One of the big misconceptions about 3D art is that you need the expensive big bucks software to accomplish anything. This is far from the truth.  Personally I make my characters with Wings which is free and I know a number of top pros use this software also. If you want to rig and animate and do it better than poser you can get Blender or messiah. The thing about a figure made from scratch is that there is a bit of the personality and character of the artist that you get to see with it.

       Anyone can get a freind to pose for a few stills and then make a painting or drawing. If you have a camera. You don't need a complete studio and a hasselblad camera to take pictures. I have made faces from referances downloaded from the net.    
  
     I know of a fe wof the cheater old school techniques. 1 which a saw my parents do from time to time was a basic primitive form of rotoscoping. They used a slide projector and projected it on a canvas and then traced the picture. Ther eare a few other ones.

     The problem with poser with very few exceptions is tha tit always looks like poser. Not like something unique that the artist made themselves it looks like poser figure 1 2 or 3. If you take tiem and look at characters that are unique and made by peopel for a picture you will see the difference. Some are terrible some have a quality that is hard to describe but they have more life to them even though they are not done to the same extent of a poser figure.

  Okfir sorry to hear about what heppened there. I think most of the poser figures I have seen are nto very animation freindly. Poser I find too has weak lighting models in it also. Most of the better poser art uses a ton of postwork to cover that. I know in C4D you have GI and SSS to get the image looking a bit better. Good luck a cartoon Sumo Wrestler might be a fun thing to make though.

   It is a giant misconception among the poser community that you need the big expensive software packages to be able to make a figure on your own. Personally I use wings for modeling which is free.  I use PMG Messiah for rendering rigging and animation 299$. I use a very old version of photoshop that came with a graphics tablet back in 2001. Still use Bryce 5 for backgrounds and reflection maps which you can get for free now.

In the end if you are having fun then keep at it. But I think many think themselves too good to learn modeling or how to draw or other time consuming tasks that are involved in art. Many  poser artists spend a lot of time wrapped up in poser world there and refuse to come out and look at the rest or even try to do go beyond that software.

The wit of a misplaced ex-patriot.
I cheated on my metaphysics exam by looking into the soul of the person next to me.