. You can open the files and print very many angles and details, resolution is not very high, but it becomes a fantastic visual reference. I am a sure buyer of Virtual Pose 3.
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