The people in your pictures: Characters or Models?
DaWaterRat
Posts: 2,882
I'm just curious about who puts their pictures together thinking of the people as models/actors/mannequins, and who makes the people into at least sketched out characters, with some backstory and personality?
I find it really difficult to do pinups, or pictures of generic "faeries" or other broad category types (pirates, vampires, teachers, teenagers, etc.) I can, and do, come up with the character as I'm setting them up with morphs and skin and wardrobe, but unless it's a background figure or similar. I find it difficult to just drop a figure into a scene and press "render." (and even then I probably think about it too much.) I don't necessarily get very detailed with the character details, but they get a bit of personality, a bit of history (at least as relevant to the image itself) sometimes a name...
I had the same problem with painting miniatures. I needed to know who they were before I could decide on the colors I wanted to use.
I'm sure those who see the figures as models (or even mannequins) think their scenes through thoroughly too, just I'm guessing the thought process is different.
So, how do you think of your figures?
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I'm like you. I treat them as characters. I have trouble getting poses or expressions that I like if I don't have some sort of personality or background story for my characters and their situations, even if I'm just doing a portrait.
I treat them as characters even if they are in portraits. I like both portraits because they emphasize the technical in a reductive way and I like the characters in renders. I find the characters when I go beyond portraiture are difficult to do a good render of that conveys the action well so I mostly relay on my own experience or other stories like TV shows and such.
Mine are characters
Characters. For me it's all about personality, and even though I own hundreds of pre-made characters, I always have to tweak them a bit so that they reflect the character traits and quirks I have in mind. And, once they're created, the ones that I like go into a virtual stock company that I keep dipping back into.
If it's a character that I sculpt the morph for and create a texture for, that's a character that gets fleshed out with a name and personality and all that. :) If it's someone else's character (a bought character) I treat them in my head like just "hired models/hired actors" and I'm the "photographer". lol I do tend to get attached to my OWN characters though - creating a character from scratch is a lot of work, energy, and time spent with one character, so while creating them I start to think of them as characters with backstory and having different personalities, etc. heheh :) I definitely find myself "fleshing out" my own characters in my head more than other people's characters that I buy.
My core business is utilities, props and poses, so a lot of the time they're like a hired model or actor to me (Okay, Mike, now stand over here while I dial the bum flat on your suit). I enjoy it when I get to do a product where the renders tell more of a story, and when I actually have time to try and do that, but those times are rarer. More often it's going to be like, "This is a darker magic thingy. I need a character that goes with it. I'll go with this pale lady with dark, saturated makeup I bought, and this other outfit that looks sort of sorceress-like. On this other render I want to use a non-white person so my renders won't be 100% similar-looking white people, so I'm going to make this starship captain black, and use the most middle-aged/distinguished morphs I can come up with from my library for that because a captain should be authoritative." And on like that. If I invent characters that primarily interest me personally, other than "generic muscular guy with little clothing on," they will not be marketable because I am weird.
..characters al the way. The two with the most extensive bakcgrounds are my namesake and Leela.
For me I think they start as models that become characters. If I only use them once or twice they never really made it to full character status. I don't use 100% stock character morphs because I see a particular model that isn't one of my "characters".
but I agree to get the most out of them they need to become characters, with some limits, traits and all that.
For me all of my characters I make have a story to them and behind them. If I were not a character creator they would just be models like "yes please lovely look at the camera" lol.
I think I lean more towards models than characters. For instance I kind of have an idea of the girl that shows up in all my MD clothing work, and the girl with the balloon definitely has a backstory, but everyone else is just like "that guy that stands in front of all my sky HDRs." I couldn't even tell you what his face looks like without checking.
Ditto. I can spend longer putting a character together than setting up a scene, and they always have a back story, whether the character is "old" or "young", and I try to bring that story into the renders, even if it's only a peek at their personality, like this one I did recently:
Characters. I always need to know who they are, why they are where they are and what their goals are even if it is just a portrait type scene. Like dragonfly_2004 I often spend as long filling out these details as I do setting up the scene.
For me they start out as models, but the longer I tweak them, morph them and give them expressions and poses, they turn into characters. Like one time, I was planning on doing a sexy pin-up but as it went along, she just looked sad, and I started thinking of the #MeToo movement and in my head, she had transformed into a girl who had slept with producers to get ahead in Hollywood and years later regretted it, missed her lost innocence and felt ashamed and sad and I ended up adding a teddy bear to the image as a symbol of her lost innocence... (This still needs postwork, I'm still working off my laptop and iPad in bed, still recovering from an upper respiratory infection.)
I'm rendering a webcomic, so it's usually characters who have a backstory and a story to tell.
For other renders, there are the "plain posing renders" where I just have the figure posing to test out the clothing, hair, skin, whatever... and sometimes, i just set up a figure because it looks great, without any other thought as getting the best pose that looks best.
For me it's most often characters, but occassionally it's just a model. I find it easier to create the render if I think of the figures as characters, and I also tend to find that kind of render more fun to make. From time to time though, the figures have been just models that has been used to create a picture. Not as fun to make (for me that is) but sometimes it's nice to just do and not think about backstory, character and such :)
They start out as mannequins, no life whatsoever. Then as I use them, they develop
their own personalities as they encounter different situations and grow, mature.
Sometimes my characters surprise me with the direction they take.
It's a webcomic, things change.
Every creation is a character. Either from my writing or my s/o's. XD With full blown personalities, background story, etc.
I have neither characters or models, I've got my boys. To me, they're unique and distinctly "butch" and each has his own, distinct, personality.
I guess, it's models for me. My renders are mostly stanalone, so I don't really feel like coming up backstories for everyone in my renders. Of course, since all the renders have some kind of story to tell, my models are not completely blank slates, but I hardly ever go beyond the things that are necessary for the render I'm working on. When I'm doing renders, I usually just have a basic idea about it.
Sometimes I have something particular in mind, most time not. Well, I start with base genesis whatever version. I dial in some interesting shapes head body etc, from my library. I then add some skin from my library and maybe use the same eye textures or maybe some other eyes from my library, Then I fine tune the character until I like what I see. Then once the character is developed, she/he tells me what she wants to wear. Then the clothes and the hair tells me how to pick a pose. I do mostly portrait type renders and no post work at all so all the lighting and background stuff is done all within Daz. And I use all versions from V3 stuff up to G8.
Right now I'm just playing around with the software to learn what possibilities it offers. So it''s just figures getting adjusted and changed and deleted again...
When I will start to make my first renders "to be kept" I will go at it from the other direction: What kind of scene do I want to make? What kind of people/creatures I need in it? Which figure fits the description I have in my mind? How do I have to adapt it to make it fit even better?
I'm more a storyteller than an artist.
For me most of the time they are just models when I'm just playing with Daz Studio. But recently Ive been doing more with developing characters.
My workflow tended to be create a scene and character, make a render then close without saving. One of my goals with creating characters in Daz Studio is to have people that are built like "normal people (Not super models). Recently I've been saving characters and scenes, and even started my own little light hearted scifi bubble universe. (The Sladen Stories)
Here are the two main characters so far :
Same for me. I think of them as "recurring characters" I guess.
Depends really. Sometimes I render a person, and it's like meh, and they end up a one off. Other times I really like it, and I save it out, and they become a regular in my render stable. Then They develop personalities over time. Sometimes they even talk to me, wait did I say that out loud?
When I was a little kid, I used to love drawing with a variety of colored magic markers. As I colored, each magic marker took on a personality of their own-- light blue and yellow were in a relationship with each other as were pink and green and red and black were also involved but mischievous and a bit evil, trying to break everyone else up LOL. I think most of us here have active imaginations and will do the same with characters we are creating.
Last night, with the big G3 M sale, I finally whipped out my G3M's and started rendering them and right away came up with a whole scenario involving a character and his son and aging father. I rarely use a character as is, but the first was DeShawn for G3M who I LOVE, he has so much personality as is! Then I tried out Growing up morphs on him, then aging morphs, creating a family for him and in my head a whole scenario between the three of them. I did each character separately because I'm on my low end laptop, but now I want to write some sort of story about them! I fell in love with my characters as I was creating them!
BTW, I kept making DeShawn's legs thinner because the pants that ARE for G3M kept clinging to his legs even though autofit should not have been in effect, thus the weird legs...
I think of them as hired actors or models too. I realized this one day when I was showing my husband a promo I was working and I said," I like this model. I've worked with her before." So I saved her with morph, skin, hair, dress as a scene subset and made a custom action so I can hire hre quickly if there is a need. I don't have name for her, just "main promo girl." The other model I frequently use is "the red haired girl," and my husband has his "sales girl" who works at the upscale lighting store.
Characters. I started dabbling in 3D art as a way to bring my RP characters to life, so most of my images tell a story of some sort or use one of my serial characters. I rarely use a stock figure as is, and once I start dialing in my own morphs, that figure starts gaining a story.