What is art? Ask the person who pees in a jar and sells it successfully to the public as art and even has the govenment sponsor it. I don't bother with what other people think of what I create I just enjoy doing it. I have made some rather good money with it, and with that I can pay for what I collect at the stores. Half the stuffage I get I haven't used, but if I do need it it's there so that doesn't bother me. When I first got into programming folks gave me a hard time about using Visual Basic. I got "a true programmer does it all from scratch". Hummm. How much time would that take if I just want to write something to use? I think Poser is an awesome program. I love Maya and the more I learn the more I love it. I will still use Poser because it does what I need. I was going to do some work on a film recently which is why I bought Maya. The idea that I had worked using poser as a base to get the idea across. This person hired 3 people from L.A. and put them to work on it. All Maya folks. When I walked in she introduced me and says "this is Marque, she's trying to learn Maya". I didn't let it bother me. None of the 3 were able to do what she needed and she told my husband later that I got closer than any of them just using poser. Her predjudice bit her on the butt. I have since done what she needed in Maya but have no desire to work with her. If you need to dig a hole and you can't dig it unless you have a shovel...if you aren't willing to use any tool to get the job done,  then you will never get it done. Just use the tools that get the job done and don't worry about what other folks think. You are the one with the finished product. I see a lot of head models that look incredible in the maya forums, but that's as far as the artist gets. So they bask in the compliments for a while and then go on to create another head. Some folks never seem to get the whole thing done. They are usually the ones who look down on those of us who do. At any rate, if I make money great, right now I'm just into learning and having fun with it.
Marque