Quote -  

 

Quote -

"Simply rigged figures with simply rigged clothing is usually enough to keep the unwashed masses happy, so that's what everybody's doing.
"

If he is making a figure for other people to use, most of his users will be your so called crude and unwashed masses. Starting off by knocking them down and insulting is not a good way yo go if he wants it to have some degree of popularity.

Otherwise, you end up a figure just for yourself... which doesn't seem what Shane is trying to do.

 

Thanks. I agree with each of you on this actually, and appreciate all views. 

I'm not letting fantasies of his mass-market appeal determine how I design him.

I'm confident enough in his potential that I think he will appeal to a lot of people once they actually see the end results.

Of course I want him to appeal to as many folks as possible, but at the same time it's not my intention to build the next McFigure. I'm sick of seeing that as everything out there already appeals to the 5-minute hobby renderer's needs. 

You don't get professional results in 5 minutes of clicking buttons. It's just not possible. If that's all the time you're willing to invest in your "art" then go use Genesis or something else.

As an artist, I like using software that was designed by artists for artists. As a figure creator, my goal is to design a figure that other artists want to use. 

In a studio setting, my job is to build a figure that an animator can use without pulling their hair out or having a nervous break-down over it. In a studio, that requires following specific rules and design principles. I don't see how Poser should be any different, as the studio animators I'm building for are the end-users.

My intentions all along have been to build a professionally designed and rigged figure that follows the principles of how I was trained to build for film and games, modified where needed in order to work within Posers limitations. 

The reason for this is to appeal more to the am-pro's among Poserites, as opposed to the pure hobbyists looking for the 1-click make-art solutions. 

There's enough of that in Poserdom, since Poser 1. The one-click solution figure has been done and redone so many times, I think that design has been pushed to its maximum potential already and now people are just trying to reinvent the wheel hoping to discover the next cash cow.

It's time to move to the next level. Poser is more than capable of handling that level but nothing currently utilizes its potential. 

That doesn't mean he won't be easy to use by the hobbyists. It just means he'll work a bit differently and may have a bit of a learning curve for some. The trade-off for that learning curve is that he'll have much better functionality for the end-user than (most) of what is currently available. Or at least that's the goal. I don't claim to be an expert, and a lot of this is still a learning process for me. I have to adapt what I know from working on higher-end projects to what I know about Poser so some of it is experimental. Actually at this point the entire project is experimental.

It can't be a direct translation because too many details are different between what works in a studio and what works in Poser. I understand that aspect. So I aim closer to the middle ground.

I can give a run-down of my experience if anyone wants it, if that helps in showing that I at least am pretty sure I know what I'm doing. It's not a lot of experience, but I think its adequate enough for what I'm trying to do.

I'm really hoping Lucas will appeal to content developers who are looking for something different, something a bit more advanced than what they currently have to work with and without all the headaches. I'm hoping enough people will take interest in him, on both an end-users perspective and a content developers perspective, and want to see his success happen, but I can't gurantee anything at this point. Everything about this kind of work is about taking chances and risking failure. That's the only way to succeed. But if you just want to chase the next $.99 market special to rake in as many dollars as you can then Lucas isn't the figure for you to support. 

 

~Shane