In addition.
The written word dates all the way back to Mesopotamia and its Cuneiform language. I do not think there was White dominance of any kind in the Egyptian Old Kingdom or Xin Dynasty China. Even the Americas had people writing in the form of pictures long before the Europeans arrived.
Please don’t let BA become the latest place that complains about ‘White devils’ as is already the case in many of our universities.
Just curious, which version are you using? When I bought mine several years back, it came with presets for heavier people, male and female, a handful of older people, a black male preset character, textures for a black woman, and an Asian female preset along with the mentioned sliders to change weight. No disagreement on the hair.
@Ace_Dragon you’ve got a point. I do encourage you to look into the history of whiteness, when it was invented, and why.
Spoiler alert: it was invented as a tool to split the poor working class so the wealthy could stay in power. It’s still doing that, btw. And if you are interested in real equality, you should be looking at power structures, not skin tones.
I believe @joseph was employing hyperbole. I’m sure he realizes that writing wasn’t invented in Europe, nor that media Japan for example is dominated by Europeans.
I can double check but in my version of cc3 I think it’s just white people.
I mean yes, this is one of the biggest, widest issues in societies today, there should be no need to explain this. Doesn’t preclude from the need to provide a source, but it’s awfully well documented.
No that’s right, I haven’t either. For one I think the topic of representation is fairly new, and only in recent times have we seen it become a judging criterion from the press & the public. But the main issue as far as I understand is that misrepresentation is internalized by the concerned people, causing mental damage as well as skewing society’s perception of entire groups of people, which then has its own consequences. That’s a topic for actual researchers though, I can’t speak more about it.
I’ve never been entirely clear what comes with the base package. Does it include a decent selection of morphs or is that all addon content?
If so, it may be a case of white as default, with the expectation that you’ll buy the morph packs or character packs for variation.
That’s how Daz does it too (though the base package is free, but the Daz software is TERRIBLE to use once you’re used to being able to navigate with a mouse and keys like in every other 3D software. And the new G9 includes non-white textures).
For the risk of being misunderstood:
I think it’s completely natural to make something one is familiar and comfortable with. You’d think an artist creating a human characters would be most likely (but not always) to model them after people they actually see around. It in itself has nothing to do with disrespect, or hate, or whatever. Starting as children we draw what we know.
Seems to me, instead of guilt-tripping some artists to “contribute to diversity”, there supposed to be a way for those under-represented people themselves to be able to produce and share more works in their own image (if they are so inclined). Without being either dismissed or celebrated as an exotic animal. That’s the only way to achieve any actual equality.
But… somehow western culture has successfully forced a very new wave of prejudice (even in places where there were none). Not so long ago no one saw anything weird with Ripley in Alien, or Agent J in MiB, and princess Leia did not need a rank of general to be badass… And it’s not about how they were written - there was no need to excuse them.
If these characters were created now, it would raise some eyebrows.
It’s always possible mine came with extra features/characters not present in the base software, I don’t really remember. I do know I didn’t pay extra for anything.
And like that, we can tie this thread on Blender Artists back to Blender and FOSS itself (which for many under-represented groups is the first time they have been able to even access production-grade software, as everything else is too expensive). The same is true for Godot (which for poorer nations has democratized access to modern game making tools in a way Unity and Unreal can’t even come close to).
To note, Africa is actually pretty untapped still as a setting (outside of Egypt) despite them having no shortage of myths and legends (real stories, not the stuff from Marvel). Anyone who wants more games and movies with diverse characters should encourage the studios to look there.
That’s not really what’s going on in this discussion. @Modron is looking for diverse character assets (no idea what race Modron but it’s not relevant that’s what they want for their art so that’s the products they’re looking for), @joseph pointed out the lack of diversity in a lot of 3D media in general, Ace_Dragon disputed the value of diversity again because in general he feels “certain demographics” (not white men) are actually over-represented (this is from a discussion in a separate thread) which caused this thread to split into two parts:
I agree think under-represented artists themselves should be the focus of any diversity campaigns - and there are plenty of talented artists out there. I see plenty of racial diversity around me though, so I got confused in your first paragraph. LOL
I understand, but I felt it’s worth pointing out where some of the “annoyance” with diversity topic might come from. Coming from euro-asian country I’m more confused by all the labels people put on each other. Formally separating people by “races” here, treating them differently is unthinkable. Dehumanising. It’s a very unnatural problem to some of us. You could say, almost unrealistic. And so doesn’t seem to hold any real value.
One learns eventually that it’s not true for all of course… But it’s something that’s hard to accept.
While in a more racially homogeneous society you will probably naturally see less racial diversity on both the street and in fiction, in a a more racially diverse society, the fiction should logically depict that diversity prejudice isn’t preventing it. And almost always, things that are being labeled as “forced diversity” by conservative, straight, white, men weren’t forced on the creators. It was a choice.
They don’t just want people to stop asking for more diversity in the media, they want studios, authors, and artists to stop choosing to depict “unnecessary” “token” diversity. Even when creatives CHOOSE to depict the diversity in our country on their own, the anti-diversity crowd sees it as “Hollywood” or the “woke mob” forcing diversity on an audience that doesn’t want it (forgetting of course the audience isn’t just the people they count as Real America).
A lot of the people complaining about diversity are conservative white Americans who see non-white Americans as less American than white Americans (similar dynamics exist in other European countries and Australia). Things are different in the US and parts of Europe probably Australia where there’s a long history of laws and social norms reinforcing separation between races, including representation in fiction.
The first Black woman to win an Oscar legally wasn’t allowed in building hosting the event due to her race, but they made an exception so she got to sit at a segregated table with an escort. Historically, many white-passing non-white actors had to change their names to whiter names to even get roles because aside from servants or the occasional exotic foreigner, white roles were basically the only roles. The rare starring Asian roles would still often be cast with white actors. It may seem from the outside like acknowledging the differences between our different groups and experiences could further isolate us, but a lot of the progress we’ve only made in recent years has happened because we’re openly discussing it and intentionally trying to make society more inclusive.
The conversation about race and representation is definitely influenced by the US’ particular history with race. I can see how a lot of that is probably confusing/inscrutable to most people outside of the US, and honestly, most people in the US haven’t really dug into that either.
Whiteness is an indicator of privilege in America, and it has been gradually doled out to different groups: Irish, Italians and Jewish people have all had whiteness withheld from them historically. This social construct is a big part of what has made race in America so pernicious, even after the abolishment of slavery. And Americans still think they represent the whole world, soooo the conversation is spread far and wide, well beyond it’s cultural context.
Where’s the pushback on all the poorly written white characters?
Keep in mind that the only reason words like ‘whiteness’ exists is to divide people and stoke the flames of class warfare. We know this because of how these terms were coined by Marxist radicals who initially came into the United States from the Soviet Union (to teach in our colleges and convert them from places of learning to activist training camps).
The mainstream media probably has not mentioned it, but other things demonized as whiteness over the last few years include things like planning ahead, being tidy, and even just being nice (seriously, the last one was actually put out by the Smithsonian). We had this right in the 80’s and 90’s, but that would’ve posited a future where the west would not be destroyed because of the fabric of society not being ripped to pieces (which is going to occur if everyone ended up being reduced to a color and some other traits as opposed to being seen as people).
See the step-by-step guide in Saul Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals, it is all there, and the fact that we are talking about these things today has all been planned in advance.
You’ve got the wrong end of the right stick.
You are free to make whatever models you want. It is not however the responsibility of the market to cater to everyone. The market is shaped around what people want to buy.
In my experience, the difficulty of the topic is very often that there is no objectively fair representation. Many disagreements I have encountered start with what factors are relevant when it comes to representation and how important they are.
I would argue that what people consider to be important factors when it comes to representation is based on trends. And yet, it is not a reason to shut the discussion down, just because it is difficult and nuanced.
Edit: I just reread your post and figured out you are talking about representations themselves being a trend. Sorry, got it wrong 
Well is that even the case so much in popular culture?
That last remark, is it even true? Note I’m far from being an expert in japanese popular culture and there’s probably plenty of stuff I’ve never heared of and plenty of stuff I wouldn’t care about anyway.
But two observations always stroke me as very odd since forever:
greetings, Kologe