Does it freak anyone else out when you see other people referring to Poser models AS IF they're REAL people? With REAL personalities? I get frightened when I see: Oh, thank ya _____ for lettin' me see Yarlanda's WILD SIDE. No offense - but it's just freaky... I get scared when I see people treating something that's not real and intangible like it's a real person. That's just... masugana.

LOL! That's not Weird! Weird is looking at people in the subway & trying to Move Dials in your Head to match their face to a 3D mesh... :-) Marco[Weird & Proud of it!]

I think those comments are probably made tounge in cheek, I wouldn't take them too seriously.

I thought it was along the same lines as giving names and personalities to Barbie and Ken when we were kids. Not freaky. Human nature.

Kind of like the voices in my head, HUH....NO I wont do it,tell your friend the same thing...sorry what was I saying?

Ask me a question, and I'll give you an answer.

Now isn't that odd -- my microwave oven was just commenting on the very same thing.

My toaster is laughing at me.

I'm laughing at Scott's toasts! They actually beleive that it's butter... LoL. TOASTS!

Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hazard
S Mallarmé

To "Anthropomorphise" Objects "Virtual" or "Real" is no different then doing it with Animals! Dialyn said it best! It's "Human"! Marco

My dogs see nothing wrong with it. ;)

"doing it with Animals" ????????

Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hazard
S Mallarmé

I was just sitting here and I let my teddy bear read this and he about passed out laughing so hard. Gosh, people and their silly imaginations !

what would you prefer?? : " Hi ,are there any new free digital computer simulated epidermal bitmaps for the 70,000 polygonal human shaped female computer dataset from DAZ 3D??." OR : " Any new free textures for Vicky 3 yet??"

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yeah, it does. but, i get the willy's real easy. kind of makes you think, though doesn't it...when danica, or maybelline, or chlamydia is the flavor of the week, she is totally personalized....wearing all the latest in lingerie and temple wear. but, but, but...these trusted vicki friends are quickly cast aside for the next group of temple tarts...then it is ophelia, 'n miss chloe, 'n arachnadinaline who look so lovely in the temple wearing...whatever it is that anthropomorphasized 3d mesh dolls who are spoiled are wearing that week. kinda makes me wonder how the temple crew treats real people. oh, well, at least no one is really thinking about war.

Now! Now! Quixote! Don't twsit my words around! Then again! I did leave the gates wide open for that one! :-) LadyJaiven, Maybe i should get my Teddy to meet yours... Please take this as words from a "Gentleman"! ;-) Marco

and, one other thing....WE CAN'T EVEN RIP THEIR STUPID BARBIE HEADS OFF. torture of them is not permitted in the gallery. period. i hated barbie. my grandmother was a professional dollmaker, and i had some wonderful dolls and clothing. i hated barbie, but, had to have her...lots of her to keep up with the "janes". fortunately, i had a psycho little brother who was glad to rip the head, tail, and limbs off any barbie i would leave in his path. it worked well. what's up with the "no mutilation"....they are mesh figures. honest, like the chameleon...they can regenerate.

Optical - Well MY teddy is a BOY... I hope your teddy is a girl :o LOL

I don't like the way my Coffe Makers been looking at me lately either.

Poppi! If i were to depict a man eating another's Brain, would that mark me as a "Cannibal"? Poser & such progs allow us to visualise our innermost dreams or nightmares... It's actually therapeutic! I had Gi Joes, my siter had Barbies! And we would make stories. We had Fun & our imagination was also enhanced! I feel sorry for the Generatons that grow with "Nintendos"! It's totaly Passive, meaning nothing positive comes except better "Eye/Hand" coordination... Well, that's Just an Old Farts opinion anyway... Back to Talking with my Cats! Marco

Well, i never bothered to ask it! And don't dare ask now! Let's say it's an "Hermaphorite"... :-) Marco

I know we refer Barbie and Ken like their real people... because they are REAL. You CAN hold them. It just... throws me off when I see people oogling over data information like they actually have their own soul. You bring up a good point, Poppi. They're not real... why can't I dismember them and post my work of frustration?

"chlamydia"?????!!!! Please tell me you made that up and no one really named a character "Chlamydia". ::twitch:: >^_~

Optical - You should ask! :O Not good to be unknowing lol. If your teddy is a girl, then my teddy says meet him at 12 ;) LOL Empress - Vicky is a virtual Barbie. Just cause she's not as tangible doesn't mean she isn't real. We had a tea party w/Steph last nite.

If yer an artist then yer weird mhuhahahahahaah our work comes from our weirdness, Some ppl talk to plants and animals y not yer modle hehe cheers dolly

LadyJaiven, Ignorance is Bliss! Actually, it's a He! Sorry! He's actually got a bit of my GrandPa's Spirit in him! Well, for whatever it's worth, What you call "real" is someone else's "Virtual Reality"... "Real" is such a "Flimsy" thing... it's like the Wind, you can feel it But can't grab or see it... I guess it's what you call a "Leap of Faith"... And it does not matter if you believe it or not! The Universe believes in You, me, the Teddies & Yes the "Virtual Dolls" too! :-) But, i do understand Emprezzario your POV! And that's what makes this place so cool! All those different ways of looking at the universe concentrated right here! Brings a tear to my eye... Marco[Felling Old & Young at the same time...]

Well, that's Just an Old Farts opinion anyway... please, do not imply that i am a new fart. i've been around a good long time my own self. 'n, 'n, 'n....as a child i really USED my imagination. partially due to the fact that i was basically 8 when speaking english clicked. before that, everyone hated me, i think. i did not care for barbie, though. all of the barbies looked pretty much the same...not like the dolls from my grandmother. and, they had little cheesy one size fits all outfits, that were flimsy and tore easily. my grandmother used real velvet, and trims, and even fur. but, all the other girls loved their barbies, so....and did not say much about my different dolls from my grandmother. well, hey now...i wanted friends. but, barbie bored me, to tell the truth. "chlamydia"?????!!!! Please tell me you made that up and no one really named a character "Chlamydia". ::twitch:: >^_~ actually, i live in the south. it sounds pretty, right...'n what's in a name? something to remember the dad by, perhaps? I know we refer Barbie and Ken like their real people... because they are REAL. You CAN hold them. and this so reminds me of an elderly lady i know. she is basically begging everyone she knows for money. why? 'cause she's been supporting her nephew....he's 50 something, and never had a job, to speak of. well, she is in such an uproar because....he's been SELLING OFF HIS G.I. JOE COLLECTION...'n isn't that a shame, 'n all? oh, good grief....time to run this all by my therapeutic, talking poppibird, now. well, no one can say i'm crazy, right? he does answer.

No, they aren't real... no I can't believe they're real... they're just... just... precious... yessss.... precious... my precioussssss.........

What freaks me even more is that I spend real money on virtual 1's and 0's.

Poppi, Please never take my words as directly personnaly to you! I was refering to me alone! That's what i'm called around the house! And it fits the Bill! LOL I don't know you well enough to call you anything! ;-) He's selling his G.I Joe Collection? The Nerve! Is that the original ones from the 70s? Wish i still had mine! I had the complete sets from "Scuba Gear" to "Cowboy Salon", Horses, etc.. I adored them! If Poser had existed during those years, i wonder... Marco

Barbie and Ken are real people? Wow, you must have had some set. Mine were plastic. And Ken left a lot to be desired.

I think they're as real as anyone wants them to be. I write fiction. My characters are very real to me, even though they're only words on a page. How does this differ from that? There are certainly very much more serious things in this world to be scared of. Real things that can hurt real people. Here in the Northwest, a man is being hunted by the authorities, suspected of killing his wife, three children, and unborn baby. That scares me. Giving our Poser characters a life-like personality is just another form of fantasy, very innocent and harmless. Melanie

its no more weird than talking about your favourite soap opera characters AS IF THEY ARE REAL... I mean people... listen to the office gossip for a change... its not any different! People (most anyway) are aware that fictional characters aren't real, but in a certain way, they are real. They just exist in your imagination. I could point at Lee Alverson's characters for example, he writes stories around them and they sure do come out real to me.

Indeed, Melanie! That's a very good analogy! There's a book Trilogy called the "Fionavar Taperstry", that i got so involved in, that at the end i wept hard for the characters! And, Yes what "Real Men" do is far scarier then any Fantazies we might conjure up! Marco

He's selling his G.I Joe Collection? The Nerve! Is that the original ones from the 70s? Wish i still had mine! I had the complete sets from "Scuba Gear" to "Cowboy Salon", Horses, etc.. I adored them! If Poser had existed during those years, i wonder... marco...message me with what you want, and i will see what he has...k? ... I mean people... listen to the office gossip for a change... its not any different! okay, my friend and i have a little crap-kickin' business...and, we gossip ALOT...mostly 'cause we have time on our hands. only, we gossip about real folks...like the ones with bones and flesh, 'n painted smiles, overworked prostrates and over-extended lines of credit. but, those folks are REAL, real....i could kick one of them in the shins, and, they could probably sock me in the mouth, or something for doing that. i could say something really hateful to one of them...like the hateful, i am sometimes THINKING when dealing with them. that could get me the mouth that roars, or, my house being burned down. and that's cause, unlike 3d models, or soap opera folks....they exist on the same physical plane as i do. therefore, i must treat them with a few more eggshells...because they are real. they could be, some of them, a bit crazy. i'm too old to be beaten up. all of the above, and, then some. REAL WORLD IS DIFFERENT!!!! i know this. i spend far too many hours there.

The soap opera characters is a good one, too, bijouchat. Likewise, when we get really excited about characters in a movie or TV show. How many Star Wars or Lord of the Rings fans think of their favorite characters in a "real" way? It's all just harmless fun. Heck, my Barbies had soap opera plots going on in their "lives" for a long time. LOL I didn't just change their clothes and bounce them around on their little high heels. I "acted" out complete story lines for them that continued from day to day. They were "real" to me at the time. I guess it was my interest in fiction writing that got started with my dolls' "lives." It doesn't hurt anyone, so why not pretend that they're real? ;) Melanie

I'm just wondering if they aren't REAL, why do I sometimes spend more money on their clothes then I do on my own. Hmmmm, maybe I should rethink my life. :-)

My idea of rebooting is kicking somebody in the butt twice!

Yes, Bill Shatner said it best at a conventon i attended: "Get a Life People"!! Of course, it created an uproar in the audience! But, it didn't fell on deft ears... :-) James Stewart in "Harvey" comes to mind... I Loved that movie! Truly a revelation for myself! Marco

Animism. And anthropomorphism... it's as wierd, or no more wierd, depending on how you look at it, than any of the more ancient traditions of calling ships "she" and reffering to them as "her", assigning names and personalities to cars, mystical qualities and names to swords, or names and personalities to hurricanes and typhoons. ;] I agree with melanie: I write fiction also. And my fictional characters develope personalities, quirks, and take on a sense of "who they are" - you can tell when you're writing when you're being true to the character or having them do things that that "person" wouldn't do. 2D and 3D characters can take on the same shape in the mind. You may find it eerie in the gallery, but I'd almost be willing to bet that if you picked up a comic book and saw the writer and artist having Superman murder a helpless child in the storyline... it'd jar, suddenly and sharply. It wouldn't be consistent with the "personality" of Superman, even though "he's" a collection of colors and lines like Vicki is a collection of pixels. "But - Superman wouldn't DO that, dammit!" Lundquivst's Frank, Lee Alverson's Twins, and my William Nighthawk or my Aiolanni and Maziri develope the same kind of consistency in our heads when we work with them - when we do something "out of character" with them, it jars on the imagination. Cracks the suspension of disbelief, just like it would if you were watching Gunsmoke and Matt Dillon suddenly turned into a bad guy. ;]

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell

OT memory - not related to anything I first saw Harvey on the stage. After the show (which was truly wonderful), I walked out and there was a six foot white rabbit leaning against a lamp post. I nearly fainted. No one else in the exiting crowd seemed to notice but my mother laughed mightily. Later, she was able to buy the portrait of the white rabbit used in the play from the son of the actor who played the main character. And I still have it. I have dabbled in fiction too, and that is, in fact, the reason I started working with Poser. I thought (stupidly) it would help break an ongoing writer's block I have. It didn't but when I write, I hear the characters' voices and see them quite clearly, and I will speak about them as if they are real because (while I'm writing), they are. At least as real as Harvey was to me that night long ago.

The sole purpose of a hobby such as this is so that we can SUSPEND our disbelief, if only for a few moments. It's theraputic - especially in the world as it is today. That's what makes movies the enjoyable things they are. How many folks cried during "E.T."? I know I was a drooling idiot when I left the theater (I was also 16 at the time too ;o)). Of course, I knew that the main character wasn't real, but that didn't diminish my enjoyment of it one bit :o). Laurie

One important difference between play and life is that death doesn't really happen in play. But I'm not sure whether fiction falls on the "play" side. A couple years ago I tried writing some short stories.... found myself so deeply immersed that I couldn't get any sleep or work done. And when one of my characters had to die, I pretty nearly cracked up. Retreated into graphics, which is more like play even when done seriously for pay.

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I've gotten used to it. I'm in marketing and I'm always dealing whith tie in partners discussing in animate characters personalities and what the would or wouldn't do. The strangest was when I was working on McDonald's Happy Meals and I got in a long discussion about whether or not birdie was able to drive a car. Turns out shes old enough for a pilots liscense but not old enough to drive.

Well. If Joseph Campbell was still around he'd tell us that we are dealing with and creating new and old Mythologies. Scott's toast, the burnt one actually, the other is more demure, told me this a few hours ago. LoL. TOASTS.

Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hazard
S Mallarmé

Adding my two cents... It doesn't freak me out to see people comment on new variations of the characters because in most of the cases I've seen on here, the comments aren't really about the characters, they're about the artistic achievement. Comments like the one the original poster talks about always come after someone has posted a picture using Poser figures in a different way. When someone says, "I just knew Vicki had a mean streak in her!" or somesuch, what they're really doing is paying the artist a compliment on a successful (realistic) rendering that demonstrates yet another use for these fabulous models. I don't think it's anthropomorphic, it's simple appreciation for someone's hard work. To me the nice thing about such comments is that they cut both ways. For every comment like "Vicki sure looks mad!", you see an equal number of comments like "Better check your morph settings; Vicki's breasts look a little too big for that blouse". The first is a mark of success (which with this program is usually measured as realism), the second is an indication that some improvement could be made. That's not freaky; that's honest and constructive criticism. It's one of the reasons why I like this site.

One thing people forget is that human beings, themselves, on so many levels, are nothing but data. What is the soul? It is completely intangible, and impossible to define, but nearly everyone who believes in some form of soul agrees that it is a part of being human. What are our minds? Either part of the soul, and thus intangible, or the thoughts and memories of the soul, retained in the body. As what? As raw data. Bits and bytes to the massively powerful organic computer we all have, the brain. If someone dies, is the body also gone? No. The mind and soul (if you believe in souls) are gone, but the body, what is tangible, is left behind. Nothing but a husk. Looking deeper, and looking at quantum mechanics, we look at quarks. Quarks, for those not up on QM, are the sub-particles all other forms of particle are composed of, and thus the building blocks for everything. According to current thory, quarks are standing vibrations in the fabric of the universe. Things "touch" and "Collide" not because there's really anything there, but because the vibrations react to the other vibrations, like ripples in a pond. We are all made up of nothing but ripples in the fabric of space and time, and thus nothing about us is truly tangible. On another note, is not sound merely a vibration? Then that makes a grain of sand billion part harmony, and the Universe is the greatest symphony ever written. My point is, the difference between what is "real" and what is not is a lot thinner than many people believe. And one day we all will know just how 'real' we were. steps off of his soapbox. Now, when it comes to digital characters, I like to assign personalities to the characters I create. It helps define them, to give them more of a sense of presence, at least to me. I even went so far as to include a shortstory about one of my characters in the MP with the zipfile. Just slapping morphs together does not give a 'character' a sense of character. But if the character is to have a sense of reality, then there must be a personality with it. "Jaliea" and "Arvenyn" (names just made up) might both be Elven characters, very similar in terms of the basic morphs used. But the first may be softer, indicating a more peaceful, contemplative 'elf', while the other has a harder edge to both the morphs, and to any poses included, representing a more warrior 'elf'. Without personality and a form of life, even if it's within the creator's mind, a character simply is not a character. It is what others have already called them, a collection of data in close approximation of a representation of a human form. Lifeless, apparantly soulless, and not useful to me at all. The soul of the character I use does not come from the mesh, but from the potential for life I percieve in the mesh, and nurture to fruition.

Remember, kids! Napalm is Nature's Toothpaste!

I assign personalities to my characters too. They exist in my head... its not any more freaky than what any other artist or novelist does. I use poser to help give life to characters and stories that already exist in my mind for some time. If you do it with words, or paintbrushes, or pencil, or clay... or POSER!!! And its a valid use for the program. Anyone that thinks this is weird, needs to study the human condition a bit more. We always make up characters and stories, human beings are natural mythmakers. I don't think its weird, I think its natural. Its what ...gasp... real people do. And if you can't appreciate the volumes of fictional characters created through several millenia of human civilisation, I think that says something about the lack of imagination of that person, certainly not of the human race as a whole. I love to see people exercise their imagination and create characters to tell stories. The more believable the characters and stories, the better artist/writer this person is. (even in fantasy/sci-fi you create a world of rules that allows the viewer to 'believe' your story too.)

In my case, my Poser characters are portraits of imaginary people (sometimes not imaginary). Yes, of course I endow these imaginary people with personality traits. They wouldn't be human otherwise. It's no different from what an author does in writing a novel.

This is just ever so mild. Ever talk to your car? Your computer? Your Lawyer? A salesman? That's all the same because none of them are real and I see folks talking, sometimes even yelling at them at the top of their lungs! The scary part is that all these things actually talk back and sometimes they never shut up!!

I see that several of you have been using Poser for the same reason I started using it: to give me a visualization of my fiction characters. I've developed my characters so vividly through Poser that my writing has actually improved in a great way. I'm able to describe my characters' physical appearance down to the tiniest details now, when before, they were like ghosts in my imagination. My characters are very real to me. If they weren't, I couldn't write about them. Every writer gives their characters life or their stories wouldn't work at all. I have a long series of stories written around the same set of characters which spans over a 30-year time period. The only way I've been able to keep connected to them is to frequently render images of them in Poser. The more I render them, the more "real" they become to me. Friends who have read the stories have commented on how real they seem to them. Poser gets the credit for some of that. It literally brought my "people" to life for me. And I have to say that there are times when I would prefer the company of my characters to some of the people I have to work with at my office. There are a couple of completely useless, overpaid managers there whose CR2's everyone would love to see deleted from the character directory. LOL Melanie

Melanie, I really congratulate you at being able to use Poser like that. It was what I hoped to accomplish with Poser and was unsuccessful. The Poser graphics have a bad habit of going off in a direction separate from anything I'm writing (due no doubt to a lack of discipline and ability on my part in both graphics and writing). I think it is true that, for writers, visualizing characters into reality is part of the process of creating stories. To me, doing a graphic is like creating a scene in a play. Because I'm not an artist, I tend to think in terms of drama rather than art design. And drama requires emotion, and emotion requires a connection to characters that have some dimension beyond height, width, and depth, so thinking of the Poser characters temporarily as real takes no effort. Do you ever wander over to the Writer's Forum? Some of the discussion here would be of great interest to that group as well since many of them are both artists and writers.

Dialyn: "The Poser graphics have a bad habit of going off in a direction separate from anything I'm writing (due no doubt to a lack of discipline and ability on my part in both graphics and writing)." Interesting. Maybe it's not a matter of discipline, though. Maybe your Poser characters are not really the same people as the written ones, and thus their lives necessarily run on a different course. More generally, I don't see much difference between my thinking about a human, my teddy bear, or Renderosibee. In each case I apply an invented personality to the external creature and treat it as alive. The only difference is that the human can surprise me (positively or negatively) by failing to match my invention.

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If EmpressZario was freaked before, can you imagine what she's thinking about some of us now?? You are right about the invention of personalities. Each of us who are writing on the forum is nearly an anonymous figure. You really don't know who I am but you are making certain assumptions, and forming an opinion based on what I write. But you might be surprised if you actually met me. Or not. Depends on your imagination. When I look at a person, I also create a personality for them. One very nice gentleman I met was so eloquent, courtly in manner, and so stately, that I nearly fell off my bus seat when I found out he was a dedicated surfing dude. I made assumptions on the evidence I had...and I was wrong on almost every point about him. I did, as you said, invented a life for him and he surprised me. Which is not a bad thing. Life would be very dull if all our assumptions about people were 100% correct. But if you write, you find that your imaginatry creations (like my Poser characters) can also surprise you by coming up with a personality trait or thought pattern you hadn't planned out. Not all writers or artists are in complete control of their creations. Which is what makes the artistic effort very interesting indeed. Those unexpected detours are what I enjoy the most. :)

Dialyn, I've found that my stories have sometimes actually taken a different twist from what I originally had in mind for them. I've discovered things about my characters that I never thought of by rendering images of them. They've taken on characteristics, both physical and personality, from images that I've done of them, which really fleshed them out more. I also think of it as a drama rather than art design. But I also look at any art, whether it's digital here in the galleries, or paintings by the great masters, as a drama going on. I don't really care that much about the technical aspects of the art, but what's taking place with the characters that are in the image. For me, it's more of a story, rather than an artistic composition. I care more about what's going on in the minds of the characters than how they're arranged on the canvas or whether the lighting is effective. I want to know what's going to happen next for the people in the image. Melanie

Dialyn - I know I shouldn't be freaked out by it after two years, but, I dunno, it's just the same as if you saw someone talking to a person that wasn't there... :)

Melanie...that's the writer in you. That's how I look at things too. :) EmpressZario....actually, I have been known to do that too. If I am working out a piece of dialogue, I sometimes say it allowed without realizing what I am doing. The character I'm talking to is in my head. I think everyone has something that makes them uneasy. Yesterday a man got on the bus and sat behind me. He was by himself and he started verbalizing. It's not unusual to have people who talk or sing to themselves on the bus, but what freaked me about this guy is that he was imitated the noises the bus makes when it runs. If a four year old had done the same thing, it wouldn't have bothered me, but there was just something weird about a fifty year old doing it. But I thank you for this thread. I've enjoyed it very much. :)

freaked out after two years... lol... there are freaky ways of referring to people that are over 2,000 years old. I have a wonderful book of Inanna stories from ancient Sumeria, a good one from Diane Wolkstein and Sam Kramer, just so happens to be sitting in front of my computer monitor and made me think of this when reading these latest posts. These stories are thousands of years old, and I think about the goddess in the stories as someone real. (not 'real' as in a flesh and blood sense, but real as a character, real as an archetype, and she was real for quite a long time as a goddess in a religion, too.) And people talk about Jesus and God as real even though they don't exist in flesh and blood, and what's so different about that? How can you be freaked out over harmlessness here at R'osity when much more profound examples of the same thing exist in real life, shaping the very society that we live in? Sure is more important in the grand scheme of living than a website, anyway. I think people are just doing what they are built to do, and really why are you freaked out over what is normal? (I could answer my own question, but I won't... I'd rather read the response ;-))

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But do dogs imagine other dogs? Here's a link to the finest piece of Flash animation I've ever seen......

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Well, bijou, God I could understand since there's no physical proof of a being ever existing, Jesus however, I do believe DID exist - but do I believe he's the son of a god? That's a different story :) I think it's scary to realize that in a few years we'll probably be seeing Marilyn Monroe in movies again... and Bette Davis... Judy Garland... Not that far off, if not already, that they can replicate stars of the past. If they bring back Marilyn, I'm sure, however, they're gonna slim down her figure. :)

hmmm... you've never met raven, have you? he talks to me. he even posted a comment on a picture of himself... (okay, now THAT freaked me out! )

you've never met raven, have you? raven, the person, or raven, the bird? we had a raven for a number of years, when i was growing up. bird was diabolical, but, very, very clever. and, he talked, too. actually, we did not technically OWN him...he belonged to god, i guess...but, he got hurt, and my father (yeah, me too, helped fix him up.) but, when he was better, he was free to go outside, as much as he wanted....we just left a window open for him. he would leave, each year...i guess to migrate. but, he would return every spring...nasty bird with a whole lot of attitude. he stole stuff, too. shiny stuff. he even got my 2 little turtles, that i had outside sunning. wicked bird. one spring, he did not return. that was a sad time. his name was Sam.