Getting started...2
How to Use This Book...5

How to Draw Illustrations Based on Prologue Photos...7
How to Draw Illustrations Based on Photos...8

Friendship Appearance ① Sakusha 2 Illustration Creation Process...18
Friendship Appearance② Ixy Example Illustration...23
Friendship Appearance ③ The process of creating illustrations by Yoshiyuki Nishi...24
Trace a photo to draw an illustration...26
Chapter 1: Standing Pose...29
Tips for Drawing Standing Poses...30
Chapter 2: Poses Using Hands...45
Tips for Drawing Hand Poses...46
Chapter 3: Sitting Pose...93
Tips for Drawing Sitting Pose...94
Chapter 4: Lying Poses...119
Tips for Drawing Lying Down Pose...120
Chapter 5: Formal Poses...127
Tips for drawing formal poses...128
Chapter 6 Action Poses ...151
Tips for Drawing Action Poses...152
Chapter 7 Two-Person Pose...173
Tips for Drawing Two-Person Poses...174
Chapter 8 Facial Expressions and Poses ...189
Tips for Drawing Facial Expressions...190

A cute girl character is created from an old man's photo?
With quality pose reference, you can draw like a pro!

"Naoki Saito's Strongest Pose" was born from a project started by popular YouTuber and professional illustrator Naoki Saito to help people who have difficulty posing characters.
He gave feedback on the subscribers' illustrations and advised them, "It's better to refer to photos for poses, so if you have trouble finding reference materials, try taking your own," but he suddenly realized that even this wasn't easy for beginners.
It is more difficult than you think to take a picture by striking a pose yourself, and the poses that look good in a photo are different from the poses that are attractive when translated into an illustration.
So he became a model himself and started posting his 'reference pose of the day' on social media.
Although this is a humorous photo by an illustrator in his early forties, it has a professional sensibility, from the lovely girl poses to the powerful use of tools, and has become a hot topic among illustrators, and numerous creative works based on it have been produced.

Drawing the human body naturally isn't easy, but a good photo of the pose makes it much easier.
This book provides over 500 newly captured poses in addition to photos already verified on the author's SNS.
These photos will help you draw natural and smooth human figures just by tracing them. First, in the prologue, the author and other popular current artists introduce their own methods for completing characters using photos.
For example, when drawing a female character based on a photo of a male model, you can adjust the limbs to be thinner and the head proportions to create balance, or when composing a group scene, you can arrange multiple photos by section.
This method allows readers to quickly and vividly draw the desired pose based on a perfectly prepared composition and photo, rather than drawing spontaneously, and reduces the chance of failure.


There are different poses that are good for drawing!
A professional pose with exceptional detail that you can't see anywhere else.

Naoki Saito is an artist who has been consistently drawing commercial illustrations and providing feedback on illustrations from YouTube subscribers for many years. He knows better than anyone else what poses are good to draw and how to maximize the appeal of those poses.
This book is full of angles and gestures that are hard to find in other collections, and that he personally selected and directed.
Even basic scenes like pretty girl poses or weapon-wielding actions reveal professional details such as knee bends and arm movements.
It also expanded the scope of creation by including scenes that are difficult to film, such as close-up movements of two people or aerial poses.
You can also see how the image changes depending on facial expressions or the angle of the toes through the point explanation, allowing you to try out detailed changes during the creative process.
By repeatedly tracing the material provided in this book, your understanding of the human body will naturally improve, and you will even learn how to take your own poses and create reference materials.
I hope you will choose a pose you like from the book and get a feel for it.