I've been a part of the Poser community for many years now. I started with Poser Pro Pack (Poser 4 with some bells and whistles), and Posette.  I've probably progressed a lot slower than most have, because I'm just now beginning to make and distribute my own content.  Recently, my boyfriend told me that when he saw my first images he thought, "Well, maybe this isn't for you."  Luckily, his words to me were nothing but encouraging. I kept making images until I started to produce work I was proud of.  And even then, it took me a long time before I started posting to the galleries. The oldest image in my gallery is 5 years older than the gallery itself.   I started frequenting forums to keep up with all of the information generous people share there.  Over the years, my skills and knowledge has grown.  At first I was horrible at painting anything.  I especially remember learning to paint hair, because I would follow tutorials and just not "get" it.  But I kept at it until something clicked.  Now painting hair is actually one of my strengths. 

     About 3 or 4 years ago, I decided to really learn to make things myself. Like many Poser hobbyists, I had a  huge library of items I'd bought and downloaded, but I still found that when I wanted to make an image, I didn't have exactly what I wanted.  I also found it saved me _tons_ of money to start with an idea and a sketch and buy what I needed rather than buying what was on sale because I might need it later.  I found when I put my own vision first, I often couldn't find the content I needed to make my work.  It just made sense to start making content.  I started with learning about materials, so I followed all of bagginsbill's (one of the people who have worked on the Poser Software that shares info in Renderosity) posts and freebies.  From his many and incredibly helpful posts and responses to questions, I learned to use his scripted material generator, Matmatic.  I have my own skin shader, and several different types of materials including lycra, velvet, suede, satin, and hair.  I also decided to make my own props and clothes.  After trying several tools, I found Blender 3D worked best for me.  I found it by far the easiest to learn what I wanted to do.  I use cloth dynamics in Blender to create dynamic clothes for Poser, and use box, polygon, and curve modeling to make everything else.  In the past year I've been progressing a lot in terms of both my material and modeling skills.  I've been learning a lot recently about UV mapping, and testing the limits of the Poser cloth room for a scene I've been creating with lots of parts and props.  Also, I'm finishing up work on my first in a series of figure texturing tutorials I plan to release for the market.

     But the year before that I took a break from CG altogether due to other pressures.  So it is possible to step away from this field and come back to it renewed.  My journey has been long and winding, and I've enjoyed every step.  I've grown immensely from where I began, and I'll soon continue on to learning Zbrush and Vue.