My figures are a slightly older model, so I’m not sure if things have changed.  But if you’re looking at the same versions as mine, where orange costs a bit less than gray -

-Both are light enough that you can easily see the shadows.  I think they’re equally usable in this regard.  If you’re concerned about colored light and/or how skin tones react to shadow, neither one of them will give you a realistic effect, and looking at real people is still your best bet.

-Gray-Kun is noticeably better quality than Orange-kun.  He has sturdier joints with stronger material.  Over time as you use them, the joints do tend to get looser (especially if your orange figure likes to lift your gray figure XD), and the hand attachments don’t attach as securely.  So if you can afford the more expensive gray, that’s the one I’d recommend.

(Also, sorry I haven’t had time to do requests or poses lately, but I’ll still try to answer questions in the meantime!)

Yes, feel free!  My only request is that people don’t repost my actual photos to other places without link/credit.  But you’re welcome to use the poses themselves for personal or commercial work.  Credit is nice, but not required in that case.

Also, sorry for the long break in posting and replying to asks!  We’re all still alive - just impossibly busy with work D:  I hope to get back into the swing of things soon!

Yes, the gray hands and stand work with the pale orange version. :)  The gray and orange figures are pretty much identical, and I had Orange-kun borrow Gray-kun’s hands for one of my old poses.  I don’t know how things match up to body-chan, but I'm pretty sure the stand and accessories (phone, laptop etc) are the same for body-kun and body-chan.  Not sure about the hands, though.

“Ah, someone who understands!”

“Understands what, Orange-kun?”

Yes, basically I bought them for myself a few months ago because I had some difficult action scenes coming up in my webcomic and thought they’d be helpful.  Aerial and worm’s eye action shots are my weakness.  But for every pose I used for reference, I ended up with like six poses that were just stupid and funny, and I needed to post them *somewhere,* right?

(fyi, I’d give my comic a moderate R rating for violence/sexual content/language/drug use, so tread carefully if you plan to click that link.)

It wasn’t originally my plan to make a side blog for the figures, and I definitely never expected it to actually be useful to people!  So that turned out well.  I'm not so good at telling other artists how awesome they are, so this is an easy way for me to give something back and try to balance out all the generosity I’ve received.

Have I been using them, and have they been helpful?  Yes and yes!  But I’m much more casual with them when I use them for my own purposes.  I don’t make clean photos for myself the way I do for this blog.  I usually don’t take photos at all, and I just kind of approximate the pose and set them on my upturned tea cup.  My preference is Memory>From Life>Photo Reference>Body-kun, but they’re all valid tools.

Here’s a photo I did take.  It’s Orange-kun riding on a Larabar in an attempt to match a motorcycle I’d already designed and drafted. (“Lemon Bar” flavor.  Highly recommended, but a little acidic. ^_^)  I start with a rough sketch to lay everything out, but that layer is turned off in this picture.

Oh dude, you wouldn’t believe how bad my setup is. ^_^;  I’m hoping maybe someday if I can manage the funds, I can put together a better setup with more flexible lighting options, a turntable, props, and maybe even a better camera.

Right now, I’m using a folded piece of bristol board as a base and backdrop, a basic floor lamp with two daylight CFL bulbs, and the camera in my iPhone 5s.  I position or tilt the floor lamp until I get roughly the results I want.  It’s a pretty low budget operation.

But what I lack in a professional setup and photography skills, I make up for in Photoshop skills! :D  I’m an illustrator/comic person, and I do art in Photoshop for a living.  I use the Curves tool to balance out the lights and darks and remove color casts.  If you don’t have Photoshop, most art programs these days have some sort of equivalent.

Here’s a before and after:

In this case, I also edited out some props and composited a second photo of Orange-kun’s tape-covered foot.  I always note in my post whether or not something’s been edited, so people can know what’s actually doable with these figures and what isn’t.

So I hope that answers your question!  If anyone wants more info on how to use Photoshop curves, let me know.

(and btw, a new pose is coming up in a couple hours!)