I had the same dilemma. I was writing my own novel which exceeded few books but I was lacking in drawing skills to create stuff to represent and materialize some of things from my novel.

Like you, I turned to Poser first few years ago. But never really got into it. Few months ago, I tried again and realized Poser was progressively dying and that Daz3D was blossoming. So, I gave Daz3D a go. It was free after all …
Only to realize later that it wasn’t really free. I had to purchase some assets to create very high quality renders. But like how you felt, I was NOT satisfied. They were not my creations. But I still am using Daz3D even now because my main priority was creating my own spaceship due to Sci fi nature of my writing. I never imagined I’d spent over a month in trying to learn Blender. But it was my only choice as other applications, like Modo, 3Dmax, and so on, were insanely expensive.

I did manage to complete modelling my first space cruiser at which point I grew familiar with how Blender works and decided to perhaps model my own figure…
I will probably get a quick human model done in Makehuman and export it to Blender.

Thanks for the nice read.

Thanks for reading!

It was pretty important for me to go all the way, especially with regards in creating something that I can call my own.

The hardest part I think was making this model have a Toon look and feel to it since in Blender it’s easy to create a gradient-rich CG look. I really put a lot of effort in trying to make this model look as less CG as possible, something closer to what I would create in Photoshop or Illustrator by having full control of where the light/shadows would be placed (whether or not it was totally accurate). Getting a bold sharp and clean contrast between light and shadow was both easy and difficult (part materials, part lights and part topology), but I feel I’ve accomplished most of that especially in the 2nd image posted above.

In Anime, I know there are many shading types used for different scenes, so I experimented with both Hard/Soft lighting as seen above, one day to be used in scenes that would benefit from that kind of setup.

The sad thing is that people can achieve cool looking anime chars but don’t go the whole path as you stated before – reaching into an anime. More obsticals to overcome on this steep and rocky path, like background drawings, story boards, compositions. Still a few know how to reach the end goal. Never quit on giving up and just go for it.

People do know about Makoto Shinkai, the man who made “5 cm per second” and “The places promised in our early days”. He was groundbreaking in using CG in stead of real paintings. But what few people know is that he started out with a very nice and small anime called “She and her cat”. 5 minutes of quality and teaches you that a story is more often important then only the visuals.After that he quit his job and shut himself down for 8 months and created “Voices from a distant star” which debuted his big breakthrough. Sure he was already involved in the gameindustry but still it was a big gamble.

So what does that teach you, infact just go onward and learn from others. There are more people who have the same goal. I am very active on the google+ community “3D Anime” and yes there are only a few active members but those who are active strife for the best possible result and thus inspire others. Drop by and learn from the posts in there.