Posemaniacs for Character Design

[Cranberry]

Is it okay to use posemaniacs poses or any other nude reference to base your character designs upon? I'm not talking about professional artists, I'm studying anatomy but my level is not that high yet where I can come up with a pose and get good to great anatomy... I feel like my progression is stuck since I would need to learn to draw humans from my mind before I can start creating characters...

Do other artists work this way? I've seen poses of characters here that look similar to poses at posemaniacs but I'm not sure what to think...

[Arshes Nei]

You know ...there's a reason they created Daz and Poser for poses...

I'm not saying Posemaniacs is bad, but iirc it's shots of a 3d model. Now getting reference isn't bad but just keep using it to work on anatomy. Real life models also works wonders too.

[jm893]

Personally I think it's great - a lot of art knobheads might slate it obviously because it isn't a "real" observational mode of drawing (lack of seeing depth/3 dimensions) etc but I still use it ... its better than fiddling with a mannequin or browsing the net for some proper out-of-date anatomy manual .. I just try to focus more on looking and deconstructing the pose itself.

Depending on what characters you're making, it helps to look at different magazines and study poses from celebrities, personalities etc. I usually tear out references from these.