Yeah I'm new to poser 5 as well. I found that PapaBlueMarlin had good advice. "I find the forums to be particularly helpful rather than trying to obtain books. It depends upon your level of skill and what version of Poser you have. I suggest looking over the manual and then just try experimenting. If you stumble into a problem use the search option here to look for a similar topic or post a new message. There are several tutorials which are great to look at such as Schlabber's Art of Posing which is a free pdf some where. Maybe some one else knows what site it's on. Then there's tutorials here about postwork and compositing so you don't have to cram a bunch of figures in the same render. Some start off advice would be to use the main window for your draft renders, always remember to antialias, render your final image in a separate window, and always save in a tiff format. These options are all under render --> render options. There is also content available such as additional figures from stores like DAZ, Renderosity, and Polymage. Since Poser itself is a big purchase I suggest that if you don't have the funds or want to wait before investing, that you download some of the free figures at poserfreebies.com. " The site where you want to find Vic and Mike should be in this link http://www.daz3d.com/shop.php?op=itemdetails&item=1098 This link should bring u to Vic u'll have to look around the site for Mike but it shouldnt be that hard to find. Who knows maybe we can help eachother out. One other thing I found good was going through the manual.