Good luck this year! 

By the way, if you want to read up on haiku, there's a page called 'About Haiku' on the site which will cover the basics of writing a haiku.  There's also a 'Teaching Haiku' page that's more about how to read and appreciate a haiku that you might find interesting.

First of all, let me say that a line of low poly toon figures for Poser is a great idea. I think the models are wonderful to look at. You've captured the look of a lot of recent cartoon heroes.

I do find the big hulk's proportions a little strange. I think it's the combination of long legs, no neck, and short torso that is throwing me off. Many big guys have a big torso and short, stubby legs -- being top-heavy gives them character. I wonder if a longer neck might help, or if elongating the torso slightly while shortening the legs might also improve the look.

I'd love to see some more renders when you think they're ready.

thundering1, there's also a new book by David D'Champ that goes over how to rig characters and set up joint parameters in Poser.  It will also point you towards some Poser-specific utilities that can help you.  It's geared towards beginners, but you'll also find a bunch of information that may shave a few weeks off the 4-6 month timeline that Garee mentioned. 

It's being offered as a download from the author's web site (www.dad-tv.com) at half price right now.

You might want to look into programs like Wardrobe Wizard 2 or Crossdresser, which allow you to convert clothes from one figure to another.  WW2 is more expensive initially, but it works great, as I can personally attest.  If you want to convert clothes to only one figure like Sydney G2, then buying a single license from Crossdresser might be what you want.  A license will let you convert any clothing to a single figure (like Sydney G2).  From what I've heard, the program works very well, though I can't verify this from my personal experience.

Very nice!  I'm especially impressed by the cross-hatching in the picture on the left.  You can add me to the list of people who would love to see a tutorial on how you did this.

@Martinw:  The characters are, I'm pretty sure, meant to be Japanese - Japanese uses a lot of Chinese characters (called kanji) to spell its words along with its own native alphabet.  Aiko is inspired by Japanese animation, so that's why they use a name from Japan (see my post above).  Still, it's interesting to see the Chinese pronunciation!  And "ko" is a common ending to female names in Japanese.  My mother and aunts all have names ending in -ko:  Hiroko, Nagako, Itoko, Sumiko, and none of them are children any more . . .

Edited because I misread the Chinese pronunciation Martinw offered. 

In case you're wondering, I'm pretty sure that the Japanese writing at the bottom of the newsletter says "Aiko" (the kanji are for 'love' and 'child' -- Ai - ko -- that is, if my Japanese hasn't deteriorated to the point where I can't even read that).

Here are some links and tips that I hope will be helpful.  Most people produce toon pictures using shaders (Estherau mentioned Olivier's Art Materials, but there are others available here and at CP) or by using the "cartoon with outline" mode and rendering in Preview mode.  I'm mostly interested in creating line art, and I found the following to be extremely helpful:

http://www.renderosity.com/news.php?viewStory=13559

And here's a tutorial on creating anime-style renders:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?print=66

And here's a more recent one on using Photoshop and other 2D programs to do the postwork:

http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/tutorials/htm/17.html

Another possibility is to set up your materials in Poser using the Toon Materials wacro, turn all the light/dark materials in the toon node to white or black, and then fiddle with the toon ID settings so that Poser will draw the outlines where you want them.  My avatar image was done with this technique, but it takes a long time to set up the figures and create new material zones with the grouping editor.  I'm not sure it was worth the effort.

One final tip:  vectorizing your image using a program like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw will make the lines look smoother and more attractive.

Click on the animation tab at the top of the screen and then on 'make movie.'  You will see an option called 'Renderer.'   Make sure that this says Firefly or Poser 4.  If you use Preview or Sketch, the movie will not use the materials you applied for your movie.  If you use Firefly or Poser 4, it will.

Make sure that you are in toon with outline mode like in Dr. Geep's tutorial.  Then in the 'Make Movie' tab, choose Preview for the renderer.  This should let you render a movie using the same technique that Dr. Geep suggested. 

I haven't tried this myself, but it should work.  Good luck!

This may sound strange, but I'm often inspired by bad art, at least in my writing.  If I want to write in a certain genre, I'll read something along those lines that I consider to be horrid, which usually sends me back to the keyboard thinking, 'I can do better than that!'  Picking out the flaws also helps germinate ideas.  'No, that should be done this way, or a better approach would be . . . '  Similarly, when I'm in a funk reading great literature simply depresses me as I often think (quite wrongly) that there's nothing more to be said.

I haven't tried this with visual art projects, but it might help.  Look at something along the general lines of what you like to do but which you consider clumsy, unfinished, etc.  Who knows?  You might be inspired to produce a better version of what you've seen.

Could it be related to the 'Illustration' style for their figure Nearme, which filters simple textures through various nodes to resemble a hand-coloured picture?  It was one of the big selling points of the figure.  Think of the colouring in a children's picture-book for some idea of the style or, even better, look at a few of the promotional pictures for Nearme products if you'd like a firsthand look.

All I can say is, good luck, Jon!  I too wish that I could make a living writing haiku or sonnets, but that's not to be.  

I remember an old New Yorker story (by Martin Amis, I think) where poetry writers were treated like Hollywood script writers.  The joke was that the writer was going to debut a new sonnet, but the ad people and producers couldn't figure out how to market it.  Still, it would be nice . . .  

I can't pretend to approach Dr. Geep's expertise, but I thought I'd mention a few other ways to produce toon images with Poser that you may want to try.

1.  Go into the material room and change your materials into toon materials.  In Poser 6 you do this by hitting the "toon material" wacro button on the right (hold down shift while clicking to convert all the material zones at once).  This will set the material zones to a toon style.  You can then render your image with the "toon line" option checked in your render options.

A few warnings with this method:  (a) unless you want black lines between every material zone, you'll have to change the toon id number by going into the advanced properties.  If you don't want a black line between two material zones, set the toon id to the same number.  If you do want the line (between a shirt and forearm, for example), make sure the numbers are different; (b) render larger than the preview window as even the "thin" toon line is too thick at this size; (c) reduce your lighting to 1 or 2 white or grey lights; (d) realize that Poser will ignore transparencies in this mode, so if you want transparency maps for your hair or clothing you'll have to try something else; (e) if you're comfortable with the material room, experiment with adjusting the light & dark color, line spread, and specular color values.

2.  Find some toon shaders and apply them in the material room.  There are several free sets available if you root around, and there are also various commercial packages available here and elsewhere.

3.  Render normally, export the result, and then use another program like Photoshop to convert your render to a toon look. 

I use Poser 6, but I'd imagine that all the methods above are available in Poser 5 as well since the material room is similar.  Good luck!

Would either of these links help?

Katar Claws v2.0
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=57289

Bladepod v2.0
http://www.rgdev.net/download.html

They are for Victoria 3.0, but there is always the V4 with V3 body version, if that's an option.  The bladepod may be a prop, so you might have success in parenting it to V4.