42753 réponses à ce sujet

[scampermax]

datbas wrote...

question: which would you say is my best looking FemShep of my 3 (spent so much time working on them, i cant decide which im most pleased with):

Nicole (main):


NJ (former main):


or Tanya (most used):

I like all three, but I have to give my vote to Nicole. She has a slight edge in the cuteness department.

Modifié par scampermax, 19 juin 2011 - 04:15 .

[thompsmt]

@datbas: Nicole looks the best, but Tanya isn't bad either.

[SkaldFish]

Apologies in advance for the wall o' text...

sagequeen wrote...

So, I have a question for you all:

Clearly, many of the folks here have custom femsheps that they are very attached to. What is your feelings towards/about default femshep - either the one currently made or the one the devs are working on? Do you feel she "is" femshep, that she's just the "poster" femshep, that she's the femshep that represents all femsheps, etc.

I ask because I'm curious how you see her. It seems there are many people who say, "Sheploo is the only Shepard!", but that's rare to see folks say "Default Jane is the only femshep." Just curious what your take is and why there seems to be such an acceptance of custom femsheps among femshep fans.

<snip/>

I'll chime in, even though many of you have read my rants on this topic. Not to knock anyone who likes Default Jane (or, I suppose, the BioWare person who created her), but I think:

(1). She borders on caricature. To me, there's something unpleasant about her face that makes it difficult for me to use her. (Personal opinion) Compared to the obvious expense and effort devoted to Sheploo's creation, she feels more like an afterthought, which has always puzzled me. At what point in game development, I wonder, did she begin to take a back seat to Sheploo? From a game design perspective, there seems to be very little bias toward an iconic male Shepard (though there is some).

I just did a little test to verify my feeling that Default Jane's facial proportions are "off." Facial proportion standards are meant as guidelines; few people have "correct" proportions across the board. But most people vary along three or four measures. Our eyes see variation across many measures as distortion. Here's how Default Jane fared:



The orange lines mark the core measurements: top of head to eyeline to chin. The eyes should be at the halfway point. The yellow lines mark other key measurements. The red lines show where things should be. Basically,

Her eyes and brow are too high.
Her eyes are too deep-set and too far apart.
Her eyes are too small for the width of her skull.
Her ears are too big.
Her nose is too short.
Her mouth is too high given nose height and chin size.
Her chin is too big and protrudes too far.

All this together is way more than enough to make her look distorted. So I loaded her up and tried to correct them. Problem is, the CC doesn't provide all the settings needed to really bring things in line. Can't make her chin small enough given the selected facial structure; can't make the nose quite long enough; can't enlarge the eyes (or alternatively narrow the skull)... etc. etc. etc....Still, she looks better (at least to me):



The first time I played FemShep, I had barely gotten into the game before I realized I had to go back and get rid of that face. I was literally irritated by it. What's more, Jennifer Hale's voice didn't seem to "match" the face at all. That authoritative, self-confident voice was coming out of a face that always looked more petulant than serious.

So, as others have said, I don't feel as though there IS a "default" female Shepard - at least not in the same way that there is a default male. Instead, there are a few presets, and one of them happens to come up first. Perhaps the "new" FemShep being worked on will be more carefully designed and more distinctive & believable as a person. This would address at least the perception of equal attention to the characterization.

(2) IMO, we rarely hear that "FemShep is the only Shepard" because of the marketing and bias toward Sheploo that each player has to wade through to get to the point of being able to decide on male vs/ female. For most, the issue is already decided the moment they look at the box cover. "That guy" is Shepard. So, as I've said before, the issue of clarifying the fact that the game enables Shepard to be the role-playing character YOU create begins with marketing. That starts when the game is being developed and company reps begin to talk about it.

(3) Many gamers (and, for that matter, BioWare employees) can't seem to keep their personal world views out of their notions of what the game "should be like" and how everyone should feel about it. (Much of this may be attributed to the younger end of the demographic, but that might be too easy a conclusion.) So we end up with a pile-on of prejudices and stereotypes that have served to steer BioWare's focus towards that myth of "The One" -- the Duke Nukem-ish, iconic 30-something white male hero.

Modifié par SkaldFish, 19 juin 2011 - 05:21 .

[Captain Crash]

Ok we need to tweet David that post because it great.  Up to them what they decide next. 


But your right our eyes decieve us and things can become distorted.  Most of our favourite sheps on here are the ones where the balance is there to make her look realistic.  Proportions are important.

Out of curiosity  how have you come to the measurements for where you have placed the lines?  Im assuming your using some sort of facial measure for it like below?

[adneate]

datbas wrote...
Nicole (main)

That one!

On the topic of facial proportions you've found the thing I struggled with for months on end, designing, redesigning and experimenting with different ways to blend facial features together as naturally as possible. I started from nothing and just coming off the Dragon Age Toolet, which gave so much more control over many aspects of the face structure and shape than the ME CC. I started working from "memory" and to put that in perspective the last time I played ME1 was a couple months after it's initial 360 release and now I was on the PC and starting with ME2 a few months after it's release. But rather than talk about the theory since Skald did a very good job of it, I'll show my own design process.

[SkaldFish]

Captain Crash wrote...

Ok we need to tweet David that post because it great.  Up to them what they decide next. 


But your right our eyes decieve us and things can become distorted.  Most of our favourite sheps on here are the ones where the balance is there to make her look realistic.  Proportions are important.

Out of curiosity  how have you come to the measurements for where you have placed the lines?  Im assuming your using some sort of facial measure for it like below?

Thanks Crash!

I haven't seen the one you posted, but it's somewhat different from the traditional "ideal" measurements I was taught.

What I was taught:

From the front ("full-on") view:

1. The eyeline is halfway between the top of the skull (not the hair) and the chin. (Our eyes fool us and tell us the eyes are higher on the head than they are.)

2. The face can be divided into thirds from the hairline to the bottom of the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose to the chin.

3. The head is five "eyes" wide at the eyeline.

4. The eyes are one eye width apart and one eye width from the temples. (The drawing you posted has an interesting variant on that, and seems to end up giving you eyes that are too far apart.)

5. The width of the nose at its base is the same as the distance between the eyes' tear ducts.

6. The width of the mouth is the same as the distance between the pupils.

7. A line drawn through the corners of the mouth is a bit less than half the distance between the bottom of the nose and the chin.

8. The top of the ears should fall between a line drawn across the bottom of the eyebrows and one drawn across the tops of the eyes.

9. The bottom of the earlobes should align with the base of the nose.

From the profile view:

1. The upper and lower lips should just touch a line drawn from the tip of the nose to the tip of the chin. (I won't start on the many, many problems all the available female lips have in ME...)

2. A vertical line drawn upward from the tip of the chin to te level of the hairline should just touch the brow ridge.

3.A vertical line drawn up from the corner of the mouth to the browline should just touch the front of the eyeball.

There are more, but those are the basics. For example, there are a few racial differences, but surprisingly few. Most of them specifiy differences in the planes of the face and the underlying bone structure.

And, like I said, those are the gudelines for creating "ideal" proportions. Variations are what make faces interesting and recognizable, but too many variations from the ideal usually make faces look odd in one way or another.

[Captain Crash]

awesome, thanks skald. The one I posted is very characterised anyway and not that realistic. I just wanted to get a grip on how you came to the measures you were using so I can put it into a correct context. Without a base I could put the lines anywhere you see. Awesome post and follow up. I can now trace exactly what you mean far more clearly 




You may want to post it here to. Its a current discussion on default femsheps face outside the thread. That is if you want to see what other forum peeps think of it.

http://social.biowar...index/7672815/1


Oh I totally sent it in a tweet to David too. Hope he spots it.  Its certainly important if they are re-modelling her.  

Modifié par Captain Crash, 19 juin 2011 - 06:10 .

[adneate]

The way I always approach the rules, not being an artist and only learning about them from an art student I use to know, is to simply be aware of them but not be a slave to them. Knowing where approximately facial features should go and roughly what they should line up with will keep you from making any "serious" mistakes while still creating varied character designs. If you're a slave to the rules you'll just make the same character over and over again, though nice to look at it gets a little stale. At least that's what I find, I'm probably a bigger fan of character creators than the average person. I spend almost as much time in them as I do playing the game, even the really difficult one like Oblivion's that most people curse.

[Rheia]

SkaldFish wrote...

I'll chime in, even though many of you have read my rants on this topic. Not to knock anyone who likes Default Jane (or, I suppose, the BioWare person who created her), but I think:

(1). She borders on caricature. To me, there's something unpleasant about her face that makes it difficult for me to use her. (Personal opinion) [...]

I just did a little test to verify my feeling that Default Jane's facial proportions are "off." Facial proportion standards are meant as guidelines; few people have "correct" proportions across the board. But most people vary along three or four measures. Our eyes see variation across many measures as distortion. Here's how Default Jane fared:

*snip proportions grid*

The orange lines mark the core measurements: top of head to eyeline to chin. The eyes should be at the halfway point. The yellow lines mark other key measurements. The red lines show where things should be. Basically,

Her eyes and brow are too high.
Her eyes are too deep-set and too far apart.
Her eyes are too small for the width of her skull.
Her ears are too big.
Her nose is too short.
Her mouth is too high given nose height and chin size.
Her chin is too big and protrudes too far.

All this together is way more than enough to make her look distorted. So I loaded her up and tried to correct them. Problem is, the CC doesn't provide all the settings needed to really bring things in line. Can't make her chin small enough given the selected facial structure; can't make the nose quite long enough; can't enlarge the eyes (or alternatively narrow the skull)... etc. etc. etc....Still, she looks better (at least to me):



The first time I played FemShep, I had barely gotten into the game before I realized I had to go back and get rid of that face. I was literally irritated by it. What's more, Jennifer Hale's voice didn't seem to "match" the face at all. That authoritative, self-confident voice was coming out of a face that always looked more petulant than serious.

That face? Looks great! I actually really like the features used in making the default. Like you said, it was the placement of them that made Jane look all wrong (for me).

[SkaldFish]

Nyoka wrote...

Whoa. This is almost embarrassing, but my Shep manages to beat Jane in virtually all those different types of wrongness when I made her, I put special care in setting her eyes higher, deeper and more far apart; her mouth higher; and her chin bigger and more protruding. At least she's got a long nose, thank God for that...

No, it's not even close to embarassing. What I should have emphasized is that the ideal proportions are a starting point. If you follow them exactly, your face will tend towards the generic. More importantly, they're relative to each other and that relativity is somewhat subjective. In the end, if the face is pleasing to you, you've succeeded. That will usually mean, though, that you've only departed significantly from the ideal proportions in two or three areas.

Note, too, that these guidelines don't say much about bone and cartilage structures like jawline, cheekbones, and nose, and those have a huge impact on the look of the face (and how departures from the ideal affect the face as a whole).

The fact that your FemShep is so beautiful in spite of supposedly "breaking the rules" just goes to show that there are always exceptions to rules!

[AkodoRyu]

I found Phi mask a bit easier to build faces on, but I never used it in any game character creator. I'm "guessing" proportions rather than follow them. "Textbook proportional" face would be too ideal for my taste, so I'm kind of glad I don't have proportions learned word-perfect.

Modifié par AkodoRyu, 19 juin 2011 - 06:33 .

[Meesherbeans]

SkaldFish wrote...

Apologies in advance for the wall o' text...

sagequeen wrote...

So, I have a question for you all:

Clearly, many of the folks here have custom femsheps that they are very attached to. What is your feelings towards/about default femshep - either the one currently made or the one the devs are working on? Do you feel she "is" femshep, that she's just the "poster" femshep, that she's the femshep that represents all femsheps, etc.

I ask because I'm curious how you see her. It seems there are many people who say, "Sheploo is the only Shepard!", but that's rare to see folks say "Default Jane is the only femshep." Just curious what your take is and why there seems to be such an acceptance of custom femsheps among femshep fans.

<snip/>

I'll chime in, even though many of you have read my rants on this topic. Not to knock anyone who likes Default Jane (or, I suppose, the BioWare person who created her), but I think:

(1). She borders on caricature. To me, there's something unpleasant about her face that makes it difficult for me to use her. (Personal opinion) Compared to the obvious expense and effort devoted to Sheploo's creation, she feels more like an afterthought, which has always puzzled me. At what point in game development, I wonder, did she begin to take a back seat to Sheploo? From a game design perspective, there seems to be very little bias toward an iconic male Shepard (though there is some).

I just did a little test to verify my feeling that Default Jane's facial proportions are "off." Facial proportion standards are meant as guidelines; few people have "correct" proportions across the board. But most people vary along three or four measures. Our eyes see variation across many measures as distortion. Here's how Default Jane fared:



The orange lines mark the core measurements: top of head to eyeline to chin. The eyes should be at the halfway point. The yellow lines mark other key measurements. The red lines show where things should be. Basically,

Her eyes and brow are too high.
Her eyes are too deep-set and too far apart.
Her eyes are too small for the width of her skull.
Her ears are too big.
Her nose is too short.
Her mouth is too high given nose height and chin size.
Her chin is too big and protrudes too far.

All this together is way more than enough to make her look distorted. So I loaded her up and tried to correct them. Problem is, the CC doesn't provide all the settings needed to really bring things in line. Can't make her chin small enough given the selected facial structure; can't make the nose quite long enough; can't enlarge the eyes (or alternatively narrow the skull)... etc. etc. etc....Still, she looks better (at least to me):



The first time I played FemShep, I had barely gotten into the game before I realized I had to go back and get rid of that face. I was literally irritated by it. What's more, Jennifer Hale's voice didn't seem to "match" the face at all. That authoritative, self-confident voice was coming out of a face that always looked more petulant than serious.

So, as others have said, I don't feel as though there IS a "default" female Shepard - at least not in the same way that there is a default male. Instead, there are a few presets, and one of them happens to come up first. Perhaps the "new" FemShep being worked on will be more carefully designed and more distinctive & believable as a person. This would address at least the perception of equal attention to the characterization.

(2) IMO, we rarely hear that "FemShep is the only Shepard" because of the marketing and bias toward Sheploo that each player has to wade through to get to the point of being able to decide on male vs/ female. For most, the issue is already decided the moment they look at the box cover. "That guy" is Shepard. So, as I've said before, the issue of clarifying the fact that the game enables Shepard to be the role-playing character YOU create begins with marketing. That starts when the game is being developed and company reps begin to talk about it.

(3) Many gamers (and, for that matter, BioWare employees) can't seem to keep their personal world views out of their notions of what the game "should be like" and how everyone should feel about it. (Much of this may be attributed to the younger end of the demographic, but that might be too easy a conclusion.) So we end up with a pile-on of prejudices and stereotypes that have served to steer BioWare's focus towards that myth of "The One" -- the Duke Nukem-ish, iconic 30-something white male hero.

I... this... it... you have Shepard! Just make her hair bright red and eyes vibrant green, and that's exactly what she looks like in my opinion. Just... /support

[SkaldFish]

Rheia wrote...

That face? Looks great! I actually really like the features used in making the default. Like you said, it was the placement of them that made Jane look all wrong (for me).

Agreed, it's mostly the placement. I threw in the screenshot to show that she can look a lot better with just a few position adjustments to bring things closer to the ideal positions. (At least I think so -- I realize some folks like her just fine "out of the box.") Still, the sliders are cranked all the way down in several places and I needed to go just a little further....

[Fiery Phoenix]

TMA LIVE wrote...

I personally don't like the default femshep, because unlike the default maleshep, she was made in the character creator, and not scanned from a model. And she just looks so plain, and blank faced. Nothing about her looks special. While the maleshep one is unique, and can't be recreated.

Like compare Lady Hawke to Jane Shepard:

Lady Hawke looks cool and unique. Like actual work was put into her. I'd really wouldn't mind playing with that face.

While Jane Shep just looks... plain, uninteresting, with a blank face.

Jane IS her own model; you can't truly duplicate her face using the in-game character creator. It's just that she isn't based on anyone's appearance.

[ADLegend21]

Wrote my first one shot involving Kat.

Link.

[Elanor]

Rheia wrote...

:D:D

Hahah, it suits him.
I don't know why, but he lools like Nicolas Cage on this picture. . .

[sagefic]

ELE08 wrote...

Definitely the combined result of having played so many diverse femSheps (salutes graveyard) and playing quite a bit with other people's femSheps for various reasons, I don't have a canon Shep anymore.  I have my femSheps, and I have my favorite one to play, but she isn't any more valid to me as the character than any of the other versions on the thread.  They are all femShep to me equally and in their own way.

In that sense, I welcome a new default.  Even if the new face of the trailer and any promo material we get doesn't look like mine, it's still female Commander Shepard to me, and that's awesome.  The looks change, the essense of the character does not.

i would have to concurr with this. working on the femshep vid, i really came to appreciate multiple femsheps in a way i never had before. kyrie feels like "my" femshep - the femshep that i've created, and her story is the way i personally prefer the mass effect saga to play out. because of that, i've had trouble creating an alt.

however, i really *don't* think of her as "the" commander shepard. i think there are other shepards who look more like what a marketing default ought to look like, and other decisions that seem more canonical to me. so seeing the marketing femshep will likely be like when i watch another person's fanvid - that's their vision, not mine, but it's very awesome to see her all the same.

and then, i do sort of think there's this 'spirit of femshep' that kind of encompasses all femsheps, but that starts to sound a little crazy.

[SkaldFish]

OK, a before-and-after with the Default Jane face, and Jane modified to "fix" proportions:


The changes are subtle, but they make a difference, IMO.

I'd like to have done more, but the sliders, man, the sliders....

Face code of the modified version: 743.KDE.E11.M81.9J3.12W.119.114.6D6.1B4.6G6.177

[ScepticMatt]

Yeah, the sliders are terrible...
Still good work. It makes a big difference IMO.

Btw. What do you think of the FemShep banner I made?

Modifié par ScepticMatt, 19 juin 2011 - 10:26 .

[SkaldFish]

ScepticMatt wrote...

Yeah, the sliders are terrible...
Still good work. It makes a big difference IMO.

Btw. What do you think of the FemShep banner I made?

Thanks! And two thumbs up on the banner -- very distinctive!

[ScepticMatt]

Do you mind if I 'steal' your facecode for future playthroughs?

[TheMarshal]

SkaldFish wrote...

OK, a before-and-after with the Default Jane face, and Jane modified to "fix" proportions:


The changes are subtle, but they make a difference, IMO.

I'd like to have done more, but the sliders, man, the sliders....

Face code of the modified version: 743.KDE.E11.M81.9J3.12W.119.114.6D6.1B4.6G6.177

Very nice!  Pretty amazing how so many subtle changes add up.  Modified Jane looks a little bit older than Default Jane.  I think it's the eyes...

[SkaldFish]

ScepticMatt wrote...
gt
Do you mind if I 'steal' your facecode for future playthroughs?

Not at all. That's why I posted it. I don't actually use this FemShep; she was just the result of this "face experiment." So let me know if she "holds up under fire."