I have spent so much money on reference pictures for just, poses, materials, different figure types etc. but I think from now on I'm just going to use the animation method of just video-recording me acting out the character and finding a screenshot from that because SO FAR its yeilded results that I am so so so happy with in my art.
This might be because reference pictures are from someone else's point of view, someone else's artistic vision, that it really limits yourself into what specifically you can do. I also felt like it pigeon hold me into not being able to do anything without a reference on hand. Which might always be the case as a self taught artist.... But the video-recording has opened up a new avenue of creative control over my art that I didn't expect to not have. Composition, story-telling, and more organic positioning have really been the biggest take aways from doing this.