The Concise Book Of Muscles is another recent purchase I made. This is a reference book rather than a good read. There is a small section at the front of the book covering some basic anatomy stuff, but nothing that you won’t find anywhere else.
The real value of this book is the great attention given to each muscle. The book covers muscles over the entire body, breaking them down by major sections: muscles of the face, head, and neck; muscles of the shoulder and upper arm; etc. It dedicates an entire page to each muscle, showing a diagram of the individual muscle and how it attaches to the skeleton. It also has a brief write up telling you the muscle’s origin and insertion points (including another small diagram outlining the exact locations of where the muscle attaches), the specific action the muscle performs, and what basic body movements the muscle is involved in. This is fantastic information to have when setting up muscle systems in your rigs.
The book is $22 at Chapters’ online store, which is a steal for reference material such as this.
The Concise Book Of Muscles on chapters.ca
Here is a brief preview on Google Books. It goes into even more detail after the face muscles.
The Concise Book Of Muscles on Google Books