SamTherapy opened this issue on Dec 23, 2009 · 56 posts
SamTherapy posted Wed, 23 December 2009 at 1:39 PM
It's a good point, Winterclaw.
I don't have any desire to spend forever postworking a render and besides, my background in traditional methods taught me to know when enough is enough. You are, however, correct to say it's a definite risk.
What I'm hoping to do now is, rather than spend hours trying to create an effect in Poser that I can do easily in Photoshop, is to do what I do for my paid work and just throw anything at it to get the result I need.
I've found myself going down pakled's road far too often and I have to put the brakes on it.
The artistic vision (if that ain't too pretentious) must come first.
To give an example, using one of my old pictures:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=419509&user_id=36349&np&np
That one pretty much does exactly what I wanted it to do. I can rework it and get a far superior render by doing a few simple things. I intend to use it as a test bed for my "back to roots" stuff. Likewise, one of my earliest images, "Flesh". That says exactly what I wanted it to say but knowing more about Poser and having a much better toolkit to work with than I did back then, I can give it more juice.
I'm trying to work out where I draw the line on tweaking, postworking, generally fiddling about with stuff. Every single piece I posted has flaws - some of them major - but I learned something from each one. That said, the real artistry went from my images some time back and I seemed to produce "nice" and "technically" accomplished pics entirely devoid of content. The best I came up with in years are a few cheap laughs. No bad thing overall but not where I want to be and definitely not what I started doing this stuff for.
Another thing to consider regarding postwork. I absolutely loathe painting in Photoshop. Not because I can't but because I did it for a living for years on end and it bores the life out of me. I'd rather throw real paint on a real canvas. So, I intend the most of my postworking to be other than painterly effects. No doubt my pics will still be flawed but at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing they are honest works and not vacuous eye candy.
Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.