If you’re an adult and your art is barely worthy of being displayed on the fridge, it might be time to brush up on your skills. Easy Poser can help by providing a visual reference for complicated human poses. But if you’re still working with the medium of crayon, sorry, chances are you’re beyond saving.
The app’s digital mannequins have many points of articulation that allow them to be manipulated into complex poses. After tapping on an area of the body, a slider menu will appear. It gives the user precise control of how the desired part is positioned within a three-dimensional space. The camera can be adjusted by slowly swiping the screen. It can be moved with even more exactness through a slider menu. The user can add mood to the scene by changing the direction of light and shadow. Models can even be placed above the ground for some very cool, dynamic poses. The app is uncomplicated and fun to play around with. Interestingly, the articulation on the models doesn’t stop at the limits of the human body. Anything goes. The models can be contorted in horrific ways that make the Handstand Scorpion yoga pose look pleasant by comparison. This aspect of the design provides scope for imagination, but it won’t help budding artists gain an intuitive understanding of realistic poses. Having the option to toggle this limitation would be a good feature.
The appeal of Easy Poser is narrowed by the fact that it only has slender manga-style models. It isn’t for those wanting to draw muscular superhero physiques — the male could probably just about lift a mid-size printer. But for those who are fine with this, there is a fair bit of choice with a male and female model and two child models. However, only the male mannequin is available when booting the free version. A recent update was made to unlock the female and child models in the lite build in exchange for ad views, but this isn’t working as intended at the time of writing.
The free version has a reasonable number of features, including two save slots and a selection of preset poses. These can be expanded by upgrading to the full app, which also unlocks the option for multiple figures to be onscreen at once. In the free version, the ad bug also affects additional presets and the unlocking of hair and glasses. A further disappointment is that the props feature is not yet fully implemented, so for now at least you can’t have your mannequins hitting one another with chairs or… you know, sitting on them.
Screenshots can be exported, which could be useful if you want to print your scene. And poses can be shared to social media and other apps if you giddily want to show off the fact that you’ve nailed the crane pose from The Karate Kid, the dab, or something twisted from your imagination.
Easy Poser is fun and simple to use. It has an array of features, but it would benefit from an expanded selection of model physiques and an option to impose limits on articulation. However, if you want to sketch manga on the go, it’s definitely worth checking out.
