The Wyrd Sisters

With Jack of Hearts/Rogue Brotherhood as the last release from Wyrd Sisters members, it’s natural to start asking what comes next. While we are not exactly prolific, all Wyrd Sisters members do tend to work constantly (and dare I say, relentlessly), and while most of the promotional work is at full swing, and has been for a while, it is the perfect time for all of us to get back to work.

Ness is right now finished with a *huge* project, but that will not be available for a while yet. It’s going back to his architectural Period Reproduction roots, and looks, dare I say, fantastic. Luthbel has now bid farewell to Michael 4 clothing for a while, and has started on his first Victoria 4 project in two years. I will be texturing this, and I am also now working on a side project with Conniekat and Surreality. And Skyewolf is still in the clutches of the publishing market.

In the meantime, I finally have got my hands on a boxed edition of Poser Pro 2010. I can’t convey how proud that made me feel. Not because I did anything on it -I didn’t- but because I know where that gorgeous character comes from, and I’ve seen her taking shape from the very begining.

Coming up, a review of PoserPro 2010.

Her gorgeous character Bastienne has been used by artist Paul Sutton for the box art for Poser Pro 2010. The artwork looks fantastic, and part of me thinks I should buy the box just to have it in print, instead of the download (yes, I am getting PoserPro 2010, more on that later).

This morph expansion adds the following extra morphs:

• for the hood to fit over Wildenlander’s and Paladin’s breastplates
• also for the hood, to hide the bottom part completely, from the chest belt downwards
• for the skirt, to fit under Wildenlander’s breastplate

The cr2s are redistributed with kind permission from Luthbel.

Cobalt Hierophant XP download

New product teaser up in the facebook group! Or more to the point, multiple teaser, as not only there’s a hint of an upcoming product, but also some upcoming updates to another. And before anybody asks, yes it is for Michael 4, no that is not Vicky, just s very young looking Mike

With the re-release of Alexa 2 at DAZ, came the opportunity to finally release “semi-officially” the refits made for both Belle Arum and Sayuri. These files are readscripts, which means they must be installed in the exact same folder as the “base” sets. Studio has an extra quirk, in that it will request that the user finds the file that it’s told to read; usually this will be nothing more complicated than hitting “Locate” and selecting the relevant .hr2 file in the window. I am sorry, but I couldn’t find a way of avoiding this that didn’t involve distributing the full cr2.

Belle Arum Plus now includes fits for Girl4 and Alexa 2. A small correction was done, where a morph that was left out of the original but was present in the Flipped version (volume) has been added too. The extras, addornments, etc, <b>have not been refitted</b> but it should be easy to do, if needed, using the existing morphs, fits and adjustments.

The Sayuri Expansion Pack now has added fits for Michael 4, Girl 4 and Alexa. Again, the extras, adornments and other body parts have not been refitted, but should be easy to do if needed using translation dials and existing morphs.

These links have been uploaded to Renderosity, where they should appear hopefully soon, and will also be listed at DAZ’ Freepository.
Any problems or issues, please let us know!

Belle Arum Plus download link

Sayuri Expansion Plus download link

The DAZ PA sale, held since 2007  every year during November, is about to end. As PAs, this is a month of intense activity, whether it is finishing items, promoting them, posting pictures, helping promote other artists, and generally interacting with a highly motivated customer base. The sale structure means customers are encouraged to check the store daily to grab the bargains, and a lot of PAs are also customers, and a lot of us do the same.

I would have liked to have all members of Wyrd Sisters participating in this sale. We do have ideas for an encompassing theme that would give all of us opportunities to shine, but real life sometimes get in the way, and this November only Ness Period Reproductions, Surreality and I participated. I have to say, however, that the results were quite good.

Ness released an exquisite chinoiserie set. We’ve spoken in the past of the Brighton Royal Pavilion, with its fantastic decoration, and these are pieces that I could easily imagine there, maybe in the music room, with his Baroque Trio and Harpsichord in use.

Surreality released Umeko, another in her Modern Muses collection. She’s got a lovely face obtained by combining a custom morph created in Modo, with Morphs++ to refine and add extra touches.  She works really well as 3D Anime character, and I am itching to model some gothic lolita clothing for her to wear.

I released two items: Night World Mourning Sun and Dawnrazor. Mourning Sun was my first clothing item for Michael 4, and just my third clothing set for the Gen4 characters. It was an interesting experience, since it’s something Luthbel and I had discussed several times since the Roxana Vampire Lady outfit was released. He wanted to model clothing for a male vampire, but back then we were both waiting for Michael 4 to come out. After that, he started modelling creatures, and I designed the outfit initially to be just for the Fallen. Its ability to wear M4 clothing meant that it would be a better option to create the outfit for the more generic figure, although I am not discarding the idea of an extension suitable for the Fallen’s own unique morphs. When the final images started to take shape, it became very obvious that the outfit fitted perfectly within the Night World series, so after a quick talk, Luthbel gave me his blessing, and Mourning Sun went straight into the Night World line-up of characters. It was amusing to see people guessing when the newsletter came out, and quite flattering that my modelling was confused with Luthbel’s -even if for a little while-, but I am glad that customers are finally starting to see me not just as a texturer, but as a modeller too.

What comes next, then? Skyewolf still has the project she intended for the PA sale. Luthbel is working on a project he also intended for the PA sale, which is moving along. Ness is working on a couple of projects at a time, and the same with Surreality. And me? Right now I am working on textures for Luthbel’s project; coming up after it, you can expect a female version of Mourning Sun (different version, not just straight conversion), maybe an expansion with the Fallen’s morphs, and after that? Well, that would be telling.

I’m trying to integrate Facebook with WP, so this blog can get its intended use. Bear with us while we iron out the technical issues.!

Earlier in the week I was discussing the PirateBay ruling with a friend, and he mentioned that copying and sharing music had happened forever, so there had to be a line drawn about legal interference with it. While I do agree to a certain extent, I am also part of the Digital Content Providers, I wanted to discuss how these things do affect the small players like me who deal with IP and digital content.

Today I sent three DMCA notices to a single site, where I found:

• 192 downloads of my Arcane Brotherhood product since the 19th of April
• 301 downloads of my Keeper of the Veil product since 10th of April
• 262 downloads of my Sayuri and Sayuri EXP pack products since February 9th

Or to put it in more tangible terms ($$$$) and JUST for what would have been my cut for it…

• $1,435.20 for Arcane Brotherhood
• $ 3,002.47 for Keeper of the Veil
• $2,455.59 for the Sayuri Hair packs.

So in little over 2 months, someone’s been giving away $6,893.26 of what should have been my money.

Now, I’m not naive enough to think that 100% of the people that downloaded would have bought. But even if something as low as 10% of those people would have (perfectly reasonable number), we’re still talking of close to $700, which I don’t know about you, but for me it would be great, and actually would pay my mortgage for a whole month. Extrapolating, we could say that I’m lossing sales to piracy for at least the value of half my year’s mortgage every year. And when you put it like that, the picture is a bit more scary.

As for the argument about people testing out the waters for vendors, I *could* point you all to the threads where the same people are commenting and “thanking” the original posters for sharing. But I won’t, because I do not want to advertise where they are. If you do police these things semi-regularly, you will also notice the same people commenting over and over. So they’re not “trying” before they buy, they’re just leeching for some stupid idea of collectibles, or simply because they can. And these are not people in poor countries either: to run our stuff you need a more than decent computer, you can’t run them in hamster-wheel powered old 486s recycled and treasured for years to learn how to use computers, and frankly, if you have the $1K you need at least for a half-decent 3D-rendering rig, you can’t tell me you don’t have $15 for a hairprop, or that you can’t get the $15 with some minor savings.

I’m not a corporation. I’m not a rockstar that looses maybe 50p per pirated CD but then recoups it when the pirate goes to see them in concert and pays $40 for the ticket + 15 for a Tshirt. DAZ 3D is not exploiting me nor my creativity, and pirating my stuff is not some act of liberation. I regularly give freebies and what I think is really good customer service. I help fellow vendors, encourage newbies, helped with a Poser book (Practical Poser 7) and I’m even mentoring someone from a 3rd wolrd country so he can realise his dream. And even he has legal stuff, and when he can’t afford it, he makes do with what he does have, and *gasp* uses CREATIVITY to get over it: his latest has been to morph the Eagle 1 into a Seagull, because he couldn’t afford the $15 he needed for the seagull models in the store. THAT, my friends, is commitment and resourcefullness: not spending hours trailing the share sites to download whichever latest products are out to plunge them into a runtime and never touch them. And if there’s any justice in this world, while my friend sleeps happy knowing that each day he learns more and becomes better, the pirates of this world will go to bed every night looking at their bloated runtimes and wondering why they can’t use it, always trailing after the latest and bestest, seeking to compensate for both their lack imagination and talent to actually do the real work.

Welcome to The Wyrd Sister’s blog. Watch this space for artwork, book covers, product reviews, commentary and tutorials by Skyewolf and Arien. Observe the way we work and what we do from a unique perspective of the creator.  Check back daily because once we get going there will always  be something interesting to look at.