Very nice Kate, very nice indeed. Paul ::Avoiding gratuitous Last Tango In Paris comments::

Allie, are you NUTS?!? grin Just these three poses were a nightmare as far as getting the hands positioned properly and keeping her arm from getting buried in her bosom on that last one was a major pain. I'd hate to think of how long it would take to animate something like that. Hmmm...... Oh well, at least with the long skirt, you can't tell her feet are in the wrong place giggle Kate

sounds like Kates chicken.... nyah! (i DARE you to do it... I DOUBLE DARE ya!)

::: makes clucking noises ::: Maybe after the holidays when the kid is back in school and I actually have some breathing room. Kate (rummaging through the video collection for the ballroom dancing in 10 easy lessons tape)

Great--if you blink real fast you can actually see them move LOL!! I think what you did is exactly what I need to do--practice/do an exercise in posing. These are just terrific results and look quite natural--a VERY hard thing to do. Did you look at pics or just 'imagine'? On some of my earlier things when I was taking more time, I would 'pose' myself and look at where my hands, arms, legs, body were, but I'm wondering if looking at pictures would be more helpful. Diane B

Well, the first pose was a modification of the "Tango" from the dancer poses. I changed the joined hand positions and the angle of the heads so that they were looking AT each other instead of PAST each other. The second one was part imagination (where would she go if she bent her arm into a turn) and then moving through the step myself a few times to get a "feel" for the positioning. The last one was the real pain. Took forever to get the collar and shoulder joints to quit sticking out at all weird angles. Yeesh! I tell ya, whoever did all those lover poses I downloaded last week has my admiration and major respect. Arms are a major pain to pose. I still didn't get the hand positions right, that's why there's so much shadow there, to hide it. Kate (who thinks she needs to watch "Dirty Dancing" again a few more times grin)

KateTheShrew, I must tell you that that is VERY nice work! I have some experience with this kind of stuff. For one thing my wife and I are longtime hardcore ballroom, swing, and latin dancers. For another, up until very recently I was doing a ballroom dance strip called FOOTLIGHTS that still gets published in the ballroom, swing, and latin, and general small press, i.e., newsletters, etc. I still get letters from lots of places, i.e., all over the States, Canada, Israel, Argentina, etc., and I'm going to be starting it up again. Funny thing, the hardest part about this writing not the drawing, as there is abundant photo, film, and video reference available. As a matter of fact, the very reason I got Poser in the first place was to use as "posing" of photo reference and then looked at from different angles, and it has certainly been very very helpful in that regard. I'm almost finished with a book of ballroom dance clip art line drawings as, despite the plentitude of photo work available, there is very little "quality" drawing for people who might have use of such. You can see some samples of this strip at the below URL. Poser 2, 3, and 4 have all been extremely great aids in drawing this and other stuff. Not everything being done with it is "porno" though I did do exactly that kind of comix for years and years. http://www.ballroom-r-us.com/footlights/gallery.htm Despite years of using 2D and 3D apps, I'm still a pencil, pen, and ink type deep down, but find I'm doing increasingly less (? HAH, is that possible) of it. That's great work you have there and I would suggest grabbing any Fred and Ginger movies or tons of others on TV late at night.

Thanks for the compliment on my efforts. Your strip is great and I love those clip art illustrations you have. Wish I could draw like that. As a big fan of the old movie musicals I spend a lot of time watching Fred and Ginger as well as Gene Kelly, Vera Ellen, Cyd Charisse, Donald O'Connor, Ann Miller and others too numerous to mention. I've always been fascinated by how graceful and liquid the motion of dancing appears when I know it can be really hard and gruelling work to make it appear that easy. Glad you liked my images. Kate