Keep in mind that I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with starting with a sketch. I'm only saying that there are other workflows that are equally valid.

A 2D artist's final sketch is literally on the canvas that the artist will paint over. There is no lost time in doing that sketch. The artist knows that every nuance of that sketch can be realized when the painting starts. It's an integral part of a 2D artist's developmental process to create a work.

When a 3D artist starts with a sketch, that sketch is only reference. It's not an integral element within Poser. Figures will not automatically pose themselves to the dynamics of the figure in the sketch (though wouldn't that be way cool!). The sketch doesn't translate as readily to 3D as it does to a 2D painting. My monitor has enough notches in it from where I banged my head trying to get a Poser figure to have the kind of fluid pose that I wanted. Just because I can draw it doesn't mean I can get Victoria into that pose and have it look as good. The background I sketch may not be something I have in my Runtime. The distance between matching that sketch in Poser can be fairly large.

In a lot of ways, sketching in 3D is much closer to the experience that a 2D artist has. When the 3D sketch is blocked out, finishing the image builds upon that 3D sketch. Once I'm happy with all the elements of my 3D sketch, I can start refining all the elements. I don't have to start all over again. I start moving the stock pose I started with to something that fits my particular vision. Then I start switching between adding clothing, hair, ancillary props; and start refining camera angles and lighting. There isn't a set order to these things. It's more a matter of attacking whichever elements are furthest away from my vision and nudging each closer to what I want. It's then a constant series of refinements till I reach the finished product.

One of the things that I like about Poser is that I can keep playing and experimenting with the image right up to the end. I can change clothing, hair, props, backgrounds, poses, camera angles, and lighting any time in the creative process. I'm never locked into a final concept until I decide I'm done. That is incredibly liberating. The creative process remains fresh throughout the effort of creating a 3D illustration.

A 2D artist doesn't have that luxury. The 2D artist's vision essentially stops at the sketch phase. The artist may alter a few things here and there in the final product. By and large, the painting usually looks very much like a more detailed sketch because that's what it is. A 2D artist's creativity stops with the sketch. There are still some design choices in colors and detailing, but the artist's vision really stops at the moment the real painting starts.

Considering that the bulk of Poser artwork is a single female figure standing in front of a backdrop, I'm all the more surprised that Poser artists will start with a sketch. With all the free poses out there, it's pretty easy to start with a pose that's close to the artist's vision.

To illustrate the process I used on my last Poser work, the attached link shows the sequence of images that I saved to judge my progress. I find these reference images useful to see if I'm making progress and how much I'm making. It also lets me see whether or not there was something good that was done at an earlier stage.

Starting from top left and moving down:

1. This is a mature rough draft and represents probably about two hours of work. I didn't save the first blocking image "sketch" because that step isn't very interesting. It's strictly a stock pose, the main figures, background, and camera angle. The first render I will do will be fairly close to the concept I want. I'll try to remember to save a blocking sketch the next time I do another Poser drawing.
2. Tried underwater lighting, but didn't like it. I turned one of the lights back to a light red and liked the contrast with the remaining blue light. I love happy accidents. I changed the hair MAT to black.
3. I pushed the contrasting blue and red lights more, shifted figures, and decreased the focal length to try to elongate the elasmosaurus.

Top right and going down.

4. I moved the lighting around to even further accentuate the contrast between the red and blue lights on the Irina figure. That's my final Poser render with all clothing and props added (there's no reason to carry all that polygon and texture overload till the image is near completion).
5. Photoshop curves were used to heighten the reds and blues to drive the contrast to an even more sixties style painted look. It took me less than ten minutes to get that effect. It would have taken hours to do the same thing in Poser with lights, assuming that it could ever be done in Poser. I added radial blurs on masked layers to blur and darken the deeper background to give the tunnel more depth.
6. Power Goo fixed the right shoulder and elbow. The dodge brush darkened the overly cylindrical looking hair strands. I made a bubble brush to heighten the underwater illusion.

All together, there's about two days of work in the image--half of that devoted to post-processing. As can be seen, the bulk of the work is done in the first few hours. The first blocking sketch in the first hour is the effort that makes me decide whether things are progressing well enough to continue. It's my 3D sketch. The reason I abandoned pencil sketches is that my Poser sketch puts me further along to finishing the image. With the SpaceNavigator, moving cameras around is a breeze and a lot more intuitive than the constant starting and stopping with a mouse to switch camera controls from the trackball to the zoom, lateral, and up/down controls. The Navigator puts all those functions in one device and I don't have to be irritated with the mouse bouncing against the corners of the screen. It makes it a lot faster working in the draft phase of the illustration.

The whole concept of this image came about from doodling in Poser. I was playing with some new products I bought and was moving around the RDNA modular tunnel when I started thinking of a use for it. Every Poser user ought to pull out a product they paid for, and never used, and play with it in Poser till an idea springs to mind. Skip the rigid process of a detailed sketch and holding firmly to that idea in Poser. Poser represents a beautiful 3D environment where we can be like kids and play with our toy dolls and props and make something unique. If I had to adhere to a strict process of working in Poser, it wouldn't be fun. I want to have fun with Poser.

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