Usually they are done either with photographed models, quality photo reference sets of the same type, or handpainted. God forbid if they use magazine scans or 'stuff they swipe from porn sites'. The former will never work due to the print process and the latter due to the image size. Both will fail due to inconsistent lighting, shadows, camera angles, and body positions/occlusions. Good quality photo references should be at least 2048 in one dimension (3.2 or better MegaPixel resolution, for instance) with intentional goals of removing shadows and specular highlights and getting somewhat orthographic shots of the subject.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

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