Virtual Pose 4 [Hardcover]

I guess you have a thankless job Mario. There are a lot of ways to do this and I suppose each has its deficiencies. I appreciate the sample you sent, and that is why I am here. There is stuff I do like in Virtual Pose 4 and one of those things is the clear ball. It does help make for some interesting and dynamic poses I haven't seen before. So that's a nice innovation. The blurring of the naughty bits has never been a major issue for me although your comments here about it would to be sold in a brown bag in America I think are out of touch. The series typically sells in art stores and major chains like Borders where fully graphic photographic art books are sold. I have never seen these books/discs in a Target or a Walmart. But when I say that, I realize you may be more in touch with the market than me.

My main problem is the same as it has been with all of them. Ambient lighting. The models are in a white room on a white platform under bright lights with fill light or lights. Light is bouncing everywhere. An advanced artist can use anything. They can invent their own lights to show form. There are junior artists and others maybe just looking to do line drawings. But if I had to ask you one question if we were one on one it would be "Why don't you use form lighting." I read its your dream to serve the artist. Even if it was just for one special series to give the artist lighting they can use for study. Light dominantly from one side, have some bounce/reflected light so they can see the core shadow. And maybe occasionally a back or rim light for some dynamics. I see in some of your photos there is a hint of back light. Its nice. In virtual pose 4 once again you have managed to light every surface up nicely. But I can get that from soft porn. But I have always seen this project of yours as sort of a substitute for people who would like to attend life drawing to take advantage of. But in life drawing, they don't light people like this. How about light for the artist to learn from? All of us are trying to learn to see light better and how to better show form. You throw light on the reflected light and the core shadow what have we got to work with?

Virtual Pose is a great and unique product for the artist. I don't want to diminish that. I thank you for it. Maybe its not an even/or scenario.
Add value. Show both fully lit and chiaroscuro for the artist. Add silhouettes. Had you considered losing the rotating platform and hiring a multi cam studio. They can fire all 35 cams at once or in sequence. Even alter the lighting as they fire. I worked for a company like this. Boom your done, next model next pose. Shoot two 180s so front and back are lit nice and boom, next pose, next model. No more jumps while the model tries to keep his or her balance.

Anyway back to the product. It looks like an improvement. Keep up the good work. Next time be a Muybridge and make something for posterity that will be cherished forever. Make the ultimate Virtual Pose book.

The poses in VP 4 are a bit more dynamic and so they are less "artsy" than some of the previous versions. It is a nice addition to any figure artist's library as long as they have a computer since the DVD is the true value.

The ability to rotate the figure in the viewer is quite nice and can help the novice and pro alike practice drawing the same figure from many different angles to get a better understanding of the human form.

My only complaint is that I wish they would make the images be in a much higher resolution so the zoom can go in closer. In this edition they are much higher than in the past but still much too low, especially when you compare it to the high res DVDs you can get from Ballistic Publishing or some of the sites on the web which all use the turn-table concept but don't include a viewer.

GREAT reference book.

I'll list the positive then negative impressions I have.

POSITIVE:
1) Beautiful photography. Very well-done multi-angle turntable images of dynamic poses, with excellent lighting (good shadows without totally obscuring any parts of the model).

2) Excellent quality, high-resolution images on the accompanying CD-ROM. They're in a Quicktime format where you just click-drag on the image to manually "rotate" the model in front of your very eyes. The image is so large, it wouldn't fit on my huge 24-inch Dell monitor!

NEGATIVE:
1) It's difficult to find something wrong with Virtual Pose 4, but if pressed my one critique would be there isn't a lot of diversity in age & fitness of the models. They're all relatively youthful & in good shape.

This is generally a fine problem to have ^.^ But if you're wanting reference for old or overweight people, you're out of luck.

All in all, I highly recommend this book, and most definitely do not regret my purchase.

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