Lips, boobs, and wonder

A few weeks back, BobC commented about Jilly’s top lip from Kinfolk; and although that may seem like a strange and random thing to notice, I thought I’d write about it because heck it’s actually an important little detail I’ve worked on for some time! Bear with me, there are lovely boobies in this blog post too, I promise.

So it all started with Ix, the lopsided-smiling character customised and freely given away by Project Bellerophon:

I believe the left-smile represented the duality of that character – Ix had a dark background and brought some trauma with her, but hadn’t lost her cheekiness, her spark – this is later referenced by big-boobed Stef’s journey in One Human, Being – not to read too much into it, but let’s face it Caravaggio and Rembrandt have a similar approach to asymmetric meaning in their studies of humans, dark vs light etc etc]

So … starting with the Ix character meant I could build Charlie:

Note Charlie also tends to smile with her left, and though she has her own darkish backstory, she’s less polarised/savage as a character than Ix, so Charlie’s lip angles are more balanced to suit. You’d think this absurd point means I’ve obsessed about stuff like this, but really it’s just me trying to make images consistent with the ‘spirit’ of the person, and I think it generally pays off? I mean these comics are read by tens of millions of people, so I think we can safely say … yes, it pays off.

Then while creating the Lithium comics, I was idly wondering about the Skybloom sort of setting, which would sit between the present day and early-scifi date-wise (hence them being in the early colony sort of context), so I played with building a slightly more booby Charlie character to fit the idealised clone sort of plot. And after a few failed attempts to use La Femme, I ended up with Sophie for Skybloom as a sort of Charlie 2.0 – based literally on Charlie, but with a slightly enhanced top lip:

Above is I think the definitive Sophie profile shot, where you see her top lip freshly built. Interestingly in this shot – she is the La Femme character from the neck down; you can tell because her fingers are way too bony; that’s an issue with the La Femme 1.0. So I re-used my failed La Femme renders in that first scene by just pasting over her head, and opting after that scene to use the full V4 Charlie 2.0 version of Sophie.

Here are some more Sophie shots so you can see the lip enhancements I’ve given her (more subtle when she smiles, but still there):

[I quite liked that shot, so here it is re-rendered the other way up:]

… hehehh.

Anyway so here’s the timeline for that pronounced top lip:

• Built Charlie, Jack and Skylar all based on Ix, ready for the Lithium Comic;
• I then built Sophie (for Skybloom), originally out of La Femme, but I found issues with that La Femme model so mothballed Skybloom as a waste of time;
• However, La Femme did have some very cute top lip action going on, which meant:
• When I rebuilt Sophie for Skybloom using Charlie as a better base, I custom-sculpted her lips (and great big boobies) to really enhance them with what I’d learnt from La Femme, and then;
• I finally built Jilly for Kinfolk, using Sophie from Skybloom (ie. Charlie 2.0) as the basis – enhancing the top lip even further, and giving her UNBELIEVABLY gigantic knockers as well! Hooray!

Originally those boobs were a bit of a joke ‘Oppai Loli’ sort of character, but then when I put Jilly on the deck of her ship I was like … ah okay yep, Kinfolk needs to happen with these two. And that pair.

Anyway, those lips of Jilly’s are a key component in her character, I think – and just so we’re all seeing what BobC noticed, and getting what I mean, here’s a bunch of screengrabs from Kinfolk which show her lovely little mouthy:

[You can see the same applies for Ernest as well, it’s just more obvious on Jilly because of the masculine/feminine variations]

… and as I approach the very end of Lithium, I’ve just read through both Kinfolk and Skybloom, with their millions of little details like this, and wow what a cute few stories, eh? Very pleased with those lil’ comics I must admit. And how they fit into the generational meta timeline going on with the Space Trek comic universe is a real joy to me, honestly.

So there we are, who knew so much thought went into top lips, eh? It’s sort of shorthand for innocence, no matter who I’m working with, I tend to pronounce the top lip in those moments that accompany humility, wonder, youth:

Then reel it in when they’re being less innocent:

… hehehh.

Lithium update: I think the final Lithium comic #14 should be out by the end of next week, honestly. So check back 🙂