Outside of Victoria, Michael, and, to a lesser extent, Stephanie, there havent been a lot of very successful Poser characters. Poser users, into fairies, have helped maintain a strong support for the Millennium Girls. Koshini captured a nice share of the marketplace by being the first well-accepted toon character. Alexa, Laroo, and AnimeDoll have a lesser following as toons, but seem to be doing okay. The Girl will get a lot of initial purchases, but only time will tell whether the market will fully embrace another toon character. MayaDoll is about the only human character that seems to have some level of support even though its small. On the non-human side, nothing seems to have been a massive hit. Different products will capture the interest of the community for a while, but eventually support dwindles. Right now, it would be hard for somebody to challenge DAZs lock on human characters. Even Poser 5s wide availability of Poser 5 characters (everybody who has Poser 5 already owns these characters) couldnt dent that lock. That was somewhat of a surprise. Poser 5 had a ton of free content, on its second CD, for these characters in a variety of settings. That, alone, should have started a groundswell of initial support for the new Poser 5 figures. People, who bought Poser 5, brought Victoria and Michael and all their clothes into the new program and essentially ignored the new content that came with the program. That experience doesnt bode well for anybody trying to bring in a new human character. If Poser 5 couldnt do it, with its large user base and extensive starting content, its hard to imagine that anybody else can do it. Its not impossible, but somebody would have to create a figure thats so incredibly realistic that it captures everybodys imagination and wallet. That leaves the market with nonhuman characters. The problem with animals and creatures is that they have limited use for most people. The bulk of Poser images are pinups. A desire to have poseable human figures is what drove most people to get the program. After that, it seems to be fantasy, then science fiction, and, lastly, more ordinary everyday life images. Pinup images dont need a lot of animals. Fantasy images can use dragons, creatures, and horses, but dont have a lot of need for dogs or cats. Science fiction uses different creatures, but not usually the kind in fantasies (though Sixus1 did have the novel idea of turning one of their monsters into a space villain). Everyday images can use horses, dogs, and cats, but not much else from the fantasy or scifi side. Human characters can be in any of those genres, but everything else is somewhat limited by what users want to do with the characters. As pessimistic as it may sound, it seems very unlikely that there will be a new breakaway character any time soon. DAZs new Girl might be one, but I suspect it will be the flavor of the month and then drop back to the kind of level of interest that Koshini shares. With all the toon characters currently available, The Girl no longer carries the novelty it once did. There might be room for some new styles of toons. On the human side, its hard to imagine that anybody can design a figure that will blow DAZs current lines off the map. For any figure to find an audience, it would have to be compatible with the clothing currently available for DAZs Millennium figures because it would be hard to match the volume of products available for them independently. Even all the content Curious Labs provided for the P5 figures didnt generate much interest for Poser users. Any real challenge will probably come from a software/figure solution, if any of the big 3D programs, such as Maya or Max, decide to reach for consumer oriented versions of their flagship software. The current weaknesses of Poser models are inherent in the approach created for the Poser software. A different solution is needed to solve most of the current problems. The trick would then to have a new figure creation method that doesnt invalidate whats already available for Poser. A better 3D engine and program would be nice to have, but not many Poser users will want to abandon their figure investment for an incompatible approach.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon