We’ve had some great articles about shooting self-reference here, involving costumes, tripods, lights, and interval timers. Well, I often need some hand, or pose, or neck wrinkle reference at odd hours when I’m the only person awake, or during a pandemic when I can’t hire a model… (The real truth is I’m lazy and working fast and don’t want a big setup).
The greatest super quick self-reference tip I’ve learned is the smartphone voice shutter. For those odd poses, specific hands that would take too long to direct someone else, goofy faces, and weird back-of-head angles, it’s been a godsend.
Check your phone camera’s settings. In my phone it’s in “shooting methods.”
Once you set it up, you just say “cheese” or one of the other voice command options, and it does a short countdown so you can adjust your facial expression. I’ve had minor problems before where I forgot to turn off music I had playing, which accidentally turned it into interval shooting, or where I thought it was broken but I simply had headphones plugged in…
With a combination of the voice shutter and mirrors I can take what would be a simple setup with a tripod and interval timer and turn it into a pose requiring pretzel-like contortions that end up looking like a floating hand–but hey, I didn’t have to get up from my drawing desk!
The art style I’m using on this project is linework-based and doesn’t require very much lighting information, so these references can be very quick and rough.
Here I wanted a very specific, difficult-to-hold pose:
Not an easy one to Google – the smiling back-of-head:
Neck wrinkles:
Voice shutter is particularly useful when you need to shoot a reference of both hands:
Or your back (I admit this one would have been easier with a model but again, who knows what time it was and I needed it right away–and my coat doesn’t fit my partner):
If you find yourself needing to just barrel ahead on something without planning and scheduling a shoot, crappy reference photos can do the job. For comics, where you might need tons of odd references, they’re a life-saver. I hope you get some use out of your smartphone’s voice shutter!
This is soooo helpful, thank you!! I have trouble finding time/space/etc. for shooting full-on references, and have often tried to fall back on self-reference using the phone – but I didn’t know about the timed voice shutter – this will help a lot!
The other thing I have trouble with is figuring out how to place the phone – I often need to experiment multiple times as the first few times the phone is not aimed correctly, wrong angle, etc. I basically half-ass it by putting it on some shelf or another, leaning it on an object. Do you have a better system for figuring out phone placement??
What you’re describing is exactly what I do, haha! I do have a couple little phone stands that I use that in combination with shelves or stacked objects, which have been working fairly well. I’ve been meaning to get one of these though, and figure it will help a lot. Finally ordered it now:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P2VK93P/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_A2D6MWG7KYP83599C5ZM?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
That feeling when you phone is so old it doesn’t have these options. 🙁
Back to tripod and interval timer…
Nothing wrong with tripod and interval timer!
Really nice article, Winona. I work mainly doing comics, and the self-reference is my best tool, it’s a save timing, specially in those weird and not-easy seaching references like the smiling back-of-head you mentioned haha. Love your articles.
Comics are a ton of work, anything to save some time really helps! Glad you’re enjoying my articles 🙂
You can also get a little remote for your phone! I have one, a click and it fires the camera app shutter. I picked it up for doing self-portraits while hiking (yeah, we all do odd stuff) and it has both iOS and Android options for about 6-7$.
Ooh, that would be useful if you need to take some where you’re further from the phone or in a noisy environment, or feel silly saying “cheese” out loud 🙂
Whoa! This article blew my socks off! Seriously, I never thought about it like that. Mind = blown!
Wonderful article. I always think if someone stole an artists phone and found all these photos on it there would be a lot of confusion haha. Thank you Winona, great stuff!!