Outoftouch Celebrates 2013 Vendor of the Year Award and Ten Year Anniversary

The Vendor of the Year award is given to the vendor with the highest number of units sold for 2013. It's no secret: give people what they want, and they will always come back for more. The Vendor of the Year continually provides a multitude of products that are almost always desired by the digital art community. Outoftouch continues that commitment to excellence by having another outstanding year in 2013.

In celebration of this award and marking ten years here as Vendor at Renderosity, outoftouch provides a look back through his history and products over the years.

What made you join Renderosity in March 2004?

I have actually been a member of Renderosity since early 2003 with a private account. What made me really enjoy this site is the one big difference that Renderosity has towards others: the big community. Renderosity is all about community. I loved the fact that people can meet and help each other, ask questions in the forums, post their images in the gallery and can comment on them. At that time, a community like this was actually still something new. We did not have that big social media everyone is using everyday today, so the thing of having an open community that welcomes everyone from around the world fascinated me.

How did you get in contact with Poser?

Before starting my career as a Poser content creator, I used to create content for computer game simulations. Texturing and modelling has always been my passion, I loved to customize stuff, create my own content and share it with others. It makes me happy to see that other users are enjoying my content. That game simulation was all about people, I sometime had to stumble opon Victoria and Michael.

I have also been a fan of computer graphic art and enjoyed programs like Bryce and even had Poser 3 for a long time. Well, at that time, you had very basic Poser native figures, that most probably did not even have anything to wear or to stand in. I did not use it much until I had discovered the DAZ figures. It must have been just around the time when Victoria 3 had been released when I discovered her and the content that was created for her. I was fascinated by how cool and realistic she actually looked and was quickly amazed by all the content that was there. One of my most favourite items at that time was the Morphing Fantasy Dress, it was one of the first clothing items I bought. And what would you expect me to do now? Yes, I tried to do my own texture for the dress. That is how it all got started.

What made you decide to become a Renderosity vendor?

Well there was that MFD texture I created, it looked pretty ugly. I had tried around several times and got better with every new attempt. Before becoming a Renderosity vendor I had offered my products on a different, smaller place and noticed that people liked the stuff and enjoyed using it. It was again that great feeling of being happy by seeing others using my products in their artwork.

The Renderosity MarketPlace mainly offered full outfits and amazing character packages. I kinda hestitated to try becoming a vendor, because I thought my products would not be good enough. I'd rarely seen texture expansions for outfits and thought they would not even take my texture products. But, I wanted to get there and had made thoughts about what kind of product would fit well here. I'd seen lots of cool characters, why shouldn't I try to do one? This was actually the birth of my first Renderosity product: "The Ultimate Cosmetics for Victoria 3 and Stephanie 3." A character set that came with a base skin and 5000000000000000 MakeUp options. I do still remember my excitement when the product was in pending and I waited for it to be released, when suddenly my brother called me and told me: "it's there!!!!" And there it was, my first outoftouch product on Renderosity.

Do you have THE favourite product of each year as a Renderosity vendor and can you tell us something about them?

Before listing specific products I must say that I actually enjoy every product I create, it is hard to pick a favourite one, especially because I did so many. I picked the following products that instantly brought good memories back when I went through my list :)

2004: Dynea for V3

Dynea for Victoria 3 was my first realistic character for Victoria 3. Well, at least at that time I would have said it looks quite realistic, surely it is not comparable to nowadays realistic characters in any way. She was meant to be some kind of fairy queen and it was the first time I had used digital photographs of human skin for texturing.

2005: Stefany Character & Hair for V3

I had always admired vendors creating hair for Poser figures, it had always been my wish to one day do a hair with someone together. I had been a big fan of Lisbeth's hairs and dared to ask if she wanted to work on a project with me together. I couldn't quite believe when she told me she would like to, so we created the package "Stefany Character & Hair for V3" together. The character was an ethnic girl and we created a really cool braided hairstyle for her. The package got really popular in the market and I was super proud of it.

2006: Music Girl Character for V3 & Hair

It was clear that I wanted to continue the collaboration with the wonderful Lisbeth, and apart from the work we did together we also quickly became very good friends too. 2006 was the year when a very popular female popstar brought back the disco feeling and the typical waved-bangs hairstyle. The music and style was the inspiration for this project. Lisbeth created an amazing hairstyle that came really close to the original one, together with a matching character, the "Music Girl for Victoria 3" was born.

2007: Cecile Hair

In 2007, I met Bice, and all of you most probably know all the collaborations we did together in the following years. Bice and outoftouch was the perfect match, it has always been a pleasure to work with her, everything was so easy. She did amazing and modern hairstyles and I was able to customize them with morphs, textures and did the promotion work for our products. Cecile Hair was the first hair we did together and I still love it very much, it is also one of the best selling items we ever created.

2008: Super Bob Hair

I simply must highlight this hairstyle, as this is one of the most timeless ones we have ever created. In all the years after 2008 the bob hairstyle never was not trendy, so the Super Bob. The intention to create "Super Bob Hair" was to create a highly customizable bob hairstyle that can go from short to long, small to big, inverted, just everything you could think of. Also this hairstyle fits to nearly any style you would choose: fashion, fantasy, sci-fi and so on. I really love this one.

2009: IMPACTS: Guilty

Bice and I focused on creating clothing more often, as we simply had fun to do something else than hair. We both loved doing fashion outfits, but always had the passion to do the sexy stuff that sometimes also went into the gothic direction. The whole IMPACTS product line has lots of different sexy gothic outfits, while "Guilty" is actually my most favourite one of that line.

2010: Kandyworld

While we had been working on a big variety of different products with my friend ilona before, the Kandyworld project still is one of my most favourite ones. It is one of those typical OOT & ilona madness products. A conversation between ilona and me always goes like: "Hey you want to do this?" "YEEEEEEEEEEEEES! AMAZING!!!!!! Let's do this, but there must be this and that. And this prop and that one, and this clothing and this hair and lights and poses and stuff." We always make the smallest idea to be the biggest one, which is amazing. This stuff gets so creative that at the end of making a plan we do not even know where to start and where to stop. The big Kandyworld project is one of them. We had made wonderful candy props, matching poses, hair and an outfit.

2011: Larissa Hair

Larissa Hair is the debut of my very own hair modelling. At the beginning of 2011, I began to learn to model. I'd always wanted to learn it someday and somehow it was just right about time. Larissa hair is a wispy long fashion hair and I was super happy that people liked what I did on my very own.

2012: SHOOT 09: Punched

Something totally weird happened at the end of 2011. Me, who had started as a texture artist, collaborated with another one. I had been in contact with Shana some time before and noticed what a cool girl she was, I had always admired the fresh style she brought to the marketplace, the bright, modern colors and high quality, detailed works. Now that I began to model and created some outfits we talked about doing a collaboration. It was the time about Christmas so what would have been better than a sexy Christmas outfit? We quickly decided to do it and I really enjoyed working on it. The brand "SHOOT" was born to offer high quality clothing packs, that are mostly created for a very specific theme. So is "SHOOT 09," which is all about boxing. The project grew big and offers an outfit, character, poses + scenery and hair.

2013: Maria Hair

While I actually love the hairstyle itself, it is rather the Hairblending feature I created. It seems to lie in my nature to always search for new tasks. At this time I wanted to realize my idea of creating some kind of system that lets the user blend two different haircolors and choose an alpha style for the blending. My inspiration for doing it was the ombrÃ© hairlook that more and more girls wore on their heads in the summer of 2013. My new task was: learn to script in python and bring your idea to life. It took many long sleepless nights until I found myself understanding what a python scirpt is doing. At this point I want to say thank you to PhilC for helping me. The OOT Hairblending has been included in several hairs that I created after Maria Hair.

2014: SuperHose Infinite for Genesis 2 Female(s)

I have been known as a Poser content creator for nearly 10 years now. At the end of 2013 I finally found my way into DAZ Studio and the amazing new possibilities the software brings to the figure line of Genesis and Genesis 2. Knowing that most of the Genesis stuff can be used flawlessly in Poser too made it even better. I learned to create content for DAZ Studio native figures and that is what I've been doing for nearly half a year now. I really enjoy working on content for Genesis 2, in my opinion the best 3D figure line to date. Since I became familiar with the unique functions of DAZ Studio, I had to try out how a new concept of the popular SuperHose we created some years ago for V4 could look like. And it quickly grew into a clothing item that is extremely customizable, even much more than the V4 version was.

Thank you:
I have done lots of different interviews over time as a Renderosity vendor, and I have often said thank you, but I really can't say it often enough. I want to say thank you to all Renderosity customers who supported my works for 10 years now and I hope we can spend another at least 50 years together :D I want to say thank you to the Renderosity admins who have supported me, who helped me, who do their job passionately and who run this place 24/7. Another thank you goes to all the partners I have worked with, it was and is always a pleasure to work with anyone of you!!!