Post by Ratqueen on Feb 12, 2017 23:00:33 GMT -5
Why show your petz?
Because it's a nice way to show off your special petz, either home-bred, adopted, or hexed, instead of letting them rot on your hard disk, unseen by anyone! Because it's rewarding, and you will feel a real sense of pride when you and your pet earns the coveted SGCh. title, making him or her all the more special to you! And because it's just plain fun!
You can now even keep track of your petz' careers in your very own Showroom on RKC!What is the ultimate goal?
The goal is to earn points, awarded by the person/judge who opened the show. Most people retire their petz when they win the SGCh. title (Supreme Grand Champion), which is earned at 30 show points. You can see a full list of show placements and pointage, show titles, as well as their meaning and points by clicking this link: Show Points and Titles System
The Guide below was created by Jewellz, with an extra section on Skinny Poses contributed by Ali. Thank you!
This guide is written specifically for Petz 3 & 4. A lot of it applies to Petz 5, since poses are identical in both games, but the steps to getting a pose are slightly different. If you have P3/4, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you pose in one of them whenever possible. In Petz 3 & 4, once a dog starts posing, it doesn't stop for a bit unless you pet it or pick it up, but in Petz 5, the dog will stop posing once you take a picture, so you only get one chance for a picture per posing sequence and your timing has to be razor sharp!
I would also like to add that this guide is purely based upon my knowledge and opinions gathered over the past 8+ years of showing dogz in the petz community. In a perfect world, a pose would be judged the same by every judge, however, each judge is different and has their own preferences & knowledge base. What I think is a "perfect" pose might not be exactly what someone else thinks.
Posing a Dog
Tweak your settings for optimum pose quality. Turn on Auto Save Photos under General Options in the game. If you have Sherlock Software's PetzA, go to Settings and set the camera picture format to GIF or PNG, your choice! I also like to set the game speed to something a tad slower, so it's easier to align the dog and know when the pose is starting. I keep my game at 62 (50 is normal) at all times, since I am frequently posing dogz, and sometimes turn it to 75 (even slower) if I have a problem dog that doesn't want to cooperate.
Bring out your dog and make sure all your toys are put away and the dog isn't wearing any clothes, since toys and clothes in a pose will usually disqualify your dog. If you have PetzA, make sure your dog's sliders are in order, I keep mine at 100 energy & fullness, and 60 fatness. For fatness while posing, anything below 50 is too skinny and anything above 70 is too fat so 60 is a good middle spot. If it is taking a long time to get poses from your dog, just remember to regularly check the sliders and increase the energy, fullness, & fatness to keep them in good shape.
Align your dog. Pick up your dog and set it down when you think it will land aligned (when the front legs are close together). As you hold your dog, it will spin around, so just hold onto it until you think it's in the right position. For original breed dogz, I wait until both eyes line up while I'm holding the dog and then drop it, and it's usually aligned. However, the rule for original breeds is to always align the front wrists. You get better with practice at knowing when it is, and isn't, aligned. Keep your cursor in front of the dog and don't move it too far away, since most of the time the dog will want to be near it and facing it. Keeping it close and in front of the dog will minimize the jumping and moving about that the dog will do.
Helpful tip: If your dog is a trotter and constantly falls and flops around when you set it down, drop it near the bottom of the screen, so it will land on its feet!
Start snapping pictures (about 1 or two every second) and eventually the dog will start posing. If the dog reacts some other way, like "spooking" or doing a trick, stop taking pictures until it stops, you may even have to re-align the dog if it has moved or jumped around.
The Petzpix folder can only hold around 250 images or so and then it will stop auto-saving, so if you've been snapping pics for some time, minimize your game and clean out the Petzpix folder (either move or delete the images) so it won't fill up right in the middle of a pose. Just keep aligning and snapping pictures until the dog poses. This can take some time and is the most frustrating part. Once your dog has posed a couple times and been rewarded for them, it will pose easier and easier for you. I have some dogz that pose as soon as I take a picture now.
Dogz always start posing with a front (Dali) pose and move directly into a profile (Dane) pose from there. The correct head position on the profile pose can be quite difficult to obtain and take multiple attempts, so front poses are much easier to get. Once your dog starts to pose, quickly hold the spacebar down, or rapidly hit the spacebar repeatedly, so you can take as many pictures as possible of all the stages of the pose. Once the dog finishes its pose, start petting it so it knows it did well. Then you can go take a look at the images you got to see if any are show-worthy.
When you look at the images you took, open the ones you think are good enough in whatever image editing program you have, zoom in and look at the nose, eyes, and paws in detail. Draw lines underneath the eyes and from back paw to back paw and see if they are in line. Compare all the images you took to determine which is best. Be sure you DON'T save the image though, that will ruin your pose!
I've created a short 3.5 minute video example (below) posing one of my dogz. It illustrates all of this pretty well, and if you're still confused, it's worth watching! There's sound but I promise it's not too loud, I thought it would be helpful for you to hear the camera noise to know when I was and wasn't taking pics. Also, the video is best viewed in fullscreen.
Video highlights:
- 0:53: Spooked pose: surprised eyes, missing eyelids, wonky ears - NOT A POSE!
- 1:10: Dog begins posing going right into a front (Dali) pose!
- 1:12: Dog moves into a profile (Dane) pose straight from the front pose.
- 1:26: Dog begins posing, I ended it early by petting him, he wasn't aligned correctly.
- 1:44: Dog begins posing again, this time aligned!
- 1:50: The "error" you'll get when your Petzpix folder fills up.
- 2:00 & on: Sorting through pics to find the correct poses.
Accepted Poses
The two most common poses for a dog are the front (Dali) pose and the profile (Dane) pose. Any breed of dog can do a front or profile pose, (except Poodles) though some breeds tend to look better in only one or the other. Most dogz that have a Poodle personality are incapable of doing a front or profile pose. A couple less-common pose styles include the Poodle pose & 3/4 pose which will not be covered in this guide since they are almost never accepted in shows these days.
Profile Pose
The next thing to look at is the legs. You want both the front and back legs to be as aligned as possible. Some breeds align perfectly, while others do not. The best way to align original breeds is by lining them up at the front wrists since their legs rarely align perfectly. Sometimes aligning them by the front wrists means their front or back paws will line up exactly, but that is not always the case. I will cover alignment in detail with each individual original breed further down.
Last but not least, the tail. Some breeds don't even have a tail, or they have an addball tail which doesn't move. However, if the tail moves, it should be curled nice and tight over the rear of the dog. The tail will curve the tightest when the dog is the most puffed up, us dog handlers call it "the highest breathing point," just before the dog is going to exhale its breath. The ideal time to snap profile pose pictures is at the highest breathing point.
Front Pose
Here is an animated GIF showing the sequence of a dog posing. I held the spacebar down so the game took pictures as fast as possible. I've slowed the two frames where the breathing point is the best for a front pose and a profile pose and marked them with a gold star, so you can't miss them! If you have Petz 5, holding down the spacebar won't work, so you'll just have to time when you take the picture for the correct moment.
Skinny Poses
Despite its appellation, what people call a "skinny" pose has nothing to to with the actual dog's fatness level, and is something that does not exist in cat posing. It might not be immediately noticeable to the untrained eye. In my past experience, and in my opinion, a skinny pose should be disqualified. If you don't want to DQ anyone, it still should never place above HM. So, what does a skinny pose look like?
I wasn't able to capture the correct breathing point for the first pose, so ignore the nose shape here. But can you see the differences in the dog's shape? A skinny pose is exactly that -- it's a normal pose in every way except the chest and torso ballz appear small and deflated, which in turn makes the dog look emaciated. This normally happens after a dog does a normal pose, you pet it, and then it poses again. Sometimes it just happens randomly (?) though. It is not aesthetically appealing at all.
Original Breeds
This section covers all of the Dogz 4 original breeds, except the Poodle.
Bulldog
This breed is pretty hard to pose. They have an un-cooperative personality to begin with, and their legs and paws are so small compared to their body that it's not much fun to align them.
In a front pose, the eyes should be almost level, with their left eye sitting one row of pixels above their right eye. The tail should be slightly curved and the nose should be heart-shaped. A Bulldog nose is a little smaller & sloppier than say, a Dalmatian nose, so sometimes the three balls that make up the nose shift around a little. If the heart-shape is lopsided but still distinguishable, it should be acceptable and not faulted much, if at all.
Chihuahua
This breed is not for beginners! They're relatively hard to pose because their ears are SO large and awkward that it's hard to make them look good in a profile pose. They also don't have a heart-shaped nose, so it's also a little harder to tell when the head is centered in a front pose. It doesn't help that they're so tiny!
Dachshund
These guys are so much fun but they tend to be goofballs and prone to doing a lot of tricks and playful things when you take pics, instead of poses. They can also be a bit tricky because they have the shortest legs of all.
In a profile pose, the head should be held as high as possible. The Dachshund poses with a pretty blank expression and not my eyelid showing, so they tend to look pretty wide-eyed, and that's fine. They like to tilt their head more than other breeds, so you need to make sure that you can only see one side of the nose, not the far side sticking up over the nearer side.
For a front pose, the eyelids should be minimal & the nose should be a lopsided/uneven heart-shape. A perfect heart-shaped nose in the front pose would mean that the dog is not as puffed up and proud looking as it should be. The ears should sit close to the head and hang as low as possible. The eyes should be one pixel unlevel, any more than that and the head is too crooked.
Dalmatian
This breed is arguably the easiest of all the dog breeds to pose. A lot of realistic showy hexed breeds are based on the Dalmatian personality because it poses easily and frequently. It doesn't look too bad in a profile pose, but it's best shown in the pose named after it: the front/Dali pose.
Great Dane
These big guys are one of the easiest of all the dog breeds to get a pose out of, but probably one of the hardest to actually get right. It's best shown in the profile/Dane pose because, well, their faces just don't look good in a front pose haha. Their ears are crooked, their eyes are crooked, it's just... not that great.
Labrador
This breed is relatively hard to align since the back legs need to be more offset from each other than the rest of the original breeds, this is where the rule to align by the front wrists is most obvious. They are as willing as a Dalmatian to pose (as many times as needed) for you. ?
In a front pose, you want the eyes to be as level as possible which is usually in line or one row of pixels offset. A heart-shaped nose is pretty easy to achieve, but the Lab nose tends to move around a bit easier than some breeds so if the heart-shape is lopsided or imperfect but still distinguishable, it's okay and shouldn't be faulted much, if at all. Lab ears are, in my opinion, one of the ugliest in a pose. The right is always a little smushed looking and sits closer to the head than the left.
Mutt
This breed can either be really easy or pretty difficult. It just depends on the dog and the style of pose you want.
In a front pose, the eyes and ears are going to be pretty crooked. The right eye will sit two rows of pixels lower than the left eye, and the left ear will sit a few rows of pixels higher than the right. In both poses, the tail should be curled into a C-shape.
Scottie
These guys are pretty easy to align! I think it's because their paws are pretty big. They look good in both pose styles.
Sometimes their eyebrows can go a little crazy and cover up some of the eyelid and eye, and that's perfectly okay. In a front pose, the bottoms of the eyes should line up within one or two rows of pixels with each other, the more in line, the better.
Sheepdog
This breed is not for beginners! Sheepdogs have such fat & furry legs that it's really hard to tell when/if they're aligned until after the posing is done and you can zoom in on their pics to see. Though they do look great in either style of pose once you get them lined up right. ?
In a profile pose, the nost should be held as high as possible and the tail (if they have one) should curve really nice over their back and point at the neck. If you can see more than a couple pixels of the far ear at the back of the head, then the head is turned too far away from the camera.
For a front pose, you'll want the Sheepie ears' fuzz to kind-of line up and point horizontally out from the eyebrows. Each ear should be almost a mirror of the other. The eyes should be as level as possible, and the bottoms of both eyes should sit no more than one row of pixels above or below the other eye. They have an identical nose to the Dalmatian, so the perfect heart-shaped nose should be easy to achieve.
Mixed Breeds
Mixed breeds can be tougher to pose since they can have parts made up from all of the original breeds. The general rule to remember is to align by the front wrists. If you're having trouble finding the ideal pose for your mixed dog, you can always ask for critique or help.
Overwrites & Hexies
Hexed petz and petz from overwrite files can be slightly tougher than mixed breeds to pose but it's the same basic principle, align by the front wrists or use your best guess. Some shows don't allow overwrites or hexies that are too far away from the original breedfile though, so if you've got a dragon or a dolphin or something, you might not have the best time showing it.
Realistic Breeds
Realistic breeds (aka hyper-realistic breeds or showy breeds) are hexed breedfiles meant to look good in a pose. Because they're hexed for showing, one pair of their legs and toes usually line up exactly, so you can easily tell if they're not aligned correctly. On most breeds, it's the front legs or toes that line up, but on a few (very few), it's the back. I recommend posing a few dogz from the breedfile and comparing all of their poses so you can narrow down what looks the best, because each breed can be pretty different. If the file is more "petzy" and less realistic, try aligning by the front wrists.
The Petz Kennel Club is the usual place that people show realistic breeds, but unless the show's rules say otherwise, realistic breeds are welcome in shows on forums and sites! Sometimes if I have a new breedfile I've never posed before, I'll search that breed on the PKC site and hopefully find some images of it in a pose so I can see how they look and then it's a little less work for me to figure out what a good pose looks like for it.
![[thumbup]](http://storage2.proboards.com/216663/images/TOVmNkVKkylWkNpJYDOX.gif)
I've be wanting a similar test for dogz, but it's rather time-consuming to make (although fun).