Can we hope for a male companion to Astrid?
Hera
Posts: 1,952
in The Commons
Can we hope for a male companion to Astrid? an Astor perhaps? With a similar bundle?
http://www.daz3d.com/astrid-elf-bundle
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Would be awesome to see a matching counterpart set...
Though I'd sooner hope for a version of the female boots without the stileto heels? Like this outfit - just went into my cart, along with a couple other clothing sets (Dragon Rider), only to double check the type of footwear, and sure enough - high-heels/stiletos on each of them. Sadly just removed these items from the cart, moving on to find something else that doesn't have heels... Sad when ya fall in love with everything else about the set and all the details and work that went into it - the scuplted armor, leather peices, scratches and etches on the metal armor... and how perfect it'd be to use in your next render. ... :(
Unfortunately, male products don't appear to be- according to the PA's- worth their time to make. So they don't make male counterparts to successful female figures, outfits, or provide poses for things like showers, tanning salons etc.
It would be remiss to point that there are poses for males for showers and tanning salons such as i13-bath-and-shower-pose-collection and i13 Tanning Salon Poses for Genesis 3 Female and Male but I do gather than the male counterpart makes about 1/2 to 1/4 of the profits of a female character so it ends up as a labor of love. I tend to by buy male characters but i would not be suprised if the bulk of daz customers only have female characters.
Good to hear. There are no men in the promo art for I3's tanning saloon at all, so no idea male poses were there. I actually don't think that is one of their better sets. A bit toony for my personal taste, but thanks for pointing it out.
They are pretty good at including male poses.... As for getting a male companion, I wish you and I were less the exception and that male character parity would be closer but this is an issue larger than 3d modeling...
Eeee'yup. At the risk of sparking a race/gender war, the 3D modeling world is in sore need of a demographics upheaval now more than ever. Like, they don't have to get rid of the skimpwear bimbo crap, just make an effort to do more gender (and race) diversity and advertise more so more people outside of the typical Daz buyer actually buys the stuff.
Or at the very least, Daz, Rendo, and HW3D need to start making efforts to court non-straight white male buyers/hobbyists if they want any hope of this industry surviving in the next 5-10 years with the way things are going in the world right now (look at how long it took the video game industry to finally shift things in a different direction to be more inclusive). They can't keep using this "Oh, it doesn't sell as well as the female version" unless they actually put forth the effort to market and show non-straight white males that this hobby/industry, especially on the big name sites, is welcoming to them. (Like for crying out loud, it's 2017 and they still don't have same-sex poses that aren't tarted up female/female ones and certain big name PAs rarely ever use non-white characters in their promos unless they make poses for Pro bundles... but that's a rant for another thread)
My "solution" to the male/female desparity is fairly simple. If it's something that I think should have a male version, but it doesn't (yet) I don't buy it until the male version comes out. Like the Retail outfit from today. I love the idea, but until we get a set of male polos to match, it stays on the wishlist - at least until it's two generations old, at which point I pull it.
Ignis Serpentis' Dark Elves are still waiting... (not that I expect them at this point. It's just an example.)
I'm just one purchase, but maybe I'm the purchase (or lack there of) that tips the scales. :) And if not, it's money I can spend elsewhere.
The problem with holding out a sale to get parity is it just makes a product look less successful and not one succesful enough to support a male counterpart and takes us in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, that vast crowd (and there really is one) who primarily renders Blod Vicky in a Swimsuit (going by the bulk of the galleries of 3d products). The artists who make are products are on our side; Sickleyield, for example, has mentioned how she would love primarily make male products but the market doesn't support it. Instead, Iif there is a male product that I want, I buy it over that nifty Stonemason set because Stonemason will be around but that vendor who made their first male product might not make one again because of dissapointing sales. As one of the few black men in this forum, I would love more products that look like myself but do realize that I have minority interests and this is a business and not a charity.
SickleYeild has consistantly made male versions of her female products, and often releases them in pairs. (I think the last female only product she released was the Furisode.) I also will buy male stuff when I can. It's only when something (like Elven races) arguably should have versions for both genders that I hold out. It's not just to get parity in the market. It's so that I have parity in my own artwork. I'm not going to buy a female of some fantasy race if I can't render a male to go with her/oppose her or whatever.
I actually hold this both ways. There are several Raw Art characters that I haven't bothered with since he moved on from Genesis, because he only made a male version.
This is indeed a business, and I'm not going to buy something I'm never going to use just to support an artist. So if that first male product is a space suit, I'll leave it to someone else to buy, because I already have more Sci-Fi stuff in my library than I'll ever use. Now if the vendor decides that the poor sales are due to it being male, and not due to poor timing (just after March Madness, for example) or genre bias (though Sci-Fi for males is pretty well supported) or some other reason... I can't do anything about that.
I'm sort of the opposite. I always need more male sci-fi make stuff but have no use for fantasy or historical clothing and don't buy it. I also have enough female characters and have stopped buying them.
I can't speak with authority about the sex ratios of elves since I have never met any in the wild and certainly not enough to make a statistical measurement but SickleYield has talked extensively about the economics of how she decides to make a male counterpart product and how closely it matches the sales the female product i.e... the male ones are usually disappointments. Unfortunately, parity here is not a matter of justice but economics. On my commute, I walk along a street to Uinion Square in San Francisco. On the street, there are two stores that sell high end women's underwear ($500 bras for example), La Perla and Agent Provacateur. La Perla sells a smattering of men's underwear such as your $200 tee-shirts but mainly it is women's clothes. Is it fair that so many men have have to buy their $200 tee-shirts in the back of the John Varatos store? No...but the economic reality is there aren't enough men to support a free standing men's luxury underwear store in even metrosexual San Francisco. Likewise, I have lived in towns where there wasn't anyone who could cut black hair in the county. I realize tht there is no business that could survive the small numbers of people who wanted a fade or do twists. I know people in the forums who have never bought or rendered their male characters. As someone who never used Daz's iconic characters in strict pairs, I occasionally collect the unusual. For example, I have these two characters, George HD and Bethany, that i know i will never render, but purchased for his hair and her UV respectively. We clearly all have are own strategies for dealing with not having the characters we want and only time will tell if any of them work.
The truth is, most women in real life buy far more clothing than men. I'm pretty sure my husband would prefer a root canal to shopping any day of the week. Its a long and torturous process to shop with him and several of my friends have said the same thing lol. Apparently, male characters feel the same. I do render far more women than men, although I hope to change that once I am done doing my catalog renders, but I also try and support the male clothing market as often as I can.
I was checking on some stuff the other day and using the filters in the store:
Genre: Contemporary
G3 Female 310 items
G3 Male 25 items
I realize female stuff sells better and females would have more variety of clothes but that's still a huge difference.
I don't really know that it is that true to real life. Where I live men's clothing is pretty well represented. At the mall, there is a sportswear store, a his & her shoe store, a big and tall men's store, Macy's with a pretty large department of clothing a outdoor wear store, and a western wear store, in addition to places like gap, old navy, and chain department stores there is also places tuxedos can be rented and places for men who wear uniforms or need clothing to wear to work. There are also business suits stores etc. This is in addition to all the teen orientated stores which sell clothing to both genders.
The idea that men's clothing offerings is reflective of current fashion trends might work and buying styles, might work if current fashion trends were all we saw in the store. BUT in many parts of history, men were just as fashionable as fashionable than women, and yet there is still few clothing options for them. OUr current attitudes towards fashion are cultural. Not Nature.
I think the present lack of men's fashion has to do with who daz marketing strategy and keepng with the status quo on not attractivng new audiences to the store. It is easier just to cater to the same audiences than try to change stuff. In many ways the store is pretty conservative approving a lot of similar stuff it knows its core audience will like and buy.
A quick peek to find some real numbers; in 2013, men's clothes retail sales were $61 billion while women's clothes were $116 billion. I think Daz3d works pretty hard to attract new people even if they don't give us exactly what we want.
We'll have to disagree on that. I don't think DAZ does much to draw or attract those who want to illustate male characters. =-(