App Smackdown: Magic Poser

 My Smackdown:

          Magic Poser has been super useful for me and many other artists for years. It's my personal choice for reference making in visual art, and it is still extremely helpful when using only free assets. References are extremely important in visual art, especially when still studying and honing your craft. As a student, apps such as this make daunting aspects of studying much easier, while still providing knowledge. With Magic Poser, you can use a variety of character models and props, changing size, shape, rotation, and even color to create a scene that fits your referential needs. There are also tools for editing lighting and shading that I find especially useful and unique to Magic Poser. Using reference pictures from the internet is very useful until light and perspective are considered, and that's where an app like Magic Poser comes in. You can use Magic Poser for 2D and 3D work, and export and save your references into other applications for further modification. I also find the aspect of an in-app community super helpful, where you can find the designs of others and save them to your files. Exploring the community tab also allows you to see the possible things you can create with the app, and can help you decide whether or not it is worth subscribing for more features. 

          I've personally only ever used the free version of the app, and it still does enough for me to be satisfied. If I were to 3D model in the future, I might consider subscribing to either the pro or master tier, as there is so much app compatibility with figurative 3D modelling. The geometric props are all available in the free version, which I find great for building a realistic relationship between the figure/s and their setting. I have used Magic Poser several times to create different sitting poses and study the relationships between objects like this. In my smackdown, I cover app assets within a sitting style pose I used a preset for and then tweaked to my liking. I think other artists should know about Magic Poser and its many uses because it could be helpful for them too, and that's why I chose to cover it.