Reel Expression

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

I try not to read the feeds very often because every single time I just get annoyed. I look at them to find new shit to buy, but It seems that every day there is a huge drama mess. So and so did this. So and so said this. Why the fuck is the SL industry so bloody catty?

I come from a smallish creative industry (film) where it was beaten into our heads a number of times of the rule “don’t talk shit.” The basis of this is probably one of the most logical ideas I’ve heard in a long time. In the basic form its if you talk shit about people, you are shooting yourself in the foot for future projects. In a small community, everyone knows someone that you know. You say something shitty about 1 person, you’ll probably not get to work with them or their mates again. If I work for a producer who is an absolute moron and I spout off about how badly I think of him. He’ll still continue to get more work even if he uses a fucking dissolve between each cut and ruin the project, him and his mates will not hire me again. And more then likely, it’d be more then just his mates since no one wants the option of being slandered.

Working in SL is a whole nother beast and it seems that many people have thrown out the idea of actually working together on projects. So yeah, there is really is no reason why animators should ever work together, but you don’t see me calling out names. You don’t see Torrid calling me a cunt. You don’t see Dove (LAP) writing out long posts about how any other animators suck.

However, fashion creators are thrown together in fashion shows. I’ve heard stories about some organizers have actually feigned technical difficulties at the exact moment certain competitors took the stage. I’ve read certain “fashion reviewers” (and I use that term loosely) who are content creators themselves and have said some really nasty things about others. Including but not limited to, calling out content theft based purely on rumour and no research at all. I’ve seen blogs that are for stores bitching about specific people. And frankly, I think its fucking stupid.

There is really nothing I can say here that will ever curb this childish poop throwing behaviour. The only thing I will say is that it does you absolutely no good to do such things. For one thing, it does give more exposure to whomever you are calling out, especially those of us who randomly find your blog and may actually like the other persons stuff and attitude better. Then you have the fact that there are many people like me who refuses to ever buy anything from a creator who behaves like this. When I buy something it’s just as much about whether a I like it as is wanting to support the creator who made it.

Is there a point to resellers in SL other than making money off creators work? There has been a lot of buzz about this sort of thing and I’ve recieved an annoyingly high amount IMs from these people. I’m not talking about the people stealing but the “legit” kinds. Where they want to buy (at a discount) in bulk then resell at a mark up.

In RL the point of a reseller is so people who can not get to your area can buy the items you make. They buy in bulk, with a discount, then mark up the items. With that markup they cover the costs of advertising, property, and running the store. RL stores cost a lot more money and time to run then those in SL. They have to hire all sorts of people like managers, cashiers, sales reps, security, customer service, ect depending on how large of a store it is. Running a shop in SL is quite simple. Get some land, build a store, place out your items, possibly hire some customer service people, and then advertise. It is nothing near the commintment of time and resources it takes to run a RL store.

For instance, you make a film. You look for a distributer who gets a cut of the profit. Then they pay for the prints to be made and advertising, sell the prints at a mark up to cinemas who then advertise a bit more and mark up the tickets + sell overly priced snacks and drinks. Then the distrubuters make DvDs and sell them at a mark up to rental stores and shops. The stores then mark it up even further. While there are people making a lot more money off the constant mark ups then I’d personally like, at least it makes sense. In SL it just doesn’t.

In a place where the proximity of location doesn’t matter what’s really the point? When things are working correctly, if I want new hair I just pop over to ETD. There is no need to worry that Elika’s sim and my sim are technically far apart on the grid map.

The problem is and always has been, is that the advertising in SL is shit and more importantly finding anything in SL that is what you are looking for is probably one of the most frustrating experiences ever. Too many stores, too many people making crap, too much to choose from without much direction of where to go. How the bloody hell is resellers helping that?

Logic says that if you have 2 locations, you have 2x the chance for people to find you, but my experience counters it. In my almost 4 years of SL the only additional shop that has done any amount of good is the animation warehouse. Because that place makes bloody sense and works. Laggy for sure but has the largest selection of animators in SL.

But why would Joe Reseller’s location be of any more use than your permanant main store? Advertising in SL is still 90% via word of mouth or blog because of the crap shoot that is the quality of items.

Maybe I’m just jaded and lucky enough to have been noticed by enough people, but this make just no sense. Anyone have an opinion?

As many of you know I’ve been mostly out of SL for over a month now due to a holiday in Rome and illness. While some IMs I did recieve, many I did not. Also while I was in Rome I was getting IMs to email which have mostly disappeared from my webmail account. You’d think using a PSP for checking mail wouldn’t mess things up, but I’m not really sure what happened. To make it even worse, my customer service rep - Sara Primrose - had all of her notecards eaten by SL. If you need help and you haven’t heard back please send me a notecard or another IM.

I will be leaving for the States (again) on Wed but I’ll have more access to SL then the last trips. Except for a scattered couple of days I should be able to log in once a day to answer IMs.

My deepest appologies for any frustration this has caused.

Tomorrow I will be closing down the sim for repricing and then I’ll put up some new stuff before I go. I’ll post here again when that’s finished.

Cheers
Luth

Yesterday I was having a chat with Sara - my super nice customer service person - who told me that Zach Wolfe of Outrider Animations had contacted her. Comes to find out that someone is using our names to sell his animation business in a box.

BUSINESS IN A BOX ANIMATION

500+ ANIMATIONS.

gestures, dances, animation overriders,dance animations, poses, dance machines, - Animations and Poses
Dances & Synced Couples Dances
Animations & Dances for tinies
Couples Walks, Animations & Attachments
Resell, Reseller, Full Perms, Business in the Box, Permissions, Permission, Yor own Business, Transfer, Start, Wholesale, full permissions HUDDLES, ZHAO, Outrider, Abranimations, Reel Movement, Syncamation, Motion Merchant, Rickymations, Hammer, gestures
urnitures,sleep,lesbian,les,fuck,sexbed,gentec,sexgen,sexbed,menu,animated,MLP,multilove pose,multilovepose,Xcite,Xcite!,x cite,poses, ,menu driven, sex beds, sex bed, heart shaped bed w/ menu Valentines sex bed, heart shaped sex bed, Sex Rugs, Sex Hot Tubs fine furniture,fine art granite marble fireplaces rugs, ,cuddle, rugs, leather sofas ,sofa, rug ,CG Design, sex rug, fuck ,animation, furniture, dragon beds,

When I read all that mess of a classified, I ported over there to see if some of my work from any number of permissions bugged poses fell into the wrong hands. Saddly, he’s selling a box within a box so I can’t look inside to see. The entire set is L$2k which I normally wouldn’t have a problem paying but I don’t want to give this jackass any money.

Even if he isn’t selling my poses, it’s still a trademark violation. It’s implying that my work is in that box. LL does nothing about those sorts of things. I’ve worked my ass off for the past 3 years for name recongnition, mainly due to the high quality of work, and this moron is trying to make money off that work.

Another problem I have with it is associating my name with all those sex keywords. I’m not a moron, I’ve always known that I’d make a lot more money making sex animations, but that just doesn’t interest me. I’m no prude nor am I against sex in SL, I just wanted to make something artistic and origional. Itegrity may be part of it, but spending hours animating avies fucking just doesn’t sound like fun. The problem is that I don’t want to be associated with sex animations. Just like some chic fashion designer wouldn’t want to be associated with stripper clothes. It’s partially an image thing and it’s partially that I’m bloody sick of the at least 1 IM a day asking for sex animations. Times that by 3 years and its atleast 1,095 IMs asking for sex animations. I don’t make them. I don’t want some random classified associating me with them.

The last issue is reselling. I fucking hate this new reselling trend in SL. Some have even tried to do reselling contracts with me as if I can’t market my own stuff. The only person making money off my hard work in SL, is going to be me. No one new coming into SL will be able to market my products so much better that it would be worth more then my 3 years of an established presense. Not to mention that I’m very very picky on the ads and the buildings my stuff is in. I get countless notecard mall invites spam that very rarely is anything worth looking into. All of them say it’s the “best place” or have the “best content” in SL and it’s always incorrect. If you have to tell people you are the best, then you really aren’t.

While there are legit reselling going on, these business in a box crap has proven time and time again to not be. Most are filled with freebies while others are stollen items. I do not want my name associated with that at all.

Technically, I shouldn’t have to worry about this sort of thing. I should be able to file a report with LL stating that someone is using my name who is not authorized. LL then should make them take it down. Just like how the DMCA reports are supposed to go. But because of LL’s policy of not getting involved, there is nothing we can do about it. Zach told me today that 1 person has filed trademark violations about it.

How it stands now is that we are going to stand together and make a stink about it. 1 voice isn’t going to do much about it, and knowing LL all of us isn’t going to make a difference. But who knows?