Hello! Sorry for not replying for too long - I had lots of work to do and haven’t time to write comprehensive reply.
First of all: as I said previously I’m working on this project for about year and half. During this period three main characters of this story became very dear to my heart. They are not simple models made for practice but almost a living persons to me - with their own tempers, habits, stories, even preferences in food and fashion. This might not be obvious by a couple of images I posted here or ZBC but behind the scenes there are much more including tens (or maybe already hundred) pages of a plot. And speaking about Nastya’s appearance. When I create my own character I don’t use references at all since I want her to be completely original and not based on someone else. Nastya personifies my ideal of female beauty (well, one type of a beauty from several I prefer). I hope all this text explains why seeing my character after such a drastic changes forced me to ask to remove them. It is like seeing your old best friend after unnecessary plastic surgery.
Yes, previously I’ve said that I like talking about anatomy and other stuff (if you, Jake, visited my ZBC thread you probably noticed it). But when I wrote that I would like to hear any critique about realism and anatomy - I thought that Tonatiuh was talking mainly about the body. Cause earlier I said that my character is semi-stylized combining realistic features (like big but slightly saggy breast with quite specific shape which is uncommon for modern heroines with perfect round boobs) and idealized ones (very broad hips and narrow waist). But when it comes to the head I actually consider her quite realistic (idealized, but still real) and didn’t want to see any modifications due to the reasons mentioned above.
And this leads us to yet another important topic. Personally I always trying to remember this when I’m helping other people on forums. The thing is: don’t confuse (or mix) anatomy with personal tastes. When I criticize someone’s work, I look only at anatomical mistakes (like origins/insertions, proper volumes and surface influence) and proportions/silhouette (and only after clarifying if the model intentionally has some stylized feel). But I never ask people to change breast type, the shape of bum or, like in this case, the facial features if there is no obvious mistakes.
So yeah, I consider Nastya’s face as idealized but still realistic. After I saw Tonatiuh’s edits, my first question was “But what does he mean by realism?”.
Basically, what he did. He made her nose longer with sticking nasal cartilages (almost angular) and flaring nostrils, made the upper lip much thinner, made the chin heavier and did square jaw. There might be other changes but it doesn’t matter. My logical conclusion was that Tonatiuh didn’t make work on hypothetical mistakes but rather conformed her face to his personal tastes. Which has no real use to me but even hurts.
But really, what exactly in Nastya’s face look unrealistic? Yeah, she has very clean skin with smooth pores, but that’s a matter of color and microdetails. Yeah, she is totally symmetrical now, but your edits weren’t focused on this aspect. She also have slightly bigger cranium (cannot fix it right now due to the layers) but it is covered with hair. It appears like you consider straight nose, plump curvy lips and delicate jaw as a clue of non-realism, hence changing them drastically. But I can show you tons of images and videos from my inspiration folder where girls and teens have exactly the same proportions: accurate narrow chin, thin noses and feminine plump lips (even my own lips look similar to Nastya’s so nothing special here).
About tools for working. It is very complex topic and it would hard to explain it shortly but I will try. Let me say first that previously I never considered my works as an art. I consider them mainly as anatomy sketches and nothing more. Because renders of characters in simple poses don’t usually arise emotions in viewer. However the T.E.O.G.O.D. project is my first attempt to create something bigger, important and hopefully artistic. Something that might influence at least someone’s heart.
This might sound rude but I believe that art and tools to create art shouldn’t be simple and available to everyone straight from the beginning. Artist should work hard to gain his experience. This hard work will discipline him and will take a lot of time, causing him to think twice before wasting his energy on numerous projects. The difficulty in making art and the lack of time will give a birth to more solid and elaborate art. I’m not against all this modern technologies, especially when it comes to professional work when time is money. But look here. Very soon we would have very detailed and perfect scans (read characters) for free, and even now there is DAZ Poser and other stuff that doesn’t requires you to learn anatomy and hardcore modeling, there is a software that creates almost perfect clothes, there is programs that will paint everything for you etc, etc. In theory, this means that artist will have more time to create more and better artworks. On practice… on practice we see endless conveyor producing cheap and vulgar, often porn images (say hello again to DA), numerous uninspired characters that are technically good looking but have nothing behind them… I will not continue the list, I hope you get the idea. Remember how photography was created and replaced drawing and painting that was requiring high skill? The intent was to make everyone being able to create an art. And what we have now? Millions of people shooting themselves in WC with duckface.
So yeah, I wanna make everything with my own hands. I don’t want allowing software like MD making job for me. Sculpting clothes is pretty much a separate science and I feel bad seeing how many people prefer just to forget this knowledge and simply push buttons. Remember the joke about “There is no MAKE IT PRETTY button”? Well, we are almost here to invent it. I’m afraid to imagine what would happen to 3D art then.
PS Thanks. Glad you like my story. Lol, you are a third person in this 1.5 years who said me this Makes me thinking I’m not just wasting my time.