Handy Art Reference Tool5.2 - App Store

"Thanks to this useful app, drawing realistic hands can become a whole lot easier" - ImagineFX

"Pencillers, inkers, and colorists should all give this a look!" - Tony Moore, co-creator of The Walking Dead

If you're an artist and ever wanted just quick and easy drawing reference for hands, heads, or even feet (IAP) without having to awkwardly pose your limbs in front of a mirror, this app is for you!

HANDY(R) is an artist's reference tool, consisting of several rotatable 3D limbs with a variety of poses useful for drawing. You can also customize and edit your own poses for hands, feet, and skulls.

Fully adjustable 3-point lighting means you can get easy lighting reference when using any of the 10+ included 3D head busts. Handy if you’re painting and need to know what shadows the head casts from a certain angle!

Also available is the Animal Skulls pack. With over 10 different animal species, it's great for anatomical reference or creature design inspiration.
[Foot rigs and Animal Skull pack require additional purchase]

NEW in Handy v5: Edit the materials of models! Selectively turn off their textures, adjust their specularity, or tint them a certain color.

Perfect for comic book artists, painters, or just casual sketchers!

Featured in ImagineFX's Top 10 Must-Have Apps!

Check out the video demo:
https://www.youtube.com/@handyarttool

Sign up for the HANDY newsletter for information about new upcoming updates!
http://www.handyarttool.com/newsletter

Follow HANDY on Bluesky
https://bsky.app/profile/handyarttool.bsky.social

Version History HANDY users, thank you very much for your patience and supportive understanding. We’re ready to finally try applying our previous update once again.
If you encounter any issues or problems, PLEASE do not hesitate to reach out to us at contact@handyarttool.com !

- Apple iCloud integration is completely re-written from the ground up, and (hopefully) should not produce any crashing or significant delays when opening Handy.
- Fixing issues where links could no longer be opened in iOS18 or later
- Fixing an issue where the rotation UI would not be aligned correctly on certain devices with skinnier aspect ratios.
- Now supports swipe from left-edge Back shortcut gestures in the menus
- Fix for not being able to individually adjust the Jaw sliders for loaded skulls 5.2 Aug 24 YIKES!
Well, we really apologize for that last update that was causing Handy to crash on launch for a lot of you folks. Despite our rigorous testing, we're still trying to diagnose and figure out what exactly is going wrong there and reproduce it on our end.
In the meantime we are reverting Handy back to the previous 5.0.7 version (Apple still makes us call it something new, so it's technically 5.1.1 yada yada). Anyways, very sorry about that.
If YOU encountered the crashing, and want to help us diagnose and figure out what might be going on via some TestFlight beta testing, PLEASE reach out to us at contact@handyarttool.com! 5.1.1 11/05/2025 Handy users, thank you for your support! Here's a general update to dust off Handy and keep things working
- Re-tooling the iCloud integration behind the scenes to hopefully make it much smoother and no longer cause long load times
- Fixed an issue where links would no longer be able to opened in iOS18 or later
- Fixed an issue where the rotation UI would not be aligned correctly on certain devices with skinnier aspect ratios 5.1 10/30/2025 - Emergency bug fix for purchases suddenly locking up Handy

Thank you for your support! 5.0.7 01/31/2025 - Fixed an issue where images would sometimes fail to save to Photos with transparency.
- Slight improvement to the Save Scene/Light Rig UX flow
- Minor bug fixes

Thank you for your support! 5.0.5 04/27/2023 - Fix added for rotation getting stuck when using iPad OS gestures
- Fix for some characters in Japanese & Chinese languages not appearing correctly 5.0.4 08/03/2022 Reworked the selection outline effect for better performance 5.0.3 02/05/2021 Reworked the selection outline effect for better performance 5.0.2 02/03/2021 5.0.1 Fix for iPadOS screenshot sharing not working

Welcome to the Handy 5.0 Update! Some new additions to this version include:
- You can now load multiple models!
- Upgraded lighting and rendering methods to PBR standards and with sub surface scattering effects
- New category: Props! Knife, Pistol, Pipe, Sword, and Katana
- Material Editor! Want to turn off the model's textures? Or edit the material to be more shiny? Or just want to color tint it? No problem
- iCloud sync now enabled for your Saved Scenes and Light Rigs across devices!
- Darker skin variants for hand / leg limbs
- 2 new high res fully textured head busts added
- Dynamic rendering quality for lower-end phones
- Some expanded camera controls like being able to lock the light rotation to the camera rotation, or lock the axis of rotation (when in landscape mode)
- Localization fixes. Better fonts for Japanese & Chinese Simplified languages 5.0.1 10/10/2020 Welcome to the Handy 5.0 Update! Some new additions to this version include:
- You can now load multiple models!
- Upgraded lighting and rendering methods to PBR standards and with sub surface scattering effects
- New category: Props! Knife, Pistol, Pipe, Sword, and Katana
- Material Editor! Want to turn off the model's textures? Or edit the material to be more shiny? Or just want to color tint it? No problem
- iCloud sync now enabled for your Saved Scenes and Light Rigs across devices!
- Darker skin variants for hand / leg limbs
- 2 new high res fully textured head busts added
- Dynamic rendering quality for lower-end phones
- Some expanded camera controls like being able to lock the light rotation to the camera rotation, or lock the axis of rotation (when in landscape mode)
- Localization fixes. Better fonts for Japanese & Chinese Simplified languages 5.0 09/28/2020 Female foot now available! It's automatically included alongside the Male Foot IAP, so if you've already grabbed that you'll get the female foot for free! 4.2 03/06/2018 Fixing a crash that would occur on iOS 11 when saving a screenshot 4.1.4 12/12/2017 Fixes splotchy shadow rendering errors occurring for iPhone 8/X users 4.1.3 12/05/2017 New in 4.1.2:
- Quick fix to a graphical glitch that would appear in the shadowed sides of lights.

New in 4.1:
- HUGE update to the Animal Skull Pack: Now includes a Chimpanzee, Boar, Raven, Turkey, Opossum, Sabertooth, Tufted Deer and Bear skull!
- Two additional human heads: Female Planar and Old Man
- Can now save transparent screenshots without a background
- Localization! Now available in Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, French, German, and Spanish!

As always, thank you for using and supporting Handy! 4.1.2 08/23/2017 - HUGE update to the Animal Skull Pack: Now includes a Chimpanzee, Boar, Raven, Turkey, Opossum, Sabertooth, Tufted Deer and Bear skull!
- Two additional human heads: Female Planar and Old Man
- Can now save transparent screenshots without a background
- Localization! Now available in Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Korean, French, German, and Spanish!

NOTE:
There is currently a possible graphical glitch that can appear in the shadowed side of lights (like a weird glowing circle). A fix for this is currently in the App Store submission process. 4.1.1 08/21/2017 - HUGE update to the Animal Skull Pack: Now includes a Chimpanzee, Boar, Raven, Turkey, Opossum, Sabertooth, Tufted Deer and Bear skull!
- Two additional human heads: Female Planar and Old Man
- Can now save transparent screenshots without a background
- Localization! Currently available in Japanese (Chinese Simplified, Korean, French, German, and Spanish will come very soon in an update the following week)

As always, thank you for using and supporting Handy! 4.1 08/19/2017 - Hand / Foot pose-ability !
- Ability to screenshot and save to device gallery or share it
- Landscape view layout support
- iOS Split View multitasking support
- Can now save head positioning
- Rotation sensitivity is now adjustable in settings 4.0 07/22/2016 NEW FANCY HEADS graciously provided by AnatomyNext
- Female Erin
- Male Planar
- Male Topology
- Male High-Res
- Skull High-Res

ANIMAL SKULL PACK [IAP] Great for animal/creature reference and inspiration!
- Cow
- Dog
- Cat
- Goat

MISC STUFF
- A bonus simple planed head for simplified light/shadow reference
- Fixed some awkward geometry on the old male head, and up-res'd it a bit
- Big improvements to the controls when two finger pinch-zooming and panning
- Direct camera controls! Now you can adjust the zoom and the FOV easily with on-screen sliders
- Skulls (those with a lower jaw anyways) now have on-screen sliders that allow you to open the mouth

Thanks for using Handy! Your reviews help not only what needs to be focused on, but also keep Handy alive, so keep em coming! 3.1 01/13/2016 - By popular demand, [male] foot now available as IAP
- Two finger touch and drag will now move model around the screen
- Lots of minor bug fixes. Also lots of re-writing stuff! So hopefully things are still running smoothly.
Please leave a review and let us know what you think of Handy ! 3.0 05/01/2015 Light 1 now does cast shadowing. I'm working on getting cast shadows for all lights, but because of rendering technical limitations it's a bit involved. So until then, I figured I'd update with the one light.
Handy is also in the middle of some restructuring for better lighting/material systems. I appreciate all your patience and support!!
Help keep Handy going by leaving a review! 2.4.1 12/14/2014 Re-implementing the fixes to the male & female hand rigs. If you experience any odd problems with this version please don't hesitate to contact us at contact@handyarttool.com ! And happy new year! 2.3.2 01/02/2014 Fixing an bizarre flickering issue with iPhone4 / Touch4 2.3.1 12/18/2013 Fixes to the female and male hands. 2.3 12/12/2013 - Happy Halloween! I got you this HUMAN SKULL
- New hand poses!
- Some small fixes and optimizations 2.2 10/24/2013 - A female hand!
- A female head!
- Fixed a bug with the saved light rig lists that could cause a crash, and an additional bug that could cause them to order incorrectly in rare situations 2.1 09/13/2013