Heyas, I recently reposted two of my male characters for download. After seeing them both pass their 500th download I've got a question for you guys. :) What did I do right? :) Did you dl them because a: you get everything just in case, b: you like their looks/clothing/etc, or c: It was a male character that wasn't funny looking. If I make more male characters what should I be aiming at? mike? milboy? dork? and what kinds of characters? normal guys? 'character' guys? ethnic guys? thug type guys? 'extras' (low rez textures to reduce render time)? I won't be done with my current project until at least Jan - just wanted some things to think about. PS if you've used any of my boys in a pic I'd love to see 'em. Same goes with any of my freestuff. It makes me want to make more stuff. And you'd like that, right? Lyrra

one of my characters, Brigid, just passes its 2400 downloads. and I want to know also what did I do right, although I worked on her for 3 days, I still don't know what made people to download her. (but I got few fan letters after posting her) :-))

In general (not specific to these two posts) I think a lot of the time characters are downloaded not to be used as they are, but to cannibalise bits of texture, morphs, etc. So people may use them, yet you won't see them as you expect.

Well, there aren't many useful items for Mike and the Dork. Most clothing and textures are for Posette or Vicky. I am doing illustrations using the Poser-Chars and I really hate that there aren't many male characters. Most charakters are supermodel this-or-that (Vicky or Posette) or female texture this-or-that. Clothing for Mike and the Dork is really hard to get by. I actually download everything I get for the male chars since it is so hard to get anything and you never know when someone decides to remove his stuff. Joerg Weber

lyra.. your male was one of the very first that I downloaded when you had him up before. he made a hit with me because he would be so nice looking before a fireplace holding a book!

Poser most certainly does need men! One of the things I like to use it for is character studies, and many characters are male. It takes a lot out of a group of them if thy all resemble the P4 dork! The more morphs and textures and clothes that are out there for male models the happier I amespecially as I can't model for anything and am only just learning to do textures. I've downloaded both your guys and like them a lot. Thanks for your work! As for what to do next, I think the P4 guy is sadly neglected. With a few morph targets like the ones up here in Freestuff he can be made to look quite respectable, and of course, people who don't have Mike will be able to use stuff for Dork. Mike stuff is always more than welcome.

There seem to be more things around for Mike than there are for the poor Dork! The Dork needs more of everything, I think. I don't think I've seen many, if any, really good Ethnic or character morphs, for instance. His wardrobe is sparse at best. There are some nice texts for him, but because of the basic Dork-look, many of them lose something in the translation. Yes, we could definitely use more male stuff, of all kinds for the Dork. I almost forgot, the Dork needs a wider selection of good hair, too, for those who are so inclined.

Ive been using the P4Guy almost exclusively for a long time, even though I still have Michael and d/l whatever might available for him. But the P4 Guy has more flexibility. Look at the morphs for Michael, and somehow, they all wind up looking like Michael. But go to Duane's ToyBox and look at the morphs hes devised for the P4, and the look changes radically. Add a photo-realistic texture, and you have something that will rival the best Michael. But its frustrating that there are so few sources out there for things for the guys, no matter which one. MalePoser.com was rocking there for a while, but I think even they realized how frustrating it is. So, a Poser guy wishlist? Right off the bat, a good dress jacket. The ones that are out there are almost all like the Big White Suit that David Byrnes wears in Stop Making Sense. Tandem to that, because, again, there just aren't any good ones out there, would be a Matrix-length coat with enough morphs built into it that it doesnt look like a piece of plastic. Textures for the clothes that aren't so damn clean. Id love to see a t-shirt or jeans texture, for example, that looks like it came off a mechanic at the end of the day. And at the same time, theres stuff on the runways in Italy and Paris that would give the P4 (or Mike) a bit of an equal footing when it comes to hoitsy-toitsy, "I got style and you got the bill, buster" Vickie. =) Montana has been designing mens fashions that are truly cutting edge, and who couldnt use a little Versace?

We need more characters that look like real guys instead of some weightlifters fantasy gone amok. There's an incredible range of shapes, sizes & colorings among real people, and most folks don't seem to want to change the basic poser people more than about 1% away from the "we're all damn near identical clones" standard that prevails. Also, more decent hair for male figures, and more clothes for them. I could use all of these. Actually, I for one have not much use for female characters, so the incredible preponderance of stuff for vicky & posette as opposed to the shortage of stuff for mike & dork has been very irritating.

Size of the characters is often dictated by the clothes. You pretty much need to use a default body size if you don't want them to be naked all the time! If people are looking for ideas about clothes, I'd like to see more period suits that would go with all the beautiful dresses at Poser Fashion. All those pretty ladies need suitable escorts! I'd also like to see more ethnic characters for either sex.

Yep .. Guys always needed.

Lyrra - your characters were very nice, AND there are not a lot of things around for the Dork, free OR pay. Or Micheal, for the matter, though there are more goodies for him. And it never seems to be 'just what I'm looking for.' The variety is a bit narrow. For example; hair packages for Posette. Tons, both free and pay. How about the Dork? Well, their's Kozeburo's excellent Gombei hair, Bloodsong's Braveheart hair and.... Nothing. Belive me, I looked recently; I was doing a pic of a female with a bunch of males and had to get really creative with the hair. In some cases I used 'female' hair but let's face it; even girls with short hair style it different from guys short hair.

Hi, Lyrra. In answer to your first question, I immediately downloaded Brendan Walker because he strongly reminds me of Anthony Stewart Head, who plays Giles the Watcher on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Much like Petunia, I envisioned him holding a book, although in my head he was standing in front of a bookcase.

lol - So, I'm not the only one who was reminded of Giles? Actually, Brendan is the only male character I've down loaded so far (take that for what it's worth, me being a newbie) but the second I saw him I liked him. I think a large part of the problem with the male characters, clothing, etc is mostly variety. A lot of it, as mentioned is geared towards adventurers, superheroes, etc. But on the other hand, it sort of mirrors real life where women get a large vareity of clothes and accessories to choose from while men usually get only varitations of pants, t-shirt, shirt, jacket, and from adesigners point of view I would think female clothing would be more fun. Personally I would like to see some good male hip hop, urban, club,sk8 etc clothing floating around and some characters to match. Be fun to give the poor dork some pizazz and sparkle. :)

nods We need more poser men. I find myself growing weary of working with nothing but Vicki and Posette day after day after day. It gets dull. I recently bought the muscleman. Wonderful figure, but so little is out there for him. Two or three textures from the penguin bar and that's it. And PoserDork... sighs Almost nothing for him. The male characters I have look mercifully nothing like him, but that's almost entirely because I spent a year and half perfecting the morphs from the UltraMorph man and Morph World. And I'm still not pleased with the textures I have. I can make my own, but they don't look real enough... As for Michael? YES! More Michael things! Poor Michael never looks different no matter how you morph him. It's entirely that horrible nose. I have several morphs from just the base morphs and from magnet tweaking that I love... except the nose. Michael has more polygons in his head? So why does he have less nose choices than even the poser 4 infant?

just wondering. (refer to sleep deprived thread in c&d.)

Ahem. The reason I post my work as morphs rather than characters is because there are so many variants on P4F that all use the same head geometry. If you're an Eve fetishist, you probably would bypass characters using the base P4 .CR2. They also compress to much smaller sizes and I don't have to think about textures, hair, etc. That said, I think you'll notice that the morphs I'm doing for PoserDude don't all fall into the male model category. Brennan looks like a skeevy double-crossing police informant, Stuart could stand to lay off the donuts, and Diego still looks too much like Chris Kattan for his own good... BTW, when you're dissing Michael's default facial features, you're commenting on DAZ3D president Dan Farr's face which was 3D scanned for the head. Rumor has it the missus was one of the 2 model faces they used as reference for Vicky.

Ouch. Then the missus is rather... Oh, I won't say it. That'd be mean.

Let's give the benefit of the doubt that the artists didn't do the greatest job of blending two different faces, leading to the various proportional gaffes.