Secrets of Poser Experts: Tips, Techniques, and Insights for Users of All Abilities: The e-frontier Official Guide | List Price: $39.99
Discount Price: $19.93
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Binding: Paperback
Getting over the postwork stigma in one easy step [Posted on 2007-02-18]
I've been slowly getting into CGI through the use of Poser and Vue since Christmas '05. I have found that many websites/forums cast postwork as being a way to correct mistakes -- like you don't really know how to use the software properly if you need to do postwork. This book blows that misconception away.
This book is a showcase for sixteen artists that utilise Poser somewhere in their workflow. They are all exceptionally talented in different ways. Each artist receives a chapter of the book and each chapter is in the form of a brief artist bio, a Poser technique/tutorial, Insights into each artist's use of Poser, a Q&A covering some set questions posed by the authors, and a Gallery of the artist's work.
What's good about the book:
Each artist gives a brief summary of their Creative Process. I found it very interesting to read about how different people work and where Poser fits into their workflow. In a similar vein the Insights section wherein each artist describes the features of Poser that they find most useful was very helpful to me -- there were features I don't even use that the artists were describing as their favourite feature.
The main plus for me though is in each artist describing their workflow for a particular piece, in the form of the Techniques/Tutorials sections. Its not so much the How as the Why -- the specific tutorials may or may not be that useful to you, but why the artist does *this* in Poser and *that* in Photoshop is quite eye-opening.
What's bad about the book:
The DVD that comes with the book. The blurb on the back of the book devotes a large section to espousing the DVD's content. I found the interface to the content to be gimicky, clunky, and flawed. The content itself is unexceptional.
Some of the techniques/tutorials are a little scarce on detail if you really want to replicate a particular image. Occasionally Photoshop is a bit of a magic box -- here's the Poser image that went in to Photoshop (standard Poser image) and here's the image afterwards (fabulous CGI image).
Favourites:
The chapters on Fabrice Delage, Brian Jon Haberlin, Daniel Scott Gabriel Murray, Gabriel Sabloff, As Shanim and Siliphiel, and Thomas Weiss. Quite inspiring and definitely informative.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who is familiar with Poser and Photoshop.
Art book and how-to [Posted on 2007-03-09]
Beautiful book. A great set of masterclasses on various poser/photoshop techniques for generating digital art. With all of the gallery sections in the book it works as a coffeetable book too.
Great Way to Learn! [Posted on 2007-11-25]
I have been trying to create some images for a while with very little success. With this book, if you TRY some of the examples, it really opens your mind to the possibilities.
I Highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to improve their creative skills!
Completely lacking in taste [Posted on 2008-01-28]
When looking through this book I was reminded of Dorothy Parker's bon mot about a similar book..."This is not a book to be lightly tossed aside. It should be thrown with great force."
A bit of background; I'm an illustrator (the real kind...with paintbrushes) with decades of experience and a number of books under my belt. I remember when Frazetta was a hot item on the paperback scene. That was in 1969 about forty years ago. I remember seeing Star Wars when it first came out in 1973...about thirty-five years ago. I remember being dazzled by Blade Runner back in 1982, more than 25 years ago. So why is it that the imagery in this book has not grown past those old, hoary images? Has the world of art stopped? Evidently it has for these "experts," because this is all aimed at the very low-paying and over-crowded field of fantasy art.
To say that these artists are derivative is like saying those art factories in China are slightly influenced by cheesy poster art.
In years of buying books for the artists in the studio, this is the only book I've bought from Amazon that I really wanted to send back. The other artists looked at it and opinions ranged from "Gaacck" to "Arrggghhh." But then, what do we know? After all, we're just well-paid working pros, so we must have missed the real essence of this book.
It's soon to become kindling.
Not for beginners. [Posted on 2008-05-28]
This book seems to me to be more of a showcase for the artists featured than instruction for Poser 7. There are tips etc. as the title says but they are more aimed at a user already quite familiar with the program. I was looking for more of a beginners instruction manual so was disappointed. Having already bought Poser 7 I wasn't interested in the free trial of Poser 6 which is included.
There are a lot of beautiful pictures showing various styles and ways that Poser can be used, but for me the book has limited usefulness.
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