Return of the Muse

(Note that if any of this doesn't make sense to you, it's in Poser/DAZ-speak. Visit DAZ 3D to see what I do.)

Didn't see this coming. Smith Micro is having an upgrade sale for $30 off Poser 8, so I decided to go over to Content Paradise and get it. Which, well, I haven't been actually doing anything arty lately, so it wasn't exactly a justified purchase. Since the last time I actually released a product, I have also bought Vue 7 Pro Studio (upgrade), Blacksmith 3D Paint, Photoshop CS4 (got it for 2/3 off when I bought a tablet!!), and DAZ Studio 3 Advanced 64-bit. Oh, and Windows 7 for both my and Justin's desktop machines, which I haven't even installed. Oops. There are probably a couple more, too. But I can't stand to think of them just now. Not to mention the bajillion free software packages I've downloaded and not learned yet. (And did I mention that after I bought Poser 8, I bought a bunch of lights for it from RDNA?)

So anyway, I have decided that I need to stop buying or start using. So I hauled out the partial Victoria 4 texture I've been working on, and loaded her and it into Blacksmith (this is a program that lets me paint directly on 3d models). Watched some tutorials on YouTube, and got going. Once I even out the lighting on some of the skin resource photos I'm using, I should be good to go there. And if I'm feeling extra ambitious, I'll do a custom morph for her. But at that point, the Photoshop vampire-energy was still kicking in every time I opened it.

Today, I went over to DAZ, because they are having the end of their March Madness sale, and I hadn't spend my $5 monthly voucher yet. I got a couple of sale items. One was a V4 character texture by my friend Amy, the other was a V4 dress by my other friend Mada. Total cost after $5 voucher: $.70. W00t! I got the dress because I wanted to texture it. I think some nice blood red and black textures would look nice on it. They look nice on everything, really. lol. Then I realized that I lost a ton of fabric resources when I had that hard drive crash. The ones I bought, I can re-download. But the ones I got free when I was a product tester are gone. I tested at 3 different stores over the years, so there were quite a few. Plus a bunch of them that I made myself are also gone. Hard drive disaster + backup CD/DVD fail = loss of graphics.

So I decided to go ahead and make some new fabric textures. And maybe buy some. Except I don't really want to spend any money up front on this. Once I get some more income coming in, then I can think about that. So I start working on some, using some techniques I already know, and going through a few tutorials to learn new stuff. And then I'm thinking I should have some ornaments and/or trims to put on them. Going to need tutorials there. Anyway, I think my long-comatose muse has woken up and taken an interest, because I haven't fallen asleep at the mouse/keyboard/tablet yet.

Anyway, while I've been endeavoring to get my head around what I want to make, I was noticing how there are a ton of crosses in Goth textures. And it kind of annoys me. What is the point of them? It it just because they are on Goth churches? Are people trying to fight vampires with pewter earrings and velvet chokers? Maybe it just looks cool to some people. I don't see it, but I don't get a lot of Abrahamic-religion-related things. And I do think that pagan symbols look cool on clothes and jewelry. Then again, pagans don't generally use torture/execution devices as holy symbols.

Anyway, I need to go get some sleep now, before I decide to start working on one of my projects again. It's kind of nice that I want to work on projects again, though.

edit: I just realized that I read in the Poser 8 product description that it includes Wardrobe Wizard...? That would be handy. I have a ton of clothes for other models that Victoria 4 and Michael 4 would like to have fitted to them. I will have to investigate this further.