When I was playing with Poser it was more like a hobby I didn't talk about much. Now that I'm selling in the Marketplace I've had to explain to some family members and co-workers what I'm doing. (I'm terrible that way; I'm one of those people who is always blabbing about what is exciting them this week). What the "muggle" (or 'danes as we used to call them in SF fandom) really wants to know is where the art comes in. The tools are so unfamiliar they can't get their minds around how we interact with it and express ourselves. In many cases they have a distinct aversion to the computer anyhow, so it just doesn't make emotional sense to them that as a 3D artist I am as engaged with the material as I am with clay, or acrylics (both of which I have done in the past). The computer seems to them a barrier, a hostile servant that only speaks in Oracular Riddles, and they can not understand the comfort level wherin I can forget the machine and almost literally feel the mesh under my fingers. The "muggles" are also, to borrow another useful set of terms, often Eloi. To the Eloi a computer is a magic box that issues forth facts and creations. The Morlock sees the computer as a pipe; you put data in one end, you get data out the other. What comes out of the computer is entirely dependent on what went into the programming. So there is a giant divide there between where the work is seen as being done. (Even more than that, Art itself is often seen as a similar black-box, a muse that Artists have and they don't, something inside the Artist that when prodded issues forth with creation. Out of this mistaken impression of the creative process comes all those romanticisations about tortured artists and drunken writers challenging bulls before throwing themselves down at a battered typewriter. ) I had to go through all this when I first got into MIDI music. It is much worse now since the rise of the DJ style, where it is taken for granted that large chunks of existing musical works are taken and recombined in new ways. As a MIDI composer I play a piano keyboard just like a real musician. The only difference is that when I hit a key, I don't get the single note of a felt-covered hammer hitting a string; I get the single note of a good flute player sounding a single Bflat. The computer doesn't do dang all for me except help me erase some of my mistakes from the recording. If there is an A-natural in the final recording, that was my finger slipping, not anything the computer did or didn't do. But that does open up the disjunct. We are really more like directors, or art directors for a magazine; we don't use the seemingly simple fragment of red paint on a brush but a larger fragment into which several artistic collaborators poured their efforts. A director, after all, does not act all the parts. She trusts the lighting people and camera people and sound recordists and so forth to do all those technical things they do and leaves to themselves only the upper level of control. A director won't --usually -- say "Give me a four-bar theme in A Major voiced in major thirds and orchestrated for a section of four trumpets, six trombones, french horns 1-3 and 2-4," they'll say "give me something heroic and brassy." And of course they'll also say "No, no, John; faster than that. And more up-beat." Of course, anyone who has tangled with traditional materials knows that control is an illusion there, also. When you do sumi-e on hand-made paper you have little control over where there is a darker spot, where the brush spalls out a little or how it runs out at the end of the stroke. With even the traditional materials you are accepting the richness of texture, of complexity and detail, of those materials, and doing your best to integrate them into the final work. As more than one sculptor has said "I don't carve a figure; I free the figure that was already in the stone." And, going back to that black box of creativity, the artist does not see this solid black line with "creative" on one side and "technical" on the other. They shade. When I draw in pencil I am using both sides of my brain; consulting anatomy books and measuring head lengths, but also eyeballing things and using instinct to how I want the character to look. There is rarely a point at which I can say "these four lines are done with math and rulers and stuff, and these next four lines will be completely creative." The kind of tool makes no difference....synthesizer or Yamaha baby grand, pencil or Poser. There is only the degree of control and the restrictions of the medium and the constant input from the creative eye through all phases of what is done. So what do I say? As you may have gathered, I like to talk. I also like to teach. I've rarely had to sum up what I do in 3d in a few words. To computer-knowledgable people I've said; "I make 3rd-party material to expand the presets library of a popular low-end 3d rendering program called Poser." Imagine translating THAT into "muggle!"