Hello everyone. After a few months of "lurking" (and learning a lot) I gathered the courage to do some posting.  I am  a watercolor artist, and I am using Poser as a  virtual models.  I am using  Poser  6  rather than poser-art or  poser artist because I LOVE dynamic clothing and you cant do that with those limited versions. Also love dynamic hair , but it is a bit difficult for my laptop (G4 MAC). So, I was wondering if there are any other artist using Poser for painting (sculpting?) anything like that. Could be nice to compare notes. To get the ball rolling I am posting a picture of my "virtual model"  and of my water color study. I hope this works

And the watercolor "Dina engulfed

Hi there :)

I use poser for both. I also render the ladies and gents running or walking as silluettes for clip art.

sorry for the mispelled word I don't rember how to spell silluettes properly O.@

I use it for gouache work - until recently I worked from previews rather than renders.

Looking at the beautiful watercolor, I wonder if the Cloth room, i.e. realistic
draping of cloth, has dramatically increased Poser's usefulness for this
purpose?   Draping is mighty hard to get right in freehand drawing.

Hello! I've been away from this for a while but I used to try my ideas in poser before I started working on the canvas. Here are some.

And some more....

Well, I've used Poser to create visualizations for designs I make.  I tool leather for a living, and this is an example of Making a Poser mockup for a dolphin design, and then tooling it into leather in a couple of variations.

I've also used it for dragon and pixie designs, and even making business cards layouts.

I frequently use Poser rendered nude figures to develop costume/fashion illustrations on.......... I print out the poser figure , pencil sketch the clothing and either paint the colour in with brush and inks or scan it back in for colouring in Photoshop. For commercial work it is more often the latter as of course I can make client requested changes in a matter of minutes in Photoshop as opposed to hours by hand. Lol, if I am ever fortunate enough to retire I would definately use it to compose models for hand drawing and paintings much more often , though I would seriously miss the "un-do"s digital offers ; )

wow so many different talents!

Thanks for the wonderfull answers! I hope there is more to come. Although I am  "the new kid on the block" I already find it an amazing tool. I was a bit disappointed that some "extreme"poses look a bit distorted because the body is stiff and also does not react to gravity (eg breasts), so sometimes I use cloths to cover up the deficiencies.
I would have thought the cloth room would be a big bonus, being artists always liked draping, but e-frontier in their wisdom dont include it in their artist versions. Maybe I am at an advantage because I used computer simulations in my job (dynamics of molecules rather than cloth), but it isnt realy that hard, and well worth it.
The other big advantage of the virtual models, you can do to them/pose them in ways you couldnt do to real models..
Hopefully, will post another example - fading out now due to the flue.
Cheer me up with some more creative applications!

One of the things I've done is print out line drawings of poser characters for kids who want to do colouring book stuff, sort of a crayon - by - number.  Also use use characters glued onto foamcore, and then cut to shape for maquettes in stage design and other building mock ups.

I'm an oil painter, and I've used variations of V3 characters and textures to put ideas I have into a visual on my computer screen that I can experiment with before I actually start my painting.  It has expanded the scope of what I end up painting.  Poser is a great tool for me. 

Wow! Some amazing and wonderful art in this thread. Exciting to see what use people are making of this program. Heck, Poser started first as basically a virtual mannequin. Nice to see some people still get use out of it that way. I'd known several tradigital artists doing book covers and box art were using Poser and other 3d renders as some of the layers in their completed digital painting, but using it to work up ideas for, say, leatherwork is wonderfully different. By the by, is that two (other) people I see in the thread already who design for theater? I stopped doing costumes back in college, myself, and Poser is really not much good towards visualizing stage lighting designs! (But I have hopes of getting Carrara to do that someday). On the downside, I have tried to problem-solve a pose in Poser before doing a comic-style drawing. I've found it more frustrating than useful. The figures are too stiff and take too long to pose. I still keep it in the bag of tricks, tho....esp when I'm trying to block out a scene with several figures, unusual camera angles, etc.

Hello,
I originally baught Poser as a digital manniquin.  It's evolved sooooo far since then.  I do use it as reference for painting, but digital and traditional.  

This is just a drawing from Posette wearing the conforming curls that came with P4 and showing that even older versions of Poser can create convincing images.

  This is a prismacolor drawing from a Poser image as well.  Vicki 2.  

And ...

  This is another character study using Vicki 2 and the Delgato character from DAZ, I used Prismacolor and conte crayons for this one.  

This IS why I baught Poser. :)
Boni

Wow, there are a lot more people using Poser for a reference in fine arts, a lot more than I would've thought. Though it was originally intended for that purpose, I believed it was the exception rather than the rule by now.

I'm a film graduate, and I've been using Poser for animation and to test out lighting and motion set-ups since early in my classes. Only lately have I started playing with the rendering features, and even though I've been disappointed in the results of attempted art in other media, I've gotten addicted to creating digital art now.

I've used Poser to ...

Print out and trace images to form a base for comic strips, then added colour pencils and scanned that back in. Added a thick line on the outside of the figure, then pasted that over a photographic or blurred rendered background gives a really cool effect.   

Printing is also good for creating graffiti style stencils. 

Print a 2 colour image then keep enlarging parts off it on a photocopier. then trace the copies onto large A2 sheets of tracing paper. Stick that to the side of a van as a base for custom car artwork, then hand paint with automotive paints.    

Spike the toon bulldog is particulary popular amongst stock car racing fans as a choice for bonnet artwork. 

Another fun thing is to is 'steal' a digital projector from the office and use it to project toon images on the walls then paint a mural for friends kids. Or print onto acceatea and use one of the old style projectors. Oh, amd remember to return the projector on Monday morning, and deny all knowledge of why it's covered in paint  :) 

It's really cheap if you use normal household emulasion (basically acrylic) paints. Buy a large can of cheap white paint it's easy to colour it with a tube of artists acrylic or some types of powder paint. 

Video and photography - Poser is great for digtal mattes, titles, chromakey overlays and Instructional sequences.

Thanks folks, I enjoyed finding out about all these applications. I expect there are more - quite a lot of inventive and talented people around. Here is another of mine- this time started from one of my  abstract watercolors.I usedit as the image for IBL on Jessi's head (after face room modifications). I positioned two mirrored walls and a "floor" mirror to generate the poser image. This was in turn used as basis for the watercolor "Lost in Reflection",to complete the mutual feedback cycle. (good example of things you can do to virtual model and not to real ones- even if I had the right mirrors,dont think a realJessi would like her head sliced off to be placed on a mirror...)

Poser was develped as a artist aide. It's origunal intent was to give an artist a model that he/she could pose for drawing and painting.