I don't especially disagree with anybody's thoughts on critiquing artwork. I have my own philosophies of how I want to help others and prefer doing it by focusing on the positives. If there's an out and out technical problem that has an easy solution, I'll offer that. I don't really think it's my place to tell them what's wrong with their image. If the artist placed their work in a Work-in-Progress gallery or forum, I might feel more comfortable offering constructive criticism. When an artist puts something in their gallery, I think they're putting something there that they're happy with and I don't feel it's my job to poke holes in their dreams.

I've taken some quick looks at galleries from posters in this thread. I saw one with a Vickie with a badly contorted and ballooned shoulder and spaghetti twisted upper arm. I saw another gallery with comic panels that were unimaginatively composed with all straight on camera angles and minimal variations in camera distances. I saw a bunch with poses that, if the artist tried duplicating that pose in a mirror, they'd fall down. Other poses would require breaking bones and ligaments to force limbs into those positions. I saw tons of faces that didn't look right. There were galleries with bad composition. I saw all these things without even trying to look for faults. Imagine how many more criticisms I could find if I had my critic's hat on. Most of these problems stuck out like sore thumbs, sometimes even in the thumbnails. I could spend all day critiquing what's wrong with what I saw. Some of you might appreciate those comments. Some of you won't. Who am I to tell you what's wrong with your artwork? I'm not a Poser expert, but, as many are pointing out, I don't have to be one to tell you what you're doing wrong.

I also saw some nice work in everybody's galleries. If I were taking the time to tell you what's wrong with your least impressive work, I'm probably not spending enough time telling you what's right with your best. Whatever time I spend critiquing the work of  others comes at the expense of spending more time bettering my own work.

As much as many don't like to see a comment that says, "Great work!" or something equally minimal, it's still nice encouragement. Somebody saw the thumbnail, found it compelling enough to open, and was happy enough with what they saw that they took the extra time to say something. I don't know about anybody else, but I don't usually get the compunction to leave a comment much more than 5% of the time. When I do find something striking enough that I want to say something, I'll try to leave more than a small one-liner. Even if I only left a quick 1-liner, it was because I thought that the work was worth saying something about. I'm not leaving the comment just to say that Killroy was here. I just can't find it in me to get upset if that's all somebody took the time to leave.

The big difference between art and technique is that technique can be learned whereas it's very hard to teach artistic talent. Teaching may focus and channel those talents. Teaching cannot create an artist unless the student has the desire to be one and is willing to invest the time to practice and improve.  Much of the artistic learning process is a personal one. Teachers can help show technique. Teachers can encourage and inspire. The real work, of artistically improving, comes from outside a classroom. Improvement is only going to come with time and practice. The amount of time an aspiring artist is going to spend on their craft partly comes from the encouragement they get.

My personal feeling is that anybody, who takes the time and trouble to post a public gallery, is better served by encouraging positive comments than a litany of comments about what they can improve.  If I should ever feel the urge to express my opinions about how others can improve their artwork, there are more than enough avenues where Works in Progress are being posted by artists who truly want criticisms and advice on how to improve what they're working on. Somehow, personal galleries just don't seem like the best place to do that.

Should somebody really want comments on how their art fares in the real world, pick a non-3D gallery to exhibit in and find out how others, who haven't grown accustomed to the quirks inherent in 3D work, view the masterpiece.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon