Over the past 4 years of buying stuff and randomly keeping track of the SL fashion industry, I’ve come to realize that not very many people know what to look for when choosing poses. Or what constitutes a bad pose. I constantly have this conversation with mates and a while ago Shai Delacroix convinced me to post about it.
Because I usually can’t try on your clothes before buying it, the ad has to say it all. Other’s far better in photoshop have given tips on how to make them not suck, but I have yet to see a comprehensive set of how to buy poses.
I’m not going to show you pictures of work from any other pose creator and point out all the bad parts of it. That’s just nasty. I’m going to make my own bad poses as illustration. I may have overdone it a bit on the bad poses, but I was having loads of fun with it. It’s not like I haven’t seen it before in advertisements. Seriously.
And I’m not sitting here telling you to only buy my poses - even if I really wouldn’t mind if you did. There are others who do it well and pay attention to the details. Nor am I saying that mine are perfect, cause I’ll be the first to say that they aren’t. I try my best and have years of experience with working out many of the kinks of SL treating that seemingly perfect .bvh file like a 2 year old with a cookie.
I’m also not saying poses made from newer animators can’t be good. They can. It’s rare and I have enjoyed watching new pose makers evolve in the level of quality because it shows me that they care. That alone gives them a high level of respect in my book. Especially those who have their own voice in the art of avatar sculpture like Torrid and Dove.
And what I hate more then anything is when posers claim to have high quality (or even *gasp* the best) when it is more then obvious that they don’t.
A lot of what actually goes into making poses has nothing to do with the reasons why people will buy a specific pose. For customers, it’s mostly about the style. Luckily enough of us have our own style so you have a decent selection for that. But what really bugs me, is that not enough poses that are actually being used for advertisements are of decent quality. I and other anal rentantive people out there, will not buy your stuff if the pose sucks. Sorry. Just like I won’t buy from you again if the seams are baddly matched.
As an odd side note, I used to animate on a laptop. Painful I know. When I finally got my rig, I looked at the poses just the day before thought were fantastic and the new monitor showed me so much that I had been missing. Any posers out there who really want to make a go of it, invest in a good monitor.
Don’t buy a pose that you can’t try first. No matter how cheap it is.
I don’t know if anyone isn’t allowing this, but just in case. Poses are bloody simple to set up so the customers can try it before they buy it. Bloody hell, if anything else it cuts down on the “buyers remorse” customer service questions. Granted if you already trust a poser from previous purchases, you can just skip this part.
The thing very few understand about animations is that because of SL’s extreme amount of appearance settings, a pose that looks fantastic on me has a good chance to look like shit on you. This is because all an animation is is a set of joint rotations. Simple example is that If you have longer arms then I do, a pose that have the hands on the hips on me may well make your arms go into your body.
There are a zillion different types of poses out there, you really don’t need one with hands on the hips. Or hands on the face which end up with your hand inside your face. You have two options here, either edit your appearance (if you really like that pose) or just don’t buy it. Ok, buy it just don’t use it. ;)
There is nothing animators can do about it. Nothing.
Twisted/Broken Midsection:
(too much twist and too much tilt)
Ok here is the deal… The avie’s range of movement is far more limited then our RL body. Point of fact. If your ad has a pose that breaks the meshes in the midsection, it ruins the clothes you spent so long on to get right. I know you think that pose is “cool looking”, but it’s actually worse in the long run. When looking at an ad, I can usually tell that mess of a torso is from the pose and not the clothes but not everyone else can.
Some pose makers know how to fake it and sacrifice a small break which are fine for full body shots and sometimes close ups. There is a trick to it and I’m not revealing mine. Sorry.
Broken/Twisted Arms:
Again, limited range of motion is at work here. But also very few people seem to understand how the body works when it comes to the arm. The twisted forearm is from only twisting the forearm and nothing else. Try it on yourself at home - see more parts of your arm actually moves when doing that. Another common practice is only raising the shoulder joint up - which severly breaks it.
The arms are by far the hardest part of a pose. In most cases it’ll look fantastic in Poser, but looks like ass in SL. Take the time to find poses that don’t break the arm mesh. Especially if your outfit has gloves or long sleeves or you sell skins.
Again there are tricks to it and you won’t find them here. Take some time out and do a bunch of trial and errors with the different joints. Write down the acceptable limits and keep them close to you. They will be your saving grace.
Hands inside hips and/or prim skirts:
If you are a curvier avie Torrid, I and possibly others (I don’t pay much attention to competitors sorry) sell separate poses for this reason. You no longer have any excuse to have the hands going into the hips. If I have a pose that hasn’t been converted yet, just ask. It takes a couple of mins, seriously. And perhaps others have the same policy. I’d much prefer you to use a well made pose that looks good on you instead of loosing biz because your ads look unprofessional.
Ok, so you sell skirts what do you do? See above. Have you tried poses for curvier avies? The only difference between curvier and non curvier poses is mostly the arm placement is further out. I’m not certain which looks worse in my eyes, hands inside the hips or inside the prim skirt. Both annoy me. It’s the reason why I’ve made 2 sets specifically designed for skirts.
Perpetual Tiptoes:
This used to be a much bigger issue and luckily has been reduced over there years. But I still see them. I don’t mean poses that are meant to be on tiptoe. I mean all the other ones. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all seen them.
When you download the poser files from the SL website, the default stance has tiptoes. This is the simplest thing to fix so it’s just because the poser is lazy. No excuse for it. Actually, after taking the pictures my poser default isn’t nearly as bad as lot of poses with this problem are. Is this on purpose?
Hands:
There are times when LL decides to fix or break our ability to change the hand morphs. That means we can upload a pose with a pointed finger, fists or whatever. It’s kind of a small list and rather annoying. However, when the default standing animation cycles through it’ll change. Even if we upload with “relaxed” hands. These will change and we have no way to fix it. So before you take your advertising picture, know which hand gesture you want and wait for the default poses to cycle if they have goofed up the “relaxed” kind.
Off Balance:
Now we are getting into some difficult ideas to express. There is leaning over, caught in motion and there is about to fall over. Granted sometimes you want the idea of just about to fall over, but I’ve seen many times where this is not the intended result.
George Maestri says it best in his book Character Animation:
The first major component of any natural pose is balance. If a pose is out of balance, the character will appear to tip over. For the purposes of posing, the body is a system of joints that is constantly trying to stay in balance. Each bone acts as a tiny lever that distributes the weight of the body through the spine to the hips, then down through the legs to the ground. A pose even slightly out of balance will be seen by the audience as “wrong.”
Symmetry:
I’m just going to quote good old George Maestri again for this one. If you are making poses and more importantly walks, this book should be in your library.
In addition to being physically correct, your poses must also be presented so that they convey the character’s intent to the audience in a clear and aesthetically pleasing way….
Since the body is so symmetrical, it is very tempting to place it into symmetrical poses. Not only is this dull and boring, it’s very unnatural…
I don’t know what the fuck is going on:
As I’m writing this, I’m not sure if I’ll use a picture because it’s difficult to show without using someone else’s image. There are times when I look at a picture and have no idea what the pose is trying to express. At all. It’s not a natural stance nor caught in natural movement - which doesn’t have to be the case - but I have no idea what emotion or idea is trying to be conveyed.
Coming from a background in animation, maybe this idea is easier for me to get. The entire point of posing, especially for animation, is to convey information. The audience is supposed to be able to read that information and understand the emotion you are trying to get across.
Ok granted, understanding this idea is why most of you buy from me. It’s the reason for the name. The reason why I started. The reason why I shifted even further towards this idea after a moron commented on the forums about how you can’t convey emotion without animating the face. And most importantly, pretty much the reason why I enjoy making poses in the first place.
I’m pretty sharp. I spend a lot of time watching people and how they move/sit/stand in reaction to things/situations/others. I like to decifer what emotion they are conveying. And even sometimes, I like to make up dialogue for them when I’m with only really close friends. I’m just geeky like that. If I don’t understand what the fuck is going on, how is a good portion of the population supposed to?
In Closing:
Buy poses because you think they are cool. Buy poses that you like the style of. Buy poses to convey an idea or emotion in your photographs. But please don’t buy poses that just suck.
(btw… yes I do moderate comments. Feel free to respond, just don’t be rude about it. These are my opinions and you have your own. It’s the way that life is. And well should be. If it wasn’t, it’d be rather dull.)
Cheers
Luth
