WELCOME TO THE VIRTUAL POSE ® MASTER COLLECTION
We are very excited about bringing professional and student artists alike this premium selection of never-before published poses designed to offer visually pleasing and challenging drawing, painting, and sculpting subjects! If you are new to Virtual Pose ®, allow me then to welcome you to our ever-growing family of artists and to give you a brief history of this project.
Artists who use Virtual Pose ® (VP) range from the amateur to the professional and everything in between. In the original VP1 and VP2 we aimed to strike a happy medium and offered a product that contained a little bit of everything. There were poses for reference, tutorial movies, and music for inspiration. However, many asked that we make the poses far bigger (and printing easier) even if it meant excluding the music and tutorial movies. And so it was with VP3 which—and unlike its two predecessors who lacked this advantage—was built upon a foundation backed by many letters and suggestions collected over the span of two years.
When we first came to the scene in 1998, the limitations of technology made it impossible to produce the kind of product you see today. Also, we began with a blank slate and had no idea if our labor of love would make it past the first modest printing, let alone flourish and put us in touch with so many artists who hung in there with us. Today, and as I see the "VP" series find its place next to books that have inspired me throughout my journey to find my own bliss, I am humbled.
And along the way, there were many challenges as well as crossroads. But none were so crucial as the one we found ourselves starting at as we all feel the global changes around us!
" THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN' "
You probably don't need me to remind you that our MOTHER EARTH needs our help.
That is why, the first thing you might notice about this Online Collection is the price!
This Online Collection is priced at considerably far less than what you might expect to pay for a comparable Virtual Pose ® Online Collection we currently offer. In fact, this new collection of forty-five (45) "Double High Resolution Poses" (by Virtual Pose ® 3 standards) is priced at around what a Hardcover Book and CD-ROM might sell for.
Now, that, is a first! And let me tell you why:
The Online Collection has always sold at a premium when compared with its traditional counterpart (Book & CD-ROM).
But what makes the Online Collection so much more expensive to acquire in the first place?
The short answer is : "Supply and Demand"
You see, in a perfect world, the revenues from the Online Collection would be equal to that of the Book and CD-ROM Collection. Then, and only then, could we have comparable pricing between both modes of distribution. But this has never (ever) been the case. Hence the price difference. Still, underneath it all, there was a silver lining:
For one thing, and to keep things fair, we made sure that no Online Collection would ever duplicate whatever would be currently in print.
That is why, for example, the "Virtual Pose ® 3" book and CD sells at a fraction of what the "Virtual Pose ® 3 Cutting Room Collection" sells for. The end-result was a symbiotic relationship between these two components: The Book functioned as a marketing tool for the the Online Collection and vice-versa. Add to that the fact we refuse to reduce the price on any Online Collection after having sold it at a premium price!
So, and taking all these factors into consideration, the real question became this:
How successful would we be if — and for the first time — we were to introduce an Online "VP" collection without any "Book with CD-ROM" counterpart and sell it at around what a Book with CD-ROM might cost?
"WE'VE BEEN HERE BEFORE..."
Oddly enough, and just as I felt when I first pitched the (then) "novel idea" of marrying art and technology in order to offer artists the next best thing to a live model, I find myself once again in uncharted territory. Add to that the global changes that are occurring at a rapid pace... In many ways, I feel that this outcome was inevitable. Hopefully, I am correct in my decision.
And just as it has always been, the success of this "greener" experiment hinges on your support.
I look forward to the next decade!
Warm Regards,
Mario Henri Chakkour, AIA
