Well, Blackheart - at the moment you are the one who seems to claim to be able to rate imagination. While I am saying that one shouldn't call himself an artist, you seem to consider yourself able to give this title. As for the Mona Lisa - Well, no one ever said it was his greatest piece of work. Actually the Mona Lisa is considered to be nothing more than a training-piece. What makes Leonard an artist? Well, for one point you could take the point that without Leonardo, you wouldn't have Poser. Leonardo daVinci was one of the people who discovered perspective and began with 3-dimensional analysis of the world surrounding him. He questioned church-doctrine and was one of the greatest architects of his time. He faced multiple charges for his scientific discoveries as well as his drawings. He also risked being put to death because of his anatomical studies - which were forbidden at that time. For short: While some people here are sitting before their computers, posing around with a programm and calling themselves "artists", people like Leonardo daVinci not only risked his life for his art, he also created the basics for what our "artists" of today are using. Or let's take people like Mucha, who influenced a whole period of art with his drawings, who gave a new definition to image-format, space-distribution and posing. There is art in creating the works that Mucha created - there is no art in repeating what he did in Poser. Everyone is capable to copy something that was done before. Creating something new is the real art. And that is one reason, I would never dare to call myself an "artist" - I rarely create something new. My web-pages have to look like some design that has already won a price, my pictures in the gallery are just comics. Well, maybe my shortstories are something new, but I wouldn't call this art. Now let's take Renderosities "Pin-Up-Production-Artists". Could you tell me what is so imaginative and new about these pictures? What makes posing some pre-created nude person before a precreated background, using pre-created textures and pre-created poses so goddamn artful? No way! I admit that Rio's picture is nicely done and shows a great deal ability with Poser, Photoshop, Painter or whatever was used. But the theme isn't really new. Well executed, but not an innovation. If anyone may call himself an artist just by the virtue that he or she is able to use a program, the word "artist" looses all meaning. If anyone doing some basics with poser is an artist, what are men like daVinci, Mucha, Manet, Monet? If anyone may judge any other person an artist, the word looses all meaning. I certainly won't be so bold as to consider myself to be able to say who is an artist. But I do think I can say what I do not consider art. And that's all this is about: My position. I do not consider these people artists. If you consider these people artists - well fine. I am lacking vocabulary here, but let me put it like this: Calling yourself an artist is vain. There is more to being an artist than just making nice pictures. And what is so bad about calling yourself an "Illustrator", "Graphics Designer" or something similar? There is no hierarchy between those names, making the artist any better than the "Illustrator".