A somewhat productive week
First off, I made some avatars for various folk on RPG.net:
Each of these hand-crafted, quality avatars took hours of procrastination before I started on them.
Then I spent a couple of days making a model of this young woman:
Here's a montage of some of the stages I went through, trying refine the model from the base (Victoria 4) to a not-unreasonable likeness:
The first face is perfectly cromulent, and - if I've still got a version somewhere - I may re-use her in something, but is actually pretty far from the target. Face #2 has had her cranium remodelled, and her skin subtly altered (you may notice that the eyebrows are slightly darker). Face #3 is a few more nudges in her physiognomy towards the subject, and I swapped the hair model. I can't do hair; I rely on free and cheap models, preferably with a lot of morphs. This hair model doesn't match what I wanted, but on the other hand it's just hair, so I went with it.
Somewhere around versions #4-6, the model got a severe face flattening to match the subject photos. I hadn't realised how flat the subject's face was until I'd been studying the photos for a while. Unlearning what you think you're seeing in favour of what is actually there can be pretty hard, sometimes. I thought I was pretty close by this time, so I put a bit of expression into the pose and changed the hair colour just for the heck of it.
I thought I was done, but looking again last night, I think I made her face too wide and left her eyes too far apart. I may go back and do some more adjusting, but I might be at the stage where trying to change things is just going to push the model further away from the subject. We'll see.
At one point I put a gun into the model's hand, and while adjusting the position (the Glock didn't come with a handy pose to put it in the right place automatically) I suddenly noticed the picture the hand camera view was giving me, and decided I liked it, so I rendered it.
Anyhow, here's a montage showing how I developed the body:
I think body#1 here is from before face#1 above, judging by the hair. At this point, I'd shortened the model's limbs - because the Victoria 4 model has extremely over-long legs and arms, I find - and reduced her bust size. At body#2 I'd tweaked the skin for the first time - she has pubic hair! - and got her breasts more-or-less right. Body#3, corresponding to face#3 above, shows further tweaks to the skin and I'd shortened her toes a bit (Victoria 4 has monkey toes). Experimenting with pubic topiary in Photoshop I got a naturalistic looking bush, but growing in the wrong place.
At body#5 I'd gotten the pubic hair so that it looked not so bad, and was still fiddling with the model's face. Body#6 is where I flattened her face and grew her chin a fraction, and then decided I was done.
But I had a few changes to go: a little tweaking of the skin texture, and a subtle change to her proportions. I increased the size of the model by a per-cent or so, then shortened her legs again to keep her the same height. If you hold a ruler up to the screen, you might be able to discern that her crotch is a smidgeon lower and her breasts look a little larger. I put some asymmetry into her pose (it took a while to get her left hand where it wasn't hovering a short distance from her leg or disappearing into her thigh), added the gun for interest's sake and anime-ed her hair colour.
Come to think of it, I may have tweaked her breasts a bit before I finished.
Midway through all that, I banged out this handsome fellah in a couple of hours in response to a request at RPG.net:
Based heavily on James Callis (aka Dr Gaius Baltar) (although I called the model "Smirky McSmirk"), he actually looks as much like the subject as some of the models I spend a couple of days on, I think. Maybe I'm getting faster, or maybe I just haven't been spending hours staring at Callis' photos, so I'm not noticing all the things that start to stand out in a multi-day session.
Gosh, I almost feel like a professional. I just have to work on that 'getting paid' thing a bit though.
PS I'll get back to the airshow photos by-and-by.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are
comments.
Each of these hand-crafted, quality avatars took hours of procrastination before I started on them.
Then I spent a couple of days making a model of this young woman:
Here's a montage of some of the stages I went through, trying refine the model from the base (Victoria 4) to a not-unreasonable likeness:
The first face is perfectly cromulent, and - if I've still got a version somewhere - I may re-use her in something, but is actually pretty far from the target. Face #2 has had her cranium remodelled, and her skin subtly altered (you may notice that the eyebrows are slightly darker). Face #3 is a few more nudges in her physiognomy towards the subject, and I swapped the hair model. I can't do hair; I rely on free and cheap models, preferably with a lot of morphs. This hair model doesn't match what I wanted, but on the other hand it's just hair, so I went with it.
Somewhere around versions #4-6, the model got a severe face flattening to match the subject photos. I hadn't realised how flat the subject's face was until I'd been studying the photos for a while. Unlearning what you think you're seeing in favour of what is actually there can be pretty hard, sometimes. I thought I was pretty close by this time, so I put a bit of expression into the pose and changed the hair colour just for the heck of it.
I thought I was done, but looking again last night, I think I made her face too wide and left her eyes too far apart. I may go back and do some more adjusting, but I might be at the stage where trying to change things is just going to push the model further away from the subject. We'll see.
At one point I put a gun into the model's hand, and while adjusting the position (the Glock didn't come with a handy pose to put it in the right place automatically) I suddenly noticed the picture the hand camera view was giving me, and decided I liked it, so I rendered it.
Anyhow, here's a montage showing how I developed the body:
I think body#1 here is from before face#1 above, judging by the hair. At this point, I'd shortened the model's limbs - because the Victoria 4 model has extremely over-long legs and arms, I find - and reduced her bust size. At body#2 I'd tweaked the skin for the first time - she has pubic hair! - and got her breasts more-or-less right. Body#3, corresponding to face#3 above, shows further tweaks to the skin and I'd shortened her toes a bit (Victoria 4 has monkey toes). Experimenting with pubic topiary in Photoshop I got a naturalistic looking bush, but growing in the wrong place.
At body#5 I'd gotten the pubic hair so that it looked not so bad, and was still fiddling with the model's face. Body#6 is where I flattened her face and grew her chin a fraction, and then decided I was done.
But I had a few changes to go: a little tweaking of the skin texture, and a subtle change to her proportions. I increased the size of the model by a per-cent or so, then shortened her legs again to keep her the same height. If you hold a ruler up to the screen, you might be able to discern that her crotch is a smidgeon lower and her breasts look a little larger. I put some asymmetry into her pose (it took a while to get her left hand where it wasn't hovering a short distance from her leg or disappearing into her thigh), added the gun for interest's sake and anime-ed her hair colour.
Come to think of it, I may have tweaked her breasts a bit before I finished.
Midway through all that, I banged out this handsome fellah in a couple of hours in response to a request at RPG.net:
Based heavily on James Callis (aka Dr Gaius Baltar) (although I called the model "Smirky McSmirk"), he actually looks as much like the subject as some of the models I spend a couple of days on, I think. Maybe I'm getting faster, or maybe I just haven't been spending hours staring at Callis' photos, so I'm not noticing all the things that start to stand out in a multi-day session.
Gosh, I almost feel like a professional. I just have to work on that 'getting paid' thing a bit though.
PS I'll get back to the airshow photos by-and-by.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are
comments.