After ten years of playing with Poser and enjoying most of that time, learning new features, buying (too much) content and just having fun, I decided I wanted to learn how to draw 'properly'.  So, I've been reading books and watching tutorials to learn to draw and paint in the traditional ways, trying to learn about color and spaces, etc.  Been spending about half an hour a day just drawing circles with the Wacom.  It's oddly relaxing.  Kinda like hitting a bucket of golf balls.  Even a hack will occassionally connect with the ball just right and knock it 250 yards in the air.  Even a hack art hobbyist will occassionally draw a near perfect circle.  It's fun.  And one sees very fast improvement when one starts without much skill.  I'm sure the skill improvements will start to slow down a lot soon though.

Anyway, back to Poser.  The last few weeks I've found myself using Poser, sometimes with just a mannequin, to create a pose as a reference to sketch from.  And then it dawned on me:  that's what Larry Weinberg intended Poser for back at version one, and version one would probably serve that purpose just as well as our fancy newer versions of Poser do today.  haha.

Indeed :)

The joy of unintended consequences. I wonder if he had any inkning what an empowering tool it would become for those of us who could never manage to do the dog the inside of the matchbook cover?

I started with version two. I liked how you could use a hot key combination to change the Poser interface to a very simplified classic windows one.  Amazing how things have changed since then.

I only became interested in Poser because of the animation features, but I can understand where you're coming from.

I'm a musician, the first software sequencers recorded only midi data, after a while some had a limited capability to actually record audio, now they are all essentially multitrack audio editors, some of which still have (often limited) midi features.

Fascinating how software can evolve in order to survive...

I really enjoyed Poser back when we had to post-work in the clothes and hair. I promised myself I would not be seduced by the new figures and content back before Poser 6 came out but I buckled. Untill then I hadn't even purchased any after-market content or figures. My favorite thing was post-working all those old Poser renders or tracing them on paper and to watercolor over. I really miss that old-style Poser 2 GUI too. Even only a couple years ago though I was still using re-mapped versions of the ancient Poser figures. I never have owned anything but a total crap computer but even the crap computer I have sadly won't run Poser 4 anymore. My only complaint with Poser 4 was no sub-folders. Often I didn't even render but just post-worked or traced over an export of the anti-aliased pose preview. I think I was much more productive then when I had to post-work over primitives as props in addition to painting the hair and clothes. Now I spend so much time organizing and managing content and trying to get perfect lighting and shaders.

I have the opposite experience. I have created traditional art for years, drawing, oil painting, watercolors, colored pencil. I still love to whip out the brushes and canvas, but I have also been enjoying my foray into Poser. I think it is wonderful that you are expanding your artistic endeavors into more traditional media.

Attached Link: http://www.drawright.com/

That's a wonderful book!  I've already read it.

My road is/was similar to AetherDream's.  I worked in CG for a number of years, though, then, during a spot of R&D into 3D modelling, I discovered Poser.  

Still can't beat the old brushes and pencils, though.  :)

Good luck with your new interest, Tunesy.  I guarantee you'll get a lot of enjoyment from it.  As an idea, leave the Wacom and PC alone for a while, get yourself some good drawing pencils and paper, get out into the big wide world and draw stuff around you.

Learning to draw what you see - rather than what you think you see - can be the hardest lesson you'll ever learn but once you grasp the concept, you'll never look back.

Oh, and real men (or women, for that matter) use Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils.  Anything else is just firewood. ;)  

I just use Poser for populating my Vue scenes.

. . . in fact, I'd strongly recommend that book (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain) to anyone else who wants to learn how to draw, or draw better.  I don't want to be long winded but there is a genuinely startling exercise where you draw upside down and end up doing a better job!  It's fascinating stuff.  At the moment it's my favorite drawing book.  Funny you mentioned it, Owl :)

Since we're plugging books now might as well plug a little software :)  For all around quick and easy drawing/painting take a close look at SketchBook Pro 6.  Only $30 or so at Amazon and just a really well designed and easy to use product.  Lot's of good Youtube tuts from some really good artists.  One of those softwares that's just too good to pass up for so little money.

And then there's the Rolls Royce of paint software:  Corel Painter.  It's great fun and amazing.  After much confusion about price (I couldn't justify the $350 at Amazon as a mere hobbyist) I called Corel on the phone, we bickered a bit, and I said, "I'm sorry but I'm just a hobbyist.  I can't spend that kind of money to finger paint."  the guy at Corel said, "Well.  the lowest I can go is $149."  So, I said, "Cool.  that's fine.  I'll buy it."  I was quite surprised to find that they would negotiate price with a mere, but persistent, hobbyist.

And finally, the one bitmap/vector software I would buy if I could buy no other . . . drum roll:  Manga Studio 5!.  Too much to type.  Just buy it.  It's wonderful and there's nothing else like it.  You don't have to do cartoons.  It's a great bitmap/vector painting app and a steal at $80 or so.  For me Manga Studio 5 is that "once in a decade software discovery".

Sorry, Sam.  x post.  I hear ya.  And yes, I'm doing digital and traditional pencil for now.  I'll spread my wings (probably to all digital . . . haha) later.

I think ArtRage by Ambient Design is far far superior to Corel Painter. It is only $49 I believe. Limited versions for iPad and iPhone are $5 and $2 each IRC. It will blow your mind. Try the free demo.

Artrage is fun, but it doesn't remotely compare to Painter.  Are you thinking of the light version of Painter maybe, momodot?  Well.  I'll take another look at Artrage.  Been a while.   Maybe I'm missing something.

Corel Painter x is the last version I used... I actually taught "Painter and Photoshop for Artists" at University but I never used Painter for my own work since it was called Monet IRC in 1995. I found I could replicate all the Painter effects in Photoshop but with more control. I liked the watercolors in Painter at first but reverted to Photoshop after a while. ArtRage seems much more tuned to the working method of traditional media artists in my opinion. But obviously it is just an opinion... different strokes for different folks, right? I prefer Corel PaintShop Pro X for "Natural Media" to Corel Painter. I believe the natural media module of PSP was written by Ambient Design... sure looks like it. The price of PSP is nice too - I think I paid about $99 for it. I don't love the interface but the program has all the functionality nearly of Photoshop and Painter combined. Really though it is all a matter of taste but IMO Corel is a great cheap alternative to Photoshop and ArtRage is a cheap alternative to Corel Painter at a fraction the price. Don't take it that I am knocking your choice - I just feel ArtRage is a huge bargain but not neccessarly well known so...

Thanks for the heads up, momodot.  It sounds like Artrage has made some nice strides.  It's inexpensive enough to add to my hobbyist toolbox.  I'll buy it.  I like to support the smaller software publishers when possible.  But here's what the reviewer at arstechnica had to say about it vs Corel Paint:

"First, let's get it out of the way: ArtRage can't compare to Corel Painter. The latter is just in a different league. It has far more robust controls, much better tablet support, and brush tips and paint types that ArtRage will likely never match. If you're looking for a professional paint tool, Painter 12 is the only option."

"....that's what Larry Weinberg intended Poser for back at version one,.."

Yes indeed. It seems to have morphed into quite a different beast since those days.

"Poser Figure Artist is a virtual studio providing highly realistic human models to help artists create human figure art for canvas, sculpture...." "...for artists who want to use the human form in their artwork or studies, and would prefer an option to wooden mannequins and costly, live models."

Haha.  That's funny.  I had no idea they were still pushing that.

Quote - I just use Poser for populating my Vue scenes.

Exactly how/why I got into Poser in the first place, all those years ago ;)

Laurie

I bought Poser 3 because I thought it would help me draw figures. Now I'm making Poser figures...

Quote - . . . in fact, I'd strongly recommend that book (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain) to anyone else who wants to learn how to draw, or draw better.  I don't want to be long winded but there is a genuinely startling exercise where you draw upside down and end up doing a better job!  It's fascinating stuff.  

It's an excellent book, and the upside down drawing exercise is amazing - drawing what your eye sees versus drawing what your brain assumes your eye probably saw. It really shows the way we tend to look at the world in our everyday lives - we don't really look, we just glance around and then fill in all the details using a library of stuff we already have in our heads. Cameras haven't helped, now we don't have to really look, even if it's something really significant, we just snap a photo and look at it later.

Regarding the Artrage vrs. Painter issue, Painter 12 includes a much wider range of effects and the real media brushes are unlike anything in Photoshop and better for simulating real world art techinques. Unfortunately, there is an issue with merging layers that can only be solved by saving Painter files in the psd. format and merging in PhotoShop or a compatible program.

I'm looking at getting rid of most of my books !! but got a feeling I maybe get that one ;-), I'd love to draw without using scale rules an guesstimates of size :-( (too many yrs in engineering)

anyhow theres one drawing proggy that no one here has mentioned and its called project dogwaffle and it has a free bit so you can try before you buy its a bit too arty for me (I like bezier curves lol) but has some awesome stuff in it you might like

Well, to each its own, indeed. While I can draw reasonably well IRL, I never managed to get the foreshortening perfectly right without either tracing photographs or constructing helper lines. And the books I used to teach myself made it perfectly clear that a "real artist" must be able to create perfect foreshortening free-handed without any external aid. Everything else was just "cheating". So for years I produced drawings that were just not up to the standards I had set for myself. I needed to draw, but I hated that I couldn't do it as effortlessly as the folks in those books could do it. But then I discovered Poser 4 in 2000 and suddenly the bloody foreshortening was perfectly right no matter what I did. I could finally concentrate on my figures without constantly doubting myself or wasting time constructing stuff with a ruler. CGI also blended my "art" perfectly with my scale modelling skills. (I made some exhibition stuff for Revell and built prototypes from scratch for a few smaller companies. Building a physical model from scratch is a lost art now. Everything is done via CAD drawings nowadays. But the skills needed are the same, so I don't care whether I build stuff from polystyrol or polygons.) Anyway, I'm perfectly happy with Poser being able to do what it can do now. Can't even stand looking at the stuff I created in older versions of Poser because it's so wrong and full of errors it makes me sick. I'm usually very happy that I was born in '65 so I could grow up in the 70's where so many things were better and still real and not ruined by corporate greed. But I definitely wasted 20yrs of my live having to work with pencil and paper because back then computers just weren't good enough to do what they can do now. As I said, different strokes....

Quote - But I definitely wasted 20yrs of my live having to work with pencil and paper because back then computers just weren't good enough to do what they can do now. As I said, different strokes....

I disagree, for years I produced architectural perspectives by hand, projecting lines from a plan using vanishing points, a long ruler and a pencil. Modern software makes that stuff infinitely easier and quicker, but those old lessons are not forgotten, I view them as a kind of apprenticeship.

I'm amazed how often I see a really impressive architectural render from big-money software spoiled by dumb composition or completely ruined by a background photo which places the horizon line in completely the wrong place.

The simpler the tools (like a pencil or a stick of charcoal), the more we rely on our eye and our judgement to make good art. It's easy to get swept up in the complexity of tools like photoshop or Poser or a full modelling/rendering package and to believe that if you figure out what all the buttons do, good art will somehow magically follow. It won't.

There's still no substitute for a critical eye and good artistic judgement, and I believe that you're more likely to find these things in artists who have at some point mastered a simple medium like pencil. 

I learned perspective drawing in school, but constructing a house with a ruler doesn't even come close in complexity to trying to depict the human shape with 100% accurate foreshortening. This "it's the artist, not the tools" stuff is a lot of balooney. Realism has a lot more to do with craft than artistery and every craftsman will tell you that you should get the best tools you can afford, as this will make your job a whole lot easier. Creating a realistic portrayal of the real world is first and foremost a technical problem, not an artistic. So the more technical help I can get the more I can free my mind for the artistic side. Pencil drawings can be highly realistic, no doubt. But you need a huge, huge technical skillset to pull them off as otherwise you'd very easily end up with that looks like child scriblings. If the average Poser user can't even find the shadow button, what unspeakeable things do you think he'll be going to do with just a pencil without several years of art school education beforehand ? Of course basic rules of composition still apply to every artwork, so learning them (so you can consciously ignore them later) isn't a bad idea. But there's no need anymore to start from the very bottom and slowly work yourself upwards, like there's no need for mental math anymore or memorizing things from an encyclopedia. Doesn't mean there are less skillsets necessary these days. It's just that the old ones are getting obsolete. Learning to tune a carburettor won't help you if all your customers drive computer controlled injection fueled cars. Oldschool is all nice and well, and if you actually have the talent, by all means go for it. But the only thing helping you become a better POSER artist are better Poser tools and better Poser skills. My "art" was crap until I discovered Poser. Might still be crap, but at least it's accurate crap now. ;-)

"First, let's get it out of the way: ArtRage can't compare to Corel Painter. The latter is just in a different league. It has far more robust controls, much better tablet support, and brush tips and paint types that ArtRage will likely never match.."

It might be true, but in the hands of a real artist I find that I almost always prefer the ArtRage version. It has a roughness that is incomparable attractive IMO. Of course taste is always individual.

Quote - "....that's what Larry Weinberg intended Poser for back at version one,.."

Yes indeed. It seems to have morphed into quite a different beast since those days.

"Poser Figure Artist is a virtual studio providing highly realistic human models to help artists create human figure art for canvas, sculpture...." "...for artists who want to use the human form in their artwork or studies, and would prefer an option to wooden mannequins and costly, live models."

Actually, I first bought Poser 2 for creating characters for a screenplay I was writing at the time. Then I created a comic of the screenplay I wrote. I thought it would be easier to write if I could visualize my characters better.