Quote - "this thread, it seems anything priced according to the work someone puts into a model is too much.  There seems to be a strong reverse bias towards modellers here, in that modelling isn't viewed as an artform, but rather just something like being in the business of making 'supplies' for an artist."

I'm one of the few around here that views things the way they should be, imo. For me the modeler or content creator is the real artist, the user using the models or content is only a mere user, using someone elses art to create an image with it. Imo the end user doesn't create art at all, he's just using someone else's art to create an image.

And this is a case in point of one of the attitudes that provokes the backlash; the arrogance behind the illusion that a mesh model is somehow the be-all and end-all of CG. Once upon a time maybe, but now it is only one step in a process. Important, yes. A work of art on their own? Sometimes (but mesh modeling is also a technical excercise, and art critics are the =first= to point out that technical proficiency is not remotely analgous to artistic merit or ability; said critics are more likely to give kudos to color balancing and light construction. Harsh, but true.). But poor lighting will make even the most uber mesh look like shit. Bad shader design will render it pathetic. Screwy rigging in articulated mesh will render it useless. And if an animator doesn't breathe life and motion into it, it is nothing more than a virtual statue. Very, very few and very far between have been the instances where someone actully tried to claim a piece of purchased content as their own; and those caught at it were clobbered for it. Yet the sneer of ' you don't make it all, it ain't worth considering' is an almost constant background noise at many of those 'high end' sites. Which ignores the simple fact that out in the real professional world CG work is pretty much divided up into specializations for speed and efficiency and the simple fact that the number of people who truly can 'do it all' well is almost negligible compared to the amount of work available. Giving credit where credit is due is only polite. And honest. When I get the shorts I've been working on done, I won't have any problem whatsoever with giving Anton Kisiel credit as Apollo's creator, or Dan Cortopassi as Natalia's, or DAZ Studio's,(Or any of the other content creators, for that matter). They deserve it for -their- hard work. But without my work in keyframing, editing, lighting, camera planning etc., their work would be no more than 2 nude meshes in a static position and boringly lit, which would make for a pretty lame short movie, no? Just because others made the meshes I use does in no way entitle them to one hair of credit or glory for the work that =I= do. Bitter as some find the pill, the Poserverse actually mimics the pipeline methodology studios use. The important part is the end result: you have those who can manipulate mesh do what they do best, those who can make textures or shaders sing do their thing, let the light riggers and camera people deal with their area of expertise. The keyframers deal with their thing if it's an animation. Pull it all together, and you can get a finished product far greater than any one name in the process could have hoped to accomplish in quintuple the time. And it allows those who are good in only one or two things make their own statements, not force them to stand to one side because they can't do it all.Poser figures tend to be the 'B' actors, as they are easily recognized. Not being unique, it forces work to be done elsewhere to compensate. Ego-points are not a finite thing; get someone to go 'Ooooooh....' and bingo! Brand spanking new ego-points to play with.