Oh, Vicky you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, hey Vicky!

Thank you, Toni Basil.

I think there's something related to the support and ther first third-party figure issue: familiarity.

I'm later than some to the Poser community. I got in with Poser 5 and Vicky 3. I was aware of Poser earlier, but frankly the images I saw back then didn't impress me enough to have a go myself. I think I may have played with Don and Judy for a few days before seeking out DAZ and the Victoria everyone seemed to say was The Best.

Even then, Vicky and Mike 3 were a clear step up from the native Poser figures.

Now, I'm not so sure. I'm really impressed by the expressiveness of Alysson and Ryan.

But each time I load them up, I'm experimenting with their capabilities somewhat. I have to think about how I use them, and what I can do with them (and the same applies to other Daz figures I use less frequently, like all three generations of DAZ children).

Because I use Vicky and Mike a lot, I'm familiar with their setups, their morphs and, in most cases, where I've installed all the stuff for them in my runtimes.

At one stage, I even had Vicky installed to load up in my default scene (these days, I have an empty scene, metric and white background/foreground, then I don,t prejudge what I'm going to fill it with).

Apollo and Antonia are great figures. G2s are very nice, but their support is a little naff, with some cheesy outfits, and the P8 generation are excellent.

But invariably, I load Vicky 4 straight off, with Steph4 my second favourite and Mike4 coming in third.

Because they were clear winners a few years ago, and because of the sheer amount of stuff I have for them, and because I know how to move, morph and pose them, I turn to them as a default. Familiarity.

Like many other people, I do a lot of doodling in Poser. The images I post are either stuff I've planned or doodles an image grew around, and they're a tiny fraction of the images I render, most of which I don't even save. But doodling increases my technical skills, and recently I've been trying to push a few personal boundaries in core skills like lighting, texturing, shading and rendering. I want a familiar figure in there while I experiment with other stuff.

Despite the old adage, familiarity doesn't always breed contempt.

Edited: fixed typo.

Andy Staples
The Penultimate HârnPage -- www.penultimateharn.com