Celebrating 12 Years of Learning

Celebrating 12 Years of Learning

January 16, 2010. That’s the date I made my first purchase in the DAZ store. I got V4 and a butt-ton of other items for free. I had a tiny little Eee-machine computer I did most of my renders on at first. I had no clue what I was doing, but by golly gosh I was going to learn. I bought books and read tutorials left and right. I experimented with my renders for most of all my weekends. I managed to somehow get over the steep learning curve of both Studio and Poser 7.

Although I liked the HDRI look of Studio Pro renders, my computer stayed on the struggle bus trying to render anything in 3DL. However, with Poser things rendered quick and textures were amazing. I ended up grabbing a copy of Poser Pro for dirt cheap at the end of 2010 and from 2011-2016ish I did most of my work in Poser.

Of course, this entire time, I kept chasing more and more training on how to achieve the looks I wanted. Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding the kind of training I needed. But, I didn’t give up. I would often deconstruct art work I liked and tried to do the effects I found in the pictures based on what skills I did have.

By the time 2020 rolled around I had collected a large file of “training”. Most of it was not as great as advertised. Somewhere during the pandemic, I decided to get back into my art. And that’s when I found some training that was different. In December of 2020, I decided I was going to work on my art skills….so I made a benchmark piece. For the first several months of 2021, I hit the courses I purchased hard and practiced almost daily. I re-did some of my older works with the new tips and tricks. I learned how to love adding textures, grain, and other embellishments.

Fast forward to today where I’ve made my second benchmark work. I used many of the new skills I picked up from my tutorials as well as really trying to push planning out my models by combining parts of outfits to make unique characters.

My art isn’t where I want it to be yet, but it’s getting there. I’ve noticed in several of my last pieces I’ve settled on a certain coloration I like to use which makes them seem cohesive.

My next goal? Learning how to paint digitally and how to do overpainting. Although I started on my cinema design course this year, it’s a massive undertaking. Here’s to another 12 years of learning!

These images are all from around December starting with 2010 and ending with 2021.

You can also visit sleekbio.com/shannonmcroberts to find links to my full galleries.

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  1. Even your early renders are more scenic than most of mine today. I’m too lazy to add backgrounds.

    My first order with DAZ was 2012-03-11, when I grabbed DAZ Studio, Bryce 7 Pro, and Hexagon 2.5. I’d used Bryce 3D in the past, but never got around to doing anything with 7. I futzed with Hexagon long enough to know I didn’t want to be creating my own models. I scarcely touched DAZ Studio until a year later. So you’ve got about 4 years of DAZ Studio experience on me and probably have studied it more than I have. I’ve a ton of tutorials I’ve yet had time to watch. Yes, I’ve watched some of the ones I’ve purchased. 🙂 But I don’t feel so bad now when I look at your art and think how you’re able to pull off effects I’d have to spend a lot of time trying to duplicate, if I were to try at all. 🙂

    Kudos for all you’ve accomplished creatively, because I know the 3D renders are only a fraction of it. Here’s to more and better creations in 2022.

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