What will be your costs, Who is going to do the printing, How large will the prints be? If they expect you to provide a printed product you had better find out what these costs will be. Also how elaborate will these posters be, how much work will you have to put in? 1 hour, 2 hours, 3? Never put a flat rate on work like this, or you may find yourself. Doing and redoing a piece for a week or more for only $100 dollars. Unless your clients will accept anything you produce for them as final for $100 you need to scale your fees according to how much work it will take to get to the finished product. Personally I would start at $100 and work up from there. If you dont you may find yourself spending days finalizing a work for only $100 and end up making less than minimum wage. I'd charge $20.00 Dollars per hour with a minimum of $100. This way if you spend 6 hours on a work you get $120.00 etc. This also keeps your cliets from unessarily having you redo time and time again for no valid reason as they will be paying for the extra time. Just some things to consider.

It is back on guys, be nice

P.S. Curious Labs is not a small company. It is a subsidiary of a much larger european graphics company.

Heck, you can never have too many tools. Especially if free and legal.

Hi Jim, Thank you for clarifing the topic. While I am familiar with many of the techniques you describe. I thought that others who may read the thread would get confused. So the reason for my post. You did clear some points on which I was vauge. Thank you.

Yike's is it me or am I more confused than before I read the explaination? Create magnets from body parts? 3 part morphs?

Rats, I already have it, so when I saw it here for free, no expiration and no strings attached, I thought I'd spread the word. I reccomend it highly.

Poser as a means to an end, is limited. But then curious labs has made pro pack. Now you can easily port poser stuff into LW and others for doing all of the things poser lacks. Plus when you consider, that if you want to do serious character work you would be porting the obj files into modeling programs to make adjustments and modifications anyway. Dollar for Dollar Poser is as good a value as Bryce. As for business, why would curious labs want to reinvent the wheel and compete head to head with the likes of Alias Wavefront, Discreet, NewTek and a host of others. In professional production you would turn to those software anyway and import and export to and from programs like poser, (Character Studio, Messiah etc) anyway. Poser fills a niche and does so very well. If I can take a poser character pull it into lightwave, modify the mesh then bone it and animate it, I save the work of creating the entire model from scratch, This in it's self is a huge money and time saver. Poser also allows for the fast and easy testing of motions and character attributes before commiting the time in LW or other programs to finalize a animation or character. In the business time is a valuable commodity. Any tool that can shve the time spent on a project is worth every penny. In this aspect alone poser is a worthwhile product.

Yup he shot in color as well. Me again.

No one take offense, It is just that my father did this for a living, it paid our rent and put food on the table. When Photography is your love and work. When your family depends on your skills, I guess your outlook on the subject is different. My father tried to teach me to. Look at the subject, really see it. Look in front and behind, look at ether side. See everything you want in the shot and everything you do not. After you framed the subject, block it out of your minds eye. Study the shadows only. Do the hide or do they reveal? Are the dark and impenetrable. Think of how you can manipulate the shadows to your advantage. Then only then, once you have taken all of these things into account. Set your camera and take the shot. And in about 5 to 10 years it will do it without thinking. You wil be able to see something or someone stop and in one shot capture a picture that you can be proud of. You won't have to think "I hope it came out" If that is bad advice, then I guess I've been misinformed. P.S. This is me, I got the car for Christmas and My father took me out to try it. Thos days he rarely went any where without a camera. I was peddaling along when he turned and said stop. Now lean out like I do when I am parking the car. I did and the result is this photo.

My posts are not meant to belittle anyone or their talent. It was more a walk down memory lane, and the values passions that my father instilled in me. I remember in my later years when I came across photographs of the Beatles of when they first hit the US for the ED Sullivan show. I was amazed, You photographed the Beatles? My father replied, Yes I photographed lots of people. Since I was a child I only had first hand knowledge of him doing weddings and regular studio work. I only wish now that we still had so many of his famous assignments.

The only photo I could find of his Studio.

My father understood that if you take enough shots of a subject, varying shutter, Fstop, lighting, angle and pose. After 70 frames you will end up with a exceptional photograph. As a matter of fact it has become a acceptible method of teachinf photography. One of the first thing taught in photography class is shoot lots of film. Bracket your exposures vary the angle. Now there is the famous cliche that states if you put a million monkeys at typewriters you will eventually end up with the Declareation of independence. My father was never into high volume work. He created images not producing photo's The back to back shot of him and my mother was one image not a collection of experiments. He sat her down framed the shot. Then sat down and tripped the shutter. The resulting image at least I feel shows creativity and excellent visualization skills. How many photographers would do the one pweson seated and the other standing behind the chair smile at the camera shot. Put a seamless background behind the shot and at least I feel you have a frameable print to hang on the wall. My point was that you could happen upon that very same photo burning through 5 rolls of film and never know you caught it before you saw the results. To my father this was not professional photography. To him a true professional, someone who is paid to produce an image should be more than a button pusher. He started his career in the 1930's. In a foreign war torn country where film was very scarce. He did not have the luxury of shooting roll after roll of film. You had to produce results on the first or second image. If you could'nt well you were never used again. So he had to develop his skills, of seeing what the camera would see, the light the shadow and the physical attributes of his subject. I suppose if you had to learn and practise your craft in that fashion. You had developed a disdain for those who would burn through rolls of film to get the same result. Modern photography and requirements now let photogrphers readily follow the shoot till you drop technique. Professionl photographers rarely do a shoot with less than 50 rolls of film on hand. Today film and paper and processing is cheap. Back through the 30's through the 50's it was not that inexpensive, developing and printing a 8 X 10 color print was not cheap. Due to the war in many countries silver was a war commodity. So you must sometimes wonder if many of todays accomplished pros would be accomplished if they could not shoot hundred of shots a session. Here is the hypothetical situation. You have to photograph the front of a premier LAS Vegas hotel. This image will be enlarged to poster dimensions and used for promotional advertising. Now you need to create the perfect image and not shoot more than 4 frames. How many can confidently be relied to accomplish it. How many so called notable professionals would be terrified. I suppose it is how you learned your craft, and your confidence of being able to apply it. I guess my father was a "one shot one kill type of guy. Sure you can use a machine gun and move someone down, a lot easier to. The photo of my dad was a promotional picture. He did do kids, but it is the quintesential image of a professional photographer. {Watch the birdie) It leaves no doubt as to the profession of the individual in the picture. Otherwise it could be a photo of a guy holding a camera. He shot tons of film, no he did not document the Hungarian Revolution and WW2 with one shot. I never meant that. I mean that all he would need was on or two shots of any given subject to have a commercially useable shot. He was never a "hold it another then another" Type of photographer. Not that he could'nt, just that he did'nt have to. From time to tim I'll psot some of his works here. Although much of his professional stuff has been lost, over the years after he sold the business and retired. See my mom was has partner in the busines. She handled the books and the studio bookings. When she died in a automobile accident in 1969. Alot of my fathers passion left with her. His heart left the business. My father turning a large B&W blow up into a oil painting by hand coloring. This was one of my first forays into photography, I think I was 12 at the time.

No no not silly at all. My fathers first enlarger was made from a coffee tin and a lens from a broken camera. You are rediscovering photography as it once was. To think people took great photographs with little more.

My Mom and Dad. The phot was a self portrait taken with a squeeze bulb shutter trip, by my father.