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I'm decidedly unnatural, then. I've seen plenty, and have zero curiosity or desire to see more from any gender unless it's part of my job and I'm getting paid. And even then it's simply a body belonging to the person I'm taking care of, and I have as much interest in the distinguishing bits as, say, an elbow. Seeing is necessary for the task, sometimes, but it's not like I'm actively curious about it if it's not.
Don't I know what it's like to have been a bottom runger at school!
Marina - my avatar - is one of the witches. I think I recently researched a new name for her - to protect her identity in my VN - but I don't have my notes to hand at this moment. She's Roman, circa 80CE, and a devotee of Trivia (Hecate). There may be one or two other witches splattered about the forums, but maybe I should be posting more.
Back on topic to this thread - I love watching others bring their characters to life as much as I enjoy giving voice and form to my own. I'll happily make introductions to my witches to anyone who makes me an introduction to theirs, @SilverGirl and others. Maybe a thread exists somewhere?
Sounds like there is context involved. Questions I might ask probably just get me in trouble. So I keep quiet, accept your answer, and wish you a good day.
I get that people have had traumatic lives
have been a few threads lately I have found overwhelming to read
as an Ace woman who has only touched a male body part very gingerly and extremely briefly with one finger in a male strip club (he was allowing women too, was not unsolicited) and has never touched another woman except myself and my mother being born
I admit I don't really have the physical experiences to understand
but what I do have is the commonsense to not overly attribute my own feelings or perceived feelings of others to an inanimate object, be it a 3D mesh, a drawn artwork or some other proxy figyre and then feel trauma on its behalf
life is hard enough without creating more drama
maybe for therapeutic reasons one could
poking vodoo dolls with pins is heaps better than stabbing your enemies
or try thumping a pillow etc
but if anthropomorphiicising your 3D models is actually causing you more distress
maybe just stop it
cuddle a cat and stroke it instead
I can feel some empathy for characters in a work of fiction, a film, or a book, even though I know they are not 'real'. Indeed I will often stop watching or reading if I don't feel something about the characters. For me 3D characters are similar, maybe that's why I tend to avoid fantasy creatures,because I can't relate that they would ever be 'real'. Strangely a long time ago I spent quite a while in Secondlife where it was commonplace to meet a whole range of fantasy avatars, some of whom became good friends.
It is good for me to see these other perspectives... I confess I don't really regard the characters I have purchased or cobbled together as personalities per se. They are more iconography which i can associate and map human like behavior when I create a scene. I realize a portion of this is family history. A bunch of my family did 23&me and discussed our family history; I actually saw the records where my great grandfathers bought my great grandmother in slave auctions in the early 1860's. there is a fascination in the reciprocal relationship between people who project human emotion on non human things and those who strip humanity from real humans to treat them as non human things. I don't think you can have one without the other. I am also very allergic to dogs and cats and seem to lack the "pet" thing. It doesn't help that I knew a fair amount of people who did research in animal neurology and behavior. Hence, I appreciate the role pets play as companions and tools but find the Rorschach like projection of their owners far more interesting. Unfortunately, that is the rub... we mold both non human creatures and things and people we choose to think of as non human to fit a persona that suits us.
LOL I'm a nurse, not an "adult companion." =P (No shade to those who are. Just... not a path for me.)
Or we could start one! :)
I don't have quite the ancestoral trauma in my geneology but do know several of mine were in somewhat forced marriages due to circumstance
(at least one possible rape or at least grooming of a minor by a much older husband and shotgun wedding)
with ongoing domestic abuse that even happened in my own lifetime in that my parents never left me alone with my grandfather and nobody really mourned his death
Mum left home at 16,
would not be surprised if that was the case going all the way back too, up the generations
history is awful but we must never hide it, rather learn from it and do better
I know this is getting off topic though, I do think it needs to be openly talked about
So out of curiosity, how do you define fantasy creatures? I'm guessing dragons and such animal-esque beings would count, but where would elves or dwarves or other human-adjacent races (including, for example, most of what's on Star Trek) fall on your personal spectrum?
For anyone who has a thread on the art forum about their characters or world, maybe we could cross-link here, for anyone curious? Or include gallery links if they're not in a sig line? (I'm awful at finding anything in the gallery, but I love seeing what people I'm chatting with create. :) )
I have a thread about creating characters. I've been debating whether to actually introduce my characters in it, and talk about them.
I haven't started one because... well, I didn't figure anyone would be interested, and also it feels weird talking about them instead of writing about them. Not sure if those align with your reasoning at all, but if so, I get it. And for the record, I would be curious to meet the people who go with your lovely renders. :)
... I've been following this thread since it started and been reluctant until now to post mainly because I've had decades of experience for developing and designing characters, long before I ever signed on the Daz 18 years ago.. Thus I wasn't sure where to start or end.
just over 50 years ago I had major in theatre along with one music and art (triple major as was interested in teaching back then) and thus had stage experience. Unfortunately I moved into the technical side (stagecraft and lighting) as even in college there was a lot of "sniping").
In the the 80s and 90s I became involved with role play games like D&D, Traveller, and Shadowrun. I both participated as a player and "game master" (the person who moderates the game and sets up situations for the players). That particular experience led me into writing scenarios and in a sense "open ended story" lines not unlike a comic book or even television series. . This also got me into character development Not just for my characters as a player but also NPCs (non player characters) as a GM. This detail tended to lend substance and backgrounds rather than a character just existing as a bunch of numbers on a sheet. or "cardboard cut outs". this tended to draw the players more into the campaign or player chracter team.
I've had people say I should turn some of my ideas and scenarios I developed as both GM and player into stories One of the campaign scenarios I ran actually came from a story idea I had for sci-fi graphic novel that I did extensive background work on but never had the chance to publish (at the time DC and Marvel were the only outlets but they were more into the monthly superhero stuff than an expansive standalone sci-fi novel [things have changed since]) So I took the notes and developed a galaxy spanning campaign complete with main characters who had bacgrounds and peronality, that lasted over three years of weekly to bi-weekly sessions. In a way it also helped provide more development and refinement to the original storyline. as the campaign was more a political intrigue thriller set in space..
As to my own characters they often would come in to a new campaign with well fleshed out backgrounds which usually answered the question, "why is this person risking life and limb (or in Call of Cthulu, their sanity) to take on a adventure based life?".Indeed,,motivation for why and what a character does is important to his or her development to make their concept "three dimensional". . Along with the character notes I would also create detailed drawings of them so other players had an idea of what they looked like (I also did the same for major NPCs when I was running a campaign).
What I learned through my gaming experience about character development literally took flight. Hence the many illustrations that I have posted here of a character named Leela who is hte cental figure from a story I've been trying to finish (RL has a nasty habit of derailing the best laid plans).. She came from a Shadowrun campaign I played in during the early 2000s (my avatar is a younger version of her). Indeed, during that campaign she seemed to take on a life of her own which prompted a couple players and the GM to suggest that I should consider writing a story around her.
Her concept has an odd beginning as I wanted a character who was into demolitions and at the time beoing a Dr Who fanm I loosely based her off of the 7th Doctor's assistant named Ace (her look even fit wth the cyberpounk setting).. However, later that evening the film Fifth Element came on the television and that changed everything. I was really moved by Leeloo's seemingly child like innocence as well as the fact she was extremely intelligent and fairly dangerous (as borne out in the fight scene on Fhloston Paradise).. Her one line early in the film "Big Badaboom" and her laugh cinched it and as the well worn cliché goes the rest was history. In a sense Leela became a fusion of both characters.
Oh, and attached below is Daz Image I created of my current character from a D&D 5e campaign (named Amineh) who in her backstory traversed the entire continent of the Forgotten Realms ( a major D&D world setting) before meeting up with the other characters. Much of what she experienced and learned as well as her curiosity about new things she's never seen has "coloured" her personality. However that is another story for another time.
Here she is prepared to embark on an adventure in far the frozen northlands. Yeah she is a bit of a "fashionista" (not all monasteries push austerity).
*[edited to clarify A few things and fix numerous typos as I wrote this late last night and the more tired I become the more my dyslexia and arthritis kicks in and affects my keyboarding accuracy]
I can accept fantasy characters with a human form, and also based on AI, since that is becoming increasingly likely. Humans with telepathy or other extraordinary characteristics I can accept, but there are limits, for instance a human that can fly without any apparent means to do so I find implausible. Human/animal hybrids I generally don't like ( unless they are the result of some crazy experiment ). Star Trek human-adjacent characters I find unconvincing, it always seems to me they are thinly disguised human actors. Dragons I can accept 'if' they act appropriately. The dragons in GOT I liked, and they seemed to fit well into the story. Once a dragon starts speaking English though, that's destroyed the illusion for me, similarly with dogs, cats etc. I make an exception for comedy across the board, a comedy character can be anything, and look like anything, so long as it's funny.
Haha! I figured some sort of caretaker, seeing things you can't unsee. And after, I saw in the Sleepless thread, you went to nursing school. So, there is context.
Let's be quite honest, the "others" that "everyone" is curious about are predominantly young attractive members of the opposite sex (or, in less frequent cases, the same sex - or maybe both) with a general bias against women.
I had quite a major spat with someone in another art community; he kept being rude about one of my characters, and it eventually turned out that the simple answer was that he didn't want to have sex with her, and he apparently couldn't comprehend the idea that there was any purpose for a female character to exist for in a story other than as an object of the audience's desire.
And I'm just not happy with that as a line of thinking unless the media is specifically intended to titillate; the characters displaying themselves for the audience's gratification is not mandatory, and is very often counter-productive.
~~~~~
In the end, I've had a fair few complements from people for the ways in which I've handled characters or situations they feel represent them; examples come to mind regarding characters I wrote as being gay, or trans, or just busty.
Getting comments along the lines of "You depicted this character really well, that's exactly the kind of thing I've experienced" means a lot more to me than those which boil down to "I love this character, she's really hot!"
Sadly I think it's a reflection of the modern world. How many young children do you hear regularly using swear words that would have got me in major trouble at the same age. A lot of it comes from mainstream media who seem to delight in pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable. That's not to say people in the past were angels, but at least there seems to have been some attempt , in some places, to keep adult subjects out of the sight and hearing of children, and yes I know there were terrible things done to some children in Victorian times, and earlier. It would be nice to think that as a species we become more enlightened and less like animals as time goes on, but evidence seems to show things going the opposite direction.
I don't want to derail the thread so back to the 3D characters for me.
Perhaps weirdly, but the things I can't unsee are more the attitudes around naked than the actual naked. (Although nothing on earth prepares you for the first time you answer a call light and walk straight into a room with a naked person standing there.) Like, it's a body, we all have one, I'm not judging. But so many women, especially older women, apologize for the effects of time and life and disease, and are ashamed they aren't supermodels. And so many men seem to think that we're all secretly fighting over the chance to see them, and possibly prove that those XXX videos are actually documentaries. At the end of the day, I don't remember what anyone's bits looked like. I remember if they were kind and respectful.
I didn't have any interest in nekkid people before becoming a nurse, though, either. Just not wired that way, I guess. Some folk like one or the other, or both, or all... I'll take the "neither/none" option. And after having seen enough of it, I figure if something was going to strike my fancy, it would've happened by now.
Fascinating! So... what if the dragon is speaking English, but it's only speaking it to other dragons? (like, it's clear they're speaking in their own language, but since the viewer wouldn't be able to understand it, it's presented as English?)
And does animation get a pass as well? Or no?
Genuinely curious. I'm willing to suspend disbelief for just about anything as long as it stays internally consistent to the story's world, so it's interesting to see where someone else's limits are.
I wouldn't want to project my perceptions onto anyone else, that said I guess that's inevitable for a writer.
I would be ok with a human being able to communicate with a dragon and then translate into English so the viewer can understand, and I think a lot can be communicated by by expression and action, so that words become unneccesary. You can generally tell if an animal is friendly or hostile without them having the ability to speak, also if they are hurt and need help. If it's important for story that the viewer needs to understand the thoughts of a dragon, then I would much prefer that be done as narration, rather than having the dragon speak English directly. I think some of this comes from watching old films where everyone speaks English, whatever their origins, I always thought that seemed fake, for instance a biblical drama where everyone speaks received pronunciation. Translated subtitles have their own problems too of course, as they can break the immersion for some people.
For example H.G Wells War of the Worlds. the human characters talk to each other, but we never get conversation from or between the Martians, other than sounds which we can't understand. To me that is a lot more convincing than if they were talking to each other in English.
Most animations I have seen were comedy so I'm haapy to accept that a duck can talk there along with bears dogs rabbits , etc etc.
Sean Connery made an excellent dragon!
@SilverGirl Thanks for sharing!
@Matt_Castle I wasn't commenting on intentionality. In many cases, it may be just as you say. If it weren't at least somewhat effective, all those folks making renders wouldn't be offering the nudie shots on Patreon.
He truly did! Oh gosh I cried my heart out in the cinema over that one at the end.
How To Train Your Dragon also did some amazing human/dragon interaction (the first animated one, anyway, I haven't seen anything after that, or the live remake). The dragons didn't speak, though it suffers from the oddness that it's supposed to be a Viking-esque culture, but everyone sounds either American or Scottish. (Really it was just a fantastic movie in general, and the insult that referenced Beowulf won me over entirely.)
For the record, I have added a bunch of commentary on the general subject of characters on my character creation thread (linked in my signature).
Cool! I'll have to hit it up when I have a bit. Thanks for the heads up!
It was quite an ending!
Yes, first animated one was very good and with noted oddness. That's just a Hollywood thing, I guess.
I can't draw. Period. DAZ lets me create the world I see in my imagination. When I wrote my debut novel, DAZ helped me create what I saw in my mind. I really wanted to use more of it to help promote it, but people look at 3D work and brand it as, "AI" even when it is far from it.
I never use a character directly out of the box. It is usually a merger of at least a few characters PLUS additional morphs added it to really give the character a unique look and feel. I even modify the clothing as well. Then I post that character as a "preview" character. If there is interest in the character, I eventually work them into the story. If there is no interested, they get shelved for a several months to a few years and then they are re-visited with other morphs to make them look different. Then, they are previewed again. So far these have become my main characters ...