Hello I am interested in doing some graphic design on my PC but am unsure of where to start and what programs to buy. My favorite things to dream up are the fantasy stuffs (i.e. mages, fairies etc). I am on a VERY limited budget (single income home with a child) but really love designing. I am pretty good with pencils and would like to move onto 3D design. Any suggestions or comments would be wonderful. Thank you for taking the time to read my post 8-)

Most of the people here that are doing character work are using Poser 4. It's inexpensive and has a wealth of resources available for it, both free and non-free. Check out the freestuff and marketplace to see what I mean. The learning curve is not too bad, and it's great for doing character stills, although it's animation tools are a little lacking. A lot of the time, you will want to do post-render work on your images, and for that you will need a good bitmap editor, such as Photoshop, Painter, Paint Shop Pro, PhotoPaint, etc. Paint Shop Pro seems to be the program of choice for the budget-conscious artists. Photoshop is the industry standard for image retouching and manipulation, but it is expensive. PhotoPaint falls somewhere in the middle, and Painter is for simulating natural media such as oils, pastels, etc. Hope this is useful to you.

Attached Link: http://www.wacom.com

There are powerful 3D modelling programs available for free such as Blender, and I believe Strata 3D as well. For low poly characters, there is Milkshape 3D. Also, the bitmap editor GIMP is complete freeware, and has pretty much completely replaced photoshop for Linux users (Blender is also available for linux. strata and milkshape, i dont know)> There is a version of Gimp for Windows, however last i checked a few months ago it was still bug ridden. The linux version however i can say from personal experience really juices, even on lower end system (PII 400's etc). A slightly stripped down version of Painter 5 (Painter has reached version 7 now) called Painter Classic ships with all Wacom Intuos and Graphire tablets. For a 100$US, you can get yourself a damn convinient graphics tablet (and you'll feel right at home seeing as you already use natural media like pencils), which comes with the tablet, the stylus, a ball and optical free mouse (its solid plastic on the bottom), along with Painter Classic. Easily worth the cash, and if you call the stores, they might actually get refurbished Graphires, which would sell for less, and are more likely to not have any problems when using them (few products do, however the rare cases where there are problems, the store ships it back to the manufacturer, and they go over the product thouroughly and fix the problem, and sell it again at a lower price.. just in case u didnt know, u might not). As for Poser, Poser 3 full version was being given away on magazine cds a year or two ago as far as I recall. The tools are out there, you just gotta know where to look. Also, no matter how much money u spend on the tools, they are useless if you dont spend the time needed to learn how to use them. If you work enough with Blender, u can churn out some amazing work. Do a search on Blender artwork, much of it is mind blowing considering the program is freeware.

try http://www.pcplus.co.uk/default.asp download: truespace 1 openfx

WOO HOO!! I jsut bought Poser 3 and the book to go with it for less than $100 shipping incl!! big silly grin now to learn how to use the friggin thing puzzled frown I downloaded Blender and Truespace as well so hopefully I should be up and running soon big smile Thanks to all who posted advise for me.