Comic Genesis Forums

ShineDog wrote: Im strongly biased against it as a medium, because i think it vastly restricts the creativity of the author.

I don't want to comment on anything else but this. As someone who uses Poser extensively I have to say, for me, Poser is exactly the opposite. The limitations force me to be more creative. I could show you some incredible poser art that might make you less dismissive of it but they do a lot of post stuff too.

I wish I could draw. I really do. I can't (my stick figures make babies cry) so I do what I CAN do. I don't expect everyone to like it.

I used to do some CG stuff, and i can definitely see the draw of Poser. That being said, i've never seen a Poser scene that really looked amazingly great. Poser seems to be best suited to doing what it's named for - posing. Any time i've seen a really impressive work, it's usually been exported to something else for enviroment, lighting, rendering, etc. It seems there can be more time put into the post processing than the actual posing.

That being said, Poser often gets hit up by the "quick and easy" crowd, because to get a quick and dirty image, there's not a lot of skill required. It's the same reason sprite comics abound. It seems to go something like, "i can't draw, can't model, can't texture, can't light, can't rig armatures, and don't really care to learn any of the former skills, but it doesn't matter because Poser does it all."

It reminds me of photography. Most pros work with really high end equipment, but a good deal of modern art photography is done with some cheapo plastic thing held together with a rubber band someone found in a dumpster. It isn't really special unless it's in the hands of a really good artist.

c.w. wrote:
That being said, Poser often gets hit up by the "quick and easy" crowd, because to get a quick and dirty image, there's not a lot of skill required. It's the same reason sprite comics abound. It seems to go something like, "i can't draw, can't model, can't texture, can't light, can't rig armatures, and don't really care to learn any of the former skills, but it doesn't matter because Poser does it all."

therin lies the crux of many an arguement, the thing is, a greater majority of poser comic creators see Poser as the end-all, and don't bother to learn to use more professional kit when it comes to rendering, such as truespace, and 3d studio max.

or go the method a lot of us go, and start drawing.

That said, me, i'd love to learn how to use a proper 3d modelling program, like the aforementioned 3dsmax, if only to create some of the more complex set pieces that need to be repeated consistantly at different angles, given i ink digitally, it can be a very useful reference for me to properly hand-draw the whole damn thing.

Actually I just figured out what bothers me most about poser comments.

1) the figures always look posed for a camera shot. not at all natural.

2) the eyes, they're vaaaacaaannnt. nobody's home in there. you'd have to take it into photoshop to add lighting to make it clear where they're looking, and even crimson darkness doesn't do that (and I can't figure out WHY )

The limitations can force you to be as creative as you want, but the fact remains. The comic looks like every poser comic out there. Poser limits your creative output, Its put a limit on what you are able to create. It has limited your creativity.

pierce studios wrote:
2) the eyes, they're vaaaacaaannnt. nobody's home in there. you'd have to take it into photoshop to add lighting to make it clear where they're looking, and even crimson darkness doesn't do that (and I can't figure out WHY )

It's not just Poser. As pretty as "Polar Express" was, the kids creeped me out. A lot of even uber professional CGI has that dead eye look. Some of us TRY but it's not always successful.

DarknessFalls wrote:

pierce studios wrote:
2) the eyes, they're vaaaacaaannnt. nobody's home in there. you'd have to take it into photoshop to add lighting to make it clear where they're looking, and even crimson darkness doesn't do that (and I can't figure out WHY )

It's not just Poser. As pretty as "Polar Express" was, the kids creeped me out. A lot of even uber professional CGI has that dead eye look. Some of us TRY but it's not always successful.

the trick is that expression is everything, particularly around the eyes, look at how nick park brought emotion and life around the eyes, etc with wallice and gromit.

it's not the tools, it's the failure of the creators to recreate emotion properly.

with anything that one creates, the real trick is to make your characters seem like they are able to come to life and jump off the page. Look at a lot of Masked comic book characters that you don't see the irises, pupils, or whatever.

Thinking about it, expression is the key advantage of webcomics. Backgrounds are... Well, they're background and often left out altogether. What other advantages does such a visual medium give us? Nice pictures of hands? No, the expressions are the primary advantage here and if Poser doesn't do them very well, I think that's a problem.

- Joel Fagin

I'm of belief that no tools are completely inadequate for creating art in hands of someone capable. I mean, if people managed to make perfectly good comics in MS Paint, I don't see why they wouldn't in Poser.
I've seen beautiful photos made with cameras that are equivalent to earlier described plastic rubber-band hold found-in-dumpster things. Simply, quality of camera doesn't restrict composition of the shot, and composition is really essential for good photo. Also, skillful people learn to handle shortcomings of their tools, so if a camera hasn't got much along the lightning control, skillful photographer still knows how to set the scene so that just the right amount of light falls into it.
Anyways, even good tools that make making comics easy can fool the unskillful eye, but anyone who's read a few comics of that kind can see when someone's using tools to their minimum capacity.
I'm guessing that it takes one well-done popular comic of the kind to push other creators to use that tool more seriously...

But generally, I think that the mistake artists who work in such, more alternative tools make is assuming that their work is essentially different from work of average, hand-drawn comic. When you strip it to the core, what makes good hand-drawn comic, or photo-comic, or poser comic, is the same thing. Like they said before: if you think that, because poser doesn't handle facial expressions well, they're not essential for poser comics, then you're wrong. Artist who draws spends probably more than 50% of his time drawing faces and mastering how to draw them. Author of poser comic should spend just about the same time and effort on getting faces of his characters to look lively and convincing. If poser author thinks that backgrounds aren't important for poser comics, he's wrong. They're important for any kind of comics, because what backgrounds bring to comics is unrelated to tools.
Similarly, DarknessFalls, you say that you can't draw, but you can still draw stickfigures. Artists who hand-draw use stick figures quite a lot, we all most likely sketch the scene in stick-figures before we get to draw it. This is because stick-figures strip the composition of the scene to bare minimums and let us work on making the scene expressive without bothering with details (they come later). Here's an idea: many people said that figures in poser comics look stiff and as if posing for camera. Why not try to first draw the scene with stick-figures, and when you get the composition you like, only then try to model it in poser using the stick-figure drawing as a sort of template.

mcDuffies wrote:I'm of belief that no tools are completely inadequate for creating art in hands of someone capable. I mean, if people managed to make perfectly good comics in MS Paint, I don't see why they wouldn't in Poser.
I've seen beautiful photos made with cameras that are equivalent to earlier described plastic rubber-band hold found-in-dumpster things. Simply, quality of camera doesn't restrict composition of the shot, and composition is really essential for good photo. Also, skillful people learn to handle shortcomings of their tools, so if a camera hasn't got much along the lightning control, skillful photographer still knows how to set the scene so that just the right amount of light falls into it.
Anyways, even good tools that make making comics easy can fool the unskillful eye, but anyone who's read a few comics of that kind can see when someone's using tools to their minimum capacity.
I'm guessing that it takes one well-done popular comic of the kind to push other creators to use that tool more seriously...

But generally, I think that the mistake artists who work in such, more alternative tools make is assuming that their work is essentially different from work of average, hand-drawn comic. When you strip it to the core, what makes good hand-drawn comic, or photo-comic, or poser comic, is the same thing. Like they said before: if you think that, because poser doesn't handle facial expressions well, they're not essential for poser comics, then you're wrong. Artist who draws spends probably more than 50% of his time drawing faces and mastering how to draw them. Author of poser comic should spend just about the same time and effort on getting faces of his characters to look lively and convincing. If poser author thinks that backgrounds aren't important for poser comics, he's wrong. They're important for any kind of comics, because what backgrounds bring to comics is unrelated to tools.
Similarly, DarknessFalls, you say that you can't draw, but you can still draw stickfigures. Artists who hand-draw use stick figures quite a lot, we all most likely sketch the scene in stick-figures before we get to draw it. This is because stick-figures strip the composition of the scene to bare minimums and let us work on making the scene expressive without bothering with details (they come later). Here's an idea: many people said that figures in poser comics look stiff and as if posing for camera. Why not try to first draw the scene with stick-figures, and when you get the composition you like, only then try to model it in poser using the stick-figure drawing as a sort of template.

the thing being, i generally see poser as a single tool, it's purpose built to create scenes, and to some degree, animations, other programs, like 3d studio max, Truespace, lightwave, and even the venerable photoshop and its ilk are proverbial toolboxes in their own right, which can be used for one thing, or even a multitude of tasks, some people even go from 3d max, to zbrush, to photoshop to create the end image.

in reality, what poser tends to honestly lack, is honest-to-god diversity, i've had a look at a lot of poser comics in the past, and most of them, regardless of overall quality and slight differences, mostly look the same.

this is prolly because in reality, most poser comics use the same bunch of base models with a few tweaks here and there to make them seem different.

that said, poser has its place, for some, one can even try and replicate a scene from their head, to poser to try and get the poses, and lighting correct for the sake of reference, for example.

all that's said and done, i don't personally see much difference between poser, and one of these, barring complexity.

Joel Fagin wrote:Thinking about it, expression is the key advantage of webcomics. Backgrounds are... Well, they're background and often left out altogether. What other advantages does such a visual medium give us? Nice pictures of hands? No, the expressions are the primary advantage here and if Poser doesn't do them very well, I think that's a problem.

- Joel Fagin

Poser does them well enough it's generally the artists that neglect them.

Oh come on.

Oh come on.

what do you mean come on? he is right I looked at the figures, the faces have the most useability of any part of the figure.. and yet often the faces are left blank because it seems to take time to pull and expression out.

The eyes will seem dead unless you do post production on them to add some depth.. it seems to me.

Rhenny wrote:The eyes will seem dead unless you do post production on them to add some depth.. it seems to me.

You can do some of that in the program by using reflection maps and better textures for the eyes. Reflection maps help catch the light and, if you've ever looked at your own eye in the mirror, you can see yourself reflected back at you. They add a bit of depth by giving the illusion of something being reflected in the eye.