I can agree and disagree with these comments. (i'm a libra so i tend to look at things from several different perspectives before drawing a conclusion. its my nature). First off, what is and is not 'art' is very much a matter of opinion. What you find beautiful I may find ugly or offensive. Or just plain dull. Also, a lot of people have different tastes as far as what genre of art they like. For example, its extremely rare that I like anything that deals with the 1920's to the 1960's or 70's. Images that depict scenes from those time periods just don't appeal to me. Once in a while I might see something that I like but its rare. Doesn't mean its not art. Nudity will attract attention 9 times out of 10. That's a simple fact. Pornography is the #1 selling media in the world, and probably always will be, regardless of how many critics and prudes there are out there (and most of the time the same people that preach about how wrong it is are the same ones that have the biggest collection stashed somewhere under their beds or in their closets). Of course not all nudity is pornography but all pornography is nudity. (at least as far as the general concept of what pornography is... but if you're someone like robert smith for example, who thinks pornography is a disgustingly obese woman (or man) gorging themselves on a box of twinkies, then...). People like seeing naked people, especially in the U.S. Excluding mid-eastern countries, and maybe china, the u.s. is the worst when it comes to sensorship. "can't let our kids see naked people! It'll scar them for life!" so they grow up thinking nudity is wrong and they teach their kids the same thing and it goes on and on. First time I ever went to London I saw a billboard on the side of a bus with a woman lifting her shirt, showing the world all she's got. It was a beer ad, if I remember correctly. It's all over europe, and sometimes in canada, but you'd never see it in the states. Not out in public anyway. Over there they don't really care about nudity. At least not nearly as much. You see it all the time and no one thinks anything of it. Yet why do you think the company used a nude woman in their ad? Then there's the concept of what message, if any, the 'artist' is trying to convey in his/her nude portrait. I personally use, or try to use, a lot of symbolism in my work. I only have two pieces in my gallery so far, (course I've also only been a member of renderosity for a lil over a week now, so...), both of them use a generic naked poser model. But neither of them really have anything to do with nudity. Its all about the message. As for fantasy and sci-fi work, i agree there's a ton of it out there, on this site and countless others. For some reason its proly up in the top rankings of digital imagery these days. That doesn't mean half or most of it isn't crap, or poorly done. It usually is. I for one am a fan of GOOD fantasy and/or dark, sometimes disturbing images. I do some of my own. Most all my work has some sort of supernatural/fantasy-like undertones. Its more creative than every day life, at least to me. Still doesn't mean that most of what I see is any good, in my opinion. But someone else might see the same image and think its fantastic. Errors in images are sometimes deliberate. Depending again on what the creator is trying to convey. Other times it gives the work character. And other times it just screws the whole thing up. Lighting and shadowing is an extremely difficult element to reproduce correctly, for anyone regardless of experience level. (i doubt there are any masters of light rendering out there, and for those who think they are one, there's always going to be someone else to come along and say its not right). Don't get me wrong though, I totally agree that there are some elements of people's work that are just blatantly bad and make it obvious that the creator didn't care enough to take the time and correct them, or at least try to correct them, before posting the image. That is irritating, especially in cases like the ones you mentioned. And its just as irritating when you find other work that is excedingly better by leaps and bounds and no one seems to care, cause its not showing any "interesting flesh". One thing that really irritates me is the fathoms of images out there depicting women in various states of undress, regardless of the genre (from 1920's new york to the deepest underbelly of middle earth). Not that I don't find women attractive, or the work exceptionally well done, but.. just yesterday I was browsing through an artist's gallery on his personal web site. I don't know how many pages there were - tons - and proly 99% of them were all women. Excedingly well-done, at least in my opinion. But there were no men, doing anything. There were a couple of male creatures, orcs, beasts, etc, but no men. Why? There's no question the artist couldn't do them just as well as he'd done the others. He just chose not to. Obviously because the male physique doesn't appeal to him as a person, but shouldn't those lines of bias dissolve in the mind of an artist? Generally speaking artists are some of the most open-minded people in the world. Until it comes to seeing or creating images of men. Put two or more women in a render, lying next to each other in various states of undress (not to mention what they might be doing), throw it up in a gallery and you'll get so many hits you might exceed bandwidth. But make it two men and all you'll get is flames. (no pun intended). Okay. I'm done with my rant. stepping down from my soap box now