https://www.posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=982&p=13081#p13081
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Tormie
Wednesday, 29 September 2004, 04:37 PM

The interview of the month with Ahjah !
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Here comes the long awaited interview with our friend Ahjah, the last lottery winner (500 candies for him too :banana1: ). What about Ahjah ? I know that he lives in Germany, which is a big place not very far from here in the north direction. What I know of Germans is that they have the best beer in the world :droll2: (but Ahjah is analcoholic 8-[ ), that there are no speed limits on certain freeways  :bigrinnin: and that they are free of charges  :bigrinnin:  :bigrinnin:  :bigrinnin: (the last time I was there I tried something with my old station wagon but a serie of big bmw, porsche and mercedes humiliated me :crybaby: ). Their Gas stations are very complicated  :-k  :-k because they have a lot of different types of gasoline and I didn't know what to choose  :-k  :-k  :-k so I filled the tank of my old station wagon with a high octane gasoline  :bigrinnin:  :bigrinnin:  :bigrinnin: ...

Ok, ok here is the interview, I hope you will enjoy it  :) !!

- Tell us a little about yourself...personal background, family, etc. What ever you are comfortable with.

I was born way back 1963 in a small (~ 70,000 people here) town named Detmold (Germany, former Western Germany), I´m still (again) living here, and I like it.
It´s not too overcrowded, but for it´s the capital of our region, it´s not boring either. The environment is mainly green hills with fields and forests, not much industrie, really a nice place to live in.
I have two Parents (!), still alife and feeling well, and one sister, a little younger than me. She´s married and has a little daughter.
I haven´t been this lucky with partnerships, yet, so I´m living as a single at the moment, no kids, too(I think... 8-[acronym="bad smelling human gas"]al education on trumpet and piano. I allways liked painting a lot too ( but I´m not very good a that, I´m not very patient. Starting with one picture, I get 100 new ideas, and it all ends up in a mess).
Referring to my mother, the first picture I painted was, when I was two and sitting potty with a crayon and a sheet of paper in front of me. When she asked me, what I was painting, my answer was:"poo". :sick: 

After school, wich I did´nt like at all (it bored me to death, so I didn´t actually finish it), I learnd a profession that maybe someting like "Brass Intrument Maker" in english, building trumpets, trombones, and so on.
I liked it a lot, but unfortunally its not much need of people, who can do this by hand. Most brass instruments are made by machines, nowadays.
So I work here and there, and, of course, play music, which is the greatest thing on earth,´cause I can make peaople feel good without harming anybody, and playing life on stage, I can see and feel the instant result of what I´m doing.
I never wanted to be a million-seller record star, just want to play on stage.
I don´t get rich this way, but I can do it MY way, at least. =; 

That´s most of the story.

- Where are you now?

here...                                                                                    there...

                             somewhere in between   (I´m not quite shure, really)

- Do you have a personal site ? If yes where is it ?

It´s at http://www.ahjah.de . There´s a gallery of some early Terragen and Bryce3D stuff, not updated since years... :whistle: 

- All the people here know that you're a musician ! Are you able to play music with farts ?

No, when it comes to farting, I don´t have much control about.

- Do you fart alone or do you consider farting a nice way to socialize and make new friends ?

I don´t have much control about.

- Do you drink beer ? If yes, what's your favourite type of beer ?

No (no alcohol at all). I´m an alcoholic and started drinking when I was twelve (!), but I´m sober since fourteen years by now.
There´s no drug any worse than alcohol. It´s avaliable everywere, and most people don´t even think of it as a drug, but it is. 
Just look around, it destroys the families, causes trouble of all kinds, car accidents, men beating up their women (or the other way ´round) or each other, or their children.
If anybody is in real trouble, just have a closer look at it, and you´ll see, alcohol is the reason, in most cases.
I was lucky. I learned to fight it.  [acronym="typical behaviour of a posetteforever member"]innin:  

 - How long have you been working with digital art, 3D and/or Poser?

My first attemps, I did about five years ago with Terragen and a little Bryce and Poser2 (!!),
but somehow it wasn´t, what I had been looking for a that time. So my head went on to other things.
The change came, when I found a free copy of Poser3 on a cover CD of a computer magazine, ´bout two years ago.
It came as promotion for the new Poser5, hitting the market that time, I think.
I started seaching the web for freebies and information, discovering most of the stuff was meant for use in Poser4 already.
I don´t have a regular income, just manage to keep me kicking. So I cannot afford buying software and stuff.
I like fighting limitations, and got pretty good at that over the years. So I tought myself hacking .cr2 and .obj files, learned to use UV-mapper and how to create own morphs.
This way I discovered to get most of the Poser4 stuff to work in my old Poser3 as well.
It still has to work for me.

- Do you consider yourself an artist or a hobbyist when it comes to digital art?

I´m a hobbyist and will ever be. If it comes to art, I play music. I´m better at that.

- Do you use a particular tecnique ?

No, I just let go (just like farting).

- What got you interested in digital art?

I´ve been interested in photography for a long time.
For me, digital (3D) art is quite similar to photography, but with the advantage of complete control over the motiv.
Maybe that´s why I don´t like to postwork my renders in most cases, I´d never paint on a good photograph, either.
(the other reason is, I´m really [acronym:252f39f57f="typical behaviour of a posetteforever member"]lazy[/acronym], too)

- We know that you're a pure Posette/Dork artist, why ?

One of the reasons is the permanent lac of money I mentioned above. But there are more.
I´ve tried other free figures, too (H.E.R., Sara, Kaedeko, LaLaLa, the Mike and Vickie LoRes freebies, Stacy Lo Res, Maya Doll..., are there more? Did I miss one?).
None of them really fit my expectations. The Posette3 that came with Poser3 worked pretty well for me.
But I was lucky. One day I downloaded a P4F char zip from the web (I was looking for some headmorphs, they work for P3 and P4),
and found a Posette4 like obj in it, that should not have been in there, I know. It doesn´t work with Objaction Mover, I cannot decode me an Eve or April´s Vickie-mapped Posette.
But all the standard Posette4 morphs and textures work with that mesh, at least.
This is the Posette, you can see in most of my renders, and for me, she´s still the greatest of them all.  :heartbeat:  :heartbeat:  :heartbeat: 

- Do you have formal training or are you self taught?

I´m self tought and learning by looking at and inspecting what other people do ( think, it´s called osmosis?).

- What's your favourite artistic style?

Nothing special. If it touches my heart and soul, it´s right for me.

- We already know you are a musician. Do you have other hobbies or special interests?

I´m interested in politics, and active in an oecological and antifascistic community ´round here.
And I love walking barefoot, from spring to autumn I don´t wear any shoes at all.

- Do your farts smell very bad or no one notice when you make them?

Ask the people around me... :oops:  :bigrinnin: 

- Where is your strength coming from?

I don´t believe in God. I believe in the universe as one great unity. Every creature, every tree, stone, butterfly, good or evil, is a part of it.
Everything and everybody has it´s place, and the right to be there and to be just like it is. Otherwise this universe wouldn´t be, like it is, and no one would be there to ask and answer any question.
Respect is the key.

- Where is your hat coming from ?

Wich hat? The hat I had on my head, when I had a hat on my head, or the hat that I had under the hat that I had not on my head when I had no hat on?  :bigrinnin:  :bigrinnin:  :bigrinnin: 

- Where is this marjuana coming from ?

Maria, who, Anna?  :-k 

- Do you know what is a "[acronym:252f39f57f="Unknown word, a mistery..."]schicken[/acronym]"?

I think so, but I won´t tell.  [acronym="bad smelling human gas"]en to Oktoberfest ?

Not my style, I prefer the Woodstock kind of festivals.

- Do you use to fart when you're in the tub just to see all those bubbles ?

I only have a shower, unfortunally.

- What's your favourite digital art site ? (*wink* *wink* *blink* *blink*)

posetteforever (what else?)

- Have you a suggestion for posetteforever ?

Only one thing, some of the graphics on the top of the pages, especially on Posy´s Playground are quite heavy and are loading really slow on a dial up connection.
Besides this you and Posy are doing a great job here and posetteforever is actually the cosiest place ´round the web.

- What's your favourite book?

I´m not reading too much, mainly non fiction. But if I think about it, yes, there are some.
D. Adams´ "Hitchhiker´s Guide..", and some Stanislav Lem stuff, I don´t know the english titles.

- What's your favourite music band or singer (except you and your band) ?

That is not easy to answer. I use to listen to all kinds of music. First of all, there are the three big "B"s (J. S. Bach, L. van Beethoven, the Beatles)
I grew up with Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, AC-DC. I love blues from the early days as Leadbelly up to Chicago style Muddy Waters.
Playing reggae, theres Bob Marley, of course, but a reggae band from Berlin, Seeed, too, who mix english and german lyrics in a really fresh and modern way.
I adore Bobby McFerrin, and his philosophy of music, and there´s much, much more....

- Do you use to sing under the shower?

Not only there, but too.

- What's your favourite movie?

To mention just two, there´s Star Wars (the first one, released in the ´70th), and Monty Pythons´ Life of Brian

- Where you would go now ?

to the mall, buy me some food. My fridge is really empty.

- Are you the one who wants to kill Tormentor ?

nope!  [-(  [-(  [-( 


Thank you Ahjah  :bigrinnin: !!


