Who is Legume? Good question. Since few of us can answer that question, I'll do the best I can and tell you who I THINK I am. I'm Joe Suburbanite, 38 years old, a former member of a notorious motorcycle gang that rode roughshod throughout southern New Jersey in the 1980s. I live in the Philadelphia area with my wife and three cuddly guinea pigs. I mow the lawn in my shorts and sandals all summer, and my neighbors don't have any idea that the polite shaven-headed man with the red Sears lawnmower is actually a high-ranking member of the Church of the SubGenius, a Texas-based UFO cult, as well as an outlaw 3D artist with a mind that's as twisted as Joe Theissmann's leg. I've always had an outrageous and weird sense of humor, but always thought that maybe I was just a lone freak in a small town. Then I discovered the SubGenius Foundation, and I realized that there was a huge underground network full of people who weren't "normal", and who weren't afraid to express that lack of normalcy to the world. From the SubGenius teachings, I learned it's OK to think differently, and in fact it may save your sanity. Everything I learned from them was true (except for the stuff that wasn't). Also, my association with the SubGenius Foundation exposed me to the artwork of several other SubGenii, such as Ivan Stang, Paul Mavrides, IMBJR and Atom Funway Plastico, who are all weirder than a pickle jar full of human thumbs. My art has been featured in the foundation's magazine, "The Stark Fist of Removal", and a gallery of my work can be found among the millions of tentacles that form the "Art Mines" at SubGenius Foundation. I guess that answers who I WAS more than who I AM, so I'd say the best answer to that question would be, "My name is Dr.Legume, and I'm Artist of the Month". Do I get a tiara and a sash? How long have you been doing 2D and 3D art work? I've been doing 2D artwork since I was a kid crudely doodling offensive sketches of my peers and teachers on lined note paper with a #2 pencil in art class instead of paying attention to my art teacher. If only I'd listened to her instead, I'd probably be creating lovely ashtrays out of clay instead of drawing pictures that 9 out of ten times led to my being pelted with rocks and cuss words on the playground by my schoolmates. Funny how some things never change. I've been creating 3D artwork since the day in 1998 I discovered that my pal and fellow UFO cultist Dr. F. Kenton Musgrave (now CEO of Pandromeda, makers of MojoWorld) worked for MetaCreations, and could hook me up with a free copy of Poser 3. Poser 3 really impressed me, having recently been exposed to the works of pin-up artist Mr.Neutron, who is now a member of the Poser newsgroup (alt.binaries.3d.poser) that I founded as a response to the then-rampant censorship practices in the Poser community. Using Poser 3, I was able to unleash the weird imagery that lives in my large, thick skull in ways that caught peoples' attention much more effectively than my crude drawings ever could. Jeez, I was lousy at drawing. If you saw my work, you'd swear I lacked opposable thumbs. When I see some of the fantastic work in the 2D gallery, I get envious as hell. What are you currently working on? I'm not currently working on any long term projects. I'm pretty prolific, sometimes cranking out two or three images per day. I'm so daggone prolific, I deserve Artist of the Month based on volume alone. I've cranked out about FIFTY new images in the last month, and I'm proud to say that almost every one of them either caused someone to laugh heartily or send me hate mail (I enjoy both thoroughly). I'd like to take a minute to thank my supporters, who have not only stood up and said in no uncertain terms that they support the expression of unorthodox ideas, but who have voted my images into an unprecedented FIFTEEN images out of the Poser Hot 20. You will be rewarded with a plethora of bunnies, armadillos, and stuff that you might never expect. I'd also like to thank my detractors; if you hadn't raised such a stink, most people would never have even looked at my stuff, let alone voted me Artist of the Month by such a huge margin. What software do you use and why? I use Poser 4, of course, and I use Bryce occasionally. I use Paintshop Pro 7, and my favorite plug-in filters are Xenofex and Alien Skin Eye Candy 4000. Alien Skin chose several of my images for their gallery at Alien Skin Software to show what their Eye Candy software is capable of doing. If I had to get by with only one graphics program forever, it'd be Paint Shop Pro. Why do you like 3D Art? I like 3D art because it brings the ability to create imagery to the those of us whose artistic expression gets crippled by crude hands between the phases of conception and execution. What inspires you? Everything inspires me. Love, hate, death, brilliance, and stupidity. War, peace, flowers, bunnies. Disease, starvation, sex, pork chops. What I see on the news, read in the newspapers, that's a huge source of subject matter for me, listening to what's said, thinking about what's NOT said. Examining a situation and analyzing the motives of the parties involved. Mostly, what inspires me is animals, including people. What they do and why, how they respond to situations and stimuli, unusual tribal rites and rituals, how they correlate to behaviors of people within my own culture, these things fascinate me. I once read "The Naked Ape" by zoologist Desmond Morris, and it changed my perceptions forever. The kinds of responses I get from my imagery, I can get those same responses from a person face to face with my ability to provide the correct stimuli, thanks to the knowledge I gleaned from Dr. Morris' book. I live to manipulate the perceptions and feelings of my fellow naked apes. The greatest thing a man can aspire to is to be a preacher. If you can communicate your ideas well, you can do ANYTHING. Visit Legume's Art Gallery here. Visit Legume's Artist Page here.