@carmen indorato Those are all very good points, but there are other sides to the story. Back in 2003 I used to run a gallery at Rosity, and I used to post some nudes once in a while. What happened was that at some point, people would no longer comment on my non-nude posts, and that was depressing. The nudes were the same quality as anything else I was posting, but only they would get attention. As an experiment, I started to post more nudes, and my page hits exploded. I've got over a million in less than 3 years, but I wasn't happy about it. I ended up closing that gallery and starting over at DA, where I only rarely post any nudes.
I have evolved as an artist at DA, thanks to interactions with artists from all kinds of medias and styles. I have produced over a hundred collab works with the community over there, and there was so much to learn from other non-3D medias. Their feedback has been invaluable to me. However, I have been there for over 10 years, and I am just approaching 600K page hits - because I quit doing nudes. Still today, in the rare occasions when I post nudes (or partial nudes), these works tend to get many times more attention than my regular works, and that is really sad. I like depicting sexy stylized pinups, but I [personally] believe nudity is greatly overrated. I think that dressing sexy has way more impact and the same [or better] effect.
I want to keep my days of posting nudes behind me, even when there is considerable pressure from the community, especially from those who remember me from Rosity. But for every nude I post, it depreciates everything else I do in my gallery - it shows in the page hits and comments. This is where my notion that nudes are like "cheating" comes from. It's a different experience from yours, so I wanted to put it in context. Quite so often I have to hear people telling me that I could be way more "popular" if I posted more nudes, as if I didn't know that from Rosity. That's not the kind of attention I want to get. From my experience at Rosity, it was quite an empty kind of fame. I now get way less attention, but at least I know it's sincere.
As for the other subject - creating your own models, that is also quite overrated. As you know, I create a LOT of the contents you see in my renders, but that doesn't make me more of an artist than other people. Creating fully functional models is an art on its own right. But good scene lighting and texture painting are also forms of art that require time, effort, and talent to get right. However, I have never been praised for the good job on my work on the rigging or UV mapping. Those are both very challenging things that take years to get right. Nonetheless, most people only think of the modeling, as if it were the beginning and the end of it all. Even though I didn't create Dawn, I rarely use her as she comes. I create my own morphs and body types for my characters and renders, and they look *nothing* like Dawn. The art is not on what base models with start a scene with, but what we do with them and the final result. In the same way, Poser is just a tool - art is how we use it to reach the final results.
A good example of that is when people used to "accuse" me of using models created by other people. That's some of the most empty kinds of critique, and let me show you why. When I finally posted scenes where I had created EVERYTHING from scratch on my own, people didn't think any better of it - they just took it for granted. This just proves that they never cared who created the models in the first place. It's just an excuse to complain and feel better about themselves. Even for those who cared to critique my models, they still have nothing to say of the rigging, UV mapping, and all other parts of the process. I personally think that there are many cases where rigging is way more challenging than just modeling. I usually model in a matter of hours, and then spend DAYS on the rigging. Nonetheless, those who seem to care about who created the models never comment on the rigging - because in reality most of them don't know what's involved in the process, and therefore are not qualified to critique in the first place.
For those who still insist that 3D is not art - just go watch an animated feature movie. They are all 3D nowadays, and there is no magic "make art" button. Wait until the credits start scrolling, and look at how many artists from different areas are needed to make a 3D movie. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, and only half a dozens of those are modelers (for those who believe 3D only takes a modeler). Disney has developed most of the art theory (e.g, animation principles and color theory) lectured in art schools nowadays, and they make 3D movies. If what they do is not art, then nothing else could qualify. Here again, the art is not on the models, but instead what is done with them. For instance, Pixar are experts in making us completely forget that the movie is made of 3D models. That's art on its finest.