You know how sometimes, no matter your gender or persuasion; sometimes you’re out and about and trying to mind your own business, but someone’s human body makes itself known and you can’t really help but stand there and go OH MY GOD are you KIDDING how is that even … … and you stand there trying not to stare? Maybe just me.
Anyway, bodies, eh? Human beauty, bottoms, bulges, wobbles, broad back-sculpted vees or great big sweeping curves, whatever your eye latches onto, it’s all mind-blowing, let’s face it. Especially when the sun’s out and nobody’s wearing more than a few micrometers of polyester. It sort of doesn’t matter what body part it is, I’ve done a similar thing with random thighs or even shins – there are these moments when you go HOLY SHITPISS?!!! And it doesn’t matter what it is, you just appreciate a bit of a body and then …. feel both awe-struck and a little pervy. And then you have to get off the bus.
Excuse me madam, could I just OH MY GOD
ANYWAY, the point is I saw an actual human lady in the real world a few days back and I thought “Oooh. Wow. Okay, yup, might fire up some 3D software this evening, and do some modelling” … you know, do some sculpting of a real-world person but in the pretend world. So here are some character development tests.
Firstly, (as for any 3D sculpting reference) I tried to find a similar character online to use as a photo reference in terms of body type and skin colour, and this was as near as I could get:
… also good. I mean actually pretty fantastic in many ways, the ol’ potential for finding photo references online. I mean as you’re probably aware, you could lose your life just looking at photos online, but this random snap was a close ish approximation to get me started. Hashtag street photography hashtag OH MY GOD THOSE KNOCKERS ARE YOU KIDDING me MEDIC MEDIC
so … err … ahem … yep. Let the character design commence!
[went a bit desaturated on the skin there. Ah well, early draft]
[the classic and very coy ‘Oh goodness, my dress seems to have come completely unbuttoned at the chest?’ expression. We’ve all done it.]
… you can see the development but I’m REALLY not getting the skin colour quite right; maybe I need to adjust the textures to up the warmth/yellows, cos she’s looking a little desaturated brown rn. 
Nice to develop a brown-skinned character that’s not default/African origin brown skinned like Suki, though. Problem is, different races are hard to get a handle on, it seems. Fun to take a break from my usual white girl aesthetic though.
It’s difficult, like the photo reference above is way more … where are we, Pakistan? I’m terrible at figuring out racial origin though, could be talking Maldives or South Pacific for all I know. So that’s half the planet then, cool. Great guesswork, Sindy. Anyone can take some guesses at the photo reference, let me know what you think in terms of likely ethnic background. Wait, is it racist to try and guess someone’s ethnic origin? Hmm, maybe, maybe. Nah, we’re fine.
I suppose this whole thing is a bit like the long-winded equivalent of using Grok to undress people. Do any of my readers do that? It’s apparently quite the sensation these last few years, but I’ve actually never done the Grok/AI method myself. Not sure why, I suppose it seems a bit like stepping over the line if you’re using actual people and using the AI to undress them, seems more directly violating?
But is what I’ve done above any different, really? I suppose at least I’ve used a sort of proxy photo reference – but even that is obviously a snap of a real human, who didn’t exactly give their permission for this sort of feasting of the hormones. Hmm. Answers on a postcard.
As an exercise in improving my rendering of beautiful brown skin though, I’m thinking … yeah this character needs work. I’ve sort of sucked the life out of that texture somehow; looks far too greyscale and strangely too dark to be quite right. Ah well, all jolly good fun. Also, I don’t know if you noticed on this page, but BOOBIES! Hooray!
