One of my perennial problems in making comics, is the apparent age of any of the characters. In a coming-of-age story (which my comics are often about), getting close to that ‘first time’ feel, without crossing that boundary of “Hold on, this is depiction of under 18s” … is pretty difficult. How old are fictional 3D characters anyway?
And it doesn’t really matter how old you say a character is – if their apparent age, or implied age is fourteen, then you’re in dodgy territory in which you get hunted by the police. Personally I prefer to avoid that territory. So I try and spell it out …
And for some reason, the easiest way to make clear that a young woman’s over eighteen, is to simply stick a COLOSSAL great pair of tits on her …
… and then have them bounce around the place as if it’s completely normal and they’re used to them wobbling about …
… just completely regular …
… no big deal …
… and if someone happens to notice them …
… well, that’s their problem, isn’t it?
… as far as I can tell, the rule does seem to be that the bigger the boobs, the older their owner must therefore be. To be honest, I initially modeled Jilly [below] to be right on the edge of that ‘sexually active’ boundary …
… but sticking these massive great knockers on her, makes her seem an apparent … what … 22? Maybe even 32 years old in this image?
… and so with references to her youthfulness elsewhere, her ‘actual’ age is left up to the reader to decide … which is fine in terms of legality. But what if I’d wanted Jilly to be a bit more flat-chested? … frankly, a bit more realistic?! She’d immediately risk looking underage, I think.
It’s strange because the boobs=adult logic really doesn’t work in the real world because as we’re surely aware, girls can have huge great baps from the age of twelve or thirteen or whatever; but my issue is that great big melons kinda ruins the vibe if you want your comic to have that ‘first time’, sort of heart-beating teenage-experimentation feeling. Or if you just prefer to have characters with more realistic tits! It makes it really hard for me to make comics about those exciting first times … and keep them legal!
(Nb. I’m always working on a few …)
… because that angsty teenage wrangling is THE BEST!!! I noticed a comment on Tira Yugen’s Rather Magnificent comics online somewhere recently, where someone commented how amazing if it’d been Shotacon (ie. if Kal’s character had been a sort of mid-teens boy discovering their aunt in that way) … and I have to admit, I agree! It would’ve been really cool. I mean personally, I wouldn’t change it one bit …
… but a younger Kal might’ve been fun too. Hmm. What to do, eh? Anyone got any good ideas about how to get round this? Any lawyers know much about where courts might draw the line in what ‘apparent’ age really means?
Look, here’s the issue. Figure [A]: big boobs, innocent womanly sex scene:
No legal problem here. But then if I want her to be more realistic, and solely reduce the boobies a little …
Figure [B]: suddenly becomes this.
… dodgy territory, right? In fact by the time you read this blog, that image may have already been removed for breaching ToS, which would immediately demonstrate the point. Love them or hate them, I’m saying boobs do immediately change the whole vibe – which is a shame because if I’m depicting someone flat chested who’s 20-24 years old, it can still seem like I’m depicting something else. And I don’t particularly want to get arrested, when my actual intention is to create sexy AF comics about innocent, loving, wonderful, exciting relationships!
Tsss. I dunno what to do, what to do. Guess my legal protection would come down to how courts define apparent age. Maybe I should just move to Hungary permanently, where the law doesn’t give a damn, and I can just churn out sexy comics, and let the rest of the world filter what they want. OR perhaps I should never release any comics as Sindy Anna Jones, but just have burner accounts on other forums to release ambiguous comics … and then just use the SAJ persona to point them out? Might be a better option.
(Nb. my continued experiments with the free La Femme 2 model distributed by Renderosity are going pretty well. Turns out there are a few free [genital] morphs for her as well. So that’s nice.)
I mean this grey-area conundrum is the reason I always depicted Meg’s little brother from an angle that disguised his face, so it was kept ambiguous:
… but then, is depicting incestuous sex acts also illegal, no matter the implied age?? And if that’s the case then am I already screwed either way?! Uh-oh. Answers on a postcard. Or on a note baked into a cake, along with a metal saw and a few files 😬
(seriously, if anyone understands the law [in the UK], speak up; I wanna keep making sexy comics but I probably would prefer to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities …)
(am I gonna have to veer more towards the wholesome boring comics that everyone else makes, where two consenting, non-related adults meet and have sex? Surely not. I can’t even begin to imagine such a dull plot.)
In Hungary, someone who has sex with their sibling gets two years, someone who has sex with their child gets three years, and if they force it, they get two to eight years plus. With consent. 🙂
A woman’s age is reflected not only in the size of her breasts, but also in other changes in her body. Such as hip size, buttock size, skin color, pubic hair, wrinkles (especially on the neck and hands), so there is room to grow even without breasts. 🙂
But I like how you age women based on their breast size. I wonder how you would portray a woman in her 40s? 🙂
P.S. Karen is not worth mentioning, she was never ready for sex. 🙂