82 réponses à ce sujet

[Shadedclan]

Schrijver wrote...

Yes, Mark Vanderloo. You can see Shepard walking around Amsterdam shopping at D&G en Louis Vuitton with his wife and kids from time to time.

This made me lol.

[SkaldFish]

Posted this to the femShep Fan Thread and Captain Crash suggested I post it here as well. (I'm including the initial post from SageQueen that prompted it...)

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).

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.

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):



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 &amp; 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&nbsp;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 - 07:10 .

[SkaldFish]

Edited to fix formatting...

Crash asked what the standards applied were, and that bears clarifying here as well.

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.

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 tops 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 the 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 specify differences in the planes of the face and the underlying bone structure.

And, like I said, those are the guidelines 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.

Modifié par SkaldFish, 19 juin 2011 - 07:08 .

[MissMaster]

I don't use the default fem Shep. I think she's kind of ugly and her lips are too thin. But then again my one and only Shep is a sexy black woman.

[Thrombin]

SkaldFish wrote...
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):

Just to confirm, the picture above is your modified femshep?  I only ask because without seeing them side by side I can't tell there's a difference!

I'd certainly be very happy with that image 

[luvstosploog]

Art3mShepard wrote...

Actually i don't care about femShep. I always use Sheploo. He's modeled after and actually it's the most impressing facemodel.

apparently you cared enough to look at this thread and post >.<

[RPGamer13]

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) 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).

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.

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.

My criticisms are as follows:

I don't like the orientation of her nose, should be level with the ground and rather than size of the nose I'd argue it's the fact that the nose area is too far back that makes it look off.

I agree the eyes are too far apart

The chin thing though is subjective.  While for the size of the head, I agree that the chin is a bit too tall, but how far it protrudes and the width of the chin is another issue.  Some women have chins that protrude that far, and some even further.  I've also seen real life women with chins about as wide.  Now, whether someone considers those desirable traits or not differs from person to person.

[Captain Crash]

Thrombin wrote...

Just to confirm, the picture above is your modified femshep?  I only ask because without seeing them side by side I can't tell there's a difference!

I'd certainly be very happy with that image 

Yep it is his modified Shep :happy:


She looks rather good doesnt she.   Im guessing Bioware can play around with her hairstyle quite liberally too. Afterall we seen the new maturer looks for Ash and Kaidan.  It be nice to see her with a new variation of what she has now.   

Its a really insightful post as I said previously Skald. Its something you dont really notice, but when you take the time to look its there.

I suppose part of the problem was Jane never had a face model. With Sheploo all they had to do was work around Vanderloo's features a little. Building Jane from scratch is always far more difficult.

[chikity chad]

In my opinion, they should use the default Jane for the marketing. To me she is the femshep but if they changed her up a little thats fine. Like in ME 1, she had the lip scar and the eyebrow scar and in ME 2 they removed those. Just as long as she looks comparable to the ME 1 and ME 2 defaults I will be happy.

[tmp7704]

Luc0s wrote...

Also, I don't get it, why does everyone always call him Mark Vanderloo while his name obviously is Mark van der Loo, a Dutch name? 'van', 'der' and 'Loo' are 3 distinct words that should not be merged together in 1 word. Ah well...

It's because that's apparently how his name is spelt, for some reason. See the imdb profile for example and note how his birth name is stated to be "Mark S. Vanderloo" unlike "Robine van der Meer" mentioned and linked on the same page.

[SkaldFish]

Thrombin wrote...

SkaldFish wrote...
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):

Just to confirm, the picture above is your modified femshep?  I only ask because without seeing them side by side I can't tell there's a difference!

I'd certainly be very happy with that image 

Guess I should have taken the time to do a side-by-side, but yes, this is the modified Default Jane. I'll try to put together a side-by-side later.

Quite a few things were changed:

The eyes and eyebrows were lowered
The eye depth was reduced
The eyes were pulled closer together
The brow ridge was reduced
The nose was lengthened
The chin was raised
The mouth was widened and its height adjusted slightly
The ears were made smaller

After all those adjustments, if she still looks like the Jane you like, that's a good thing! Like I said, though, I wasn't able to make all the changes I wanted to make (a constant frustration for me in the CC). The chin needs to be a bit smaller, the face needs to be narrower at the temples, and the nose needs to be a bit longer. But the sliders were at their limits. Of course, I always want to work on the mouth but can't. Most of the female mouths tend to create "duck-face" in certain lighting situations (and especially when Shepard smiles).

Also, I think someone noted this on another thread, but Default Jane's face isn't precisely duplicated in the CC custom options. As soon as you opt for a custom face, you can see that the nose, the mouth, and the skin texture change slightly. I don't believe she was built from a human model, but she was apparently created outside the CC and only approximated within its customization options.

Finally, I want to emphasize that those ideal proportions are best used as a starting point and a "sanity check" as you're developing a face. Interesting faces will always violate the ideal in two or three areas. In this case, I used them to help me figure out why Default Jane's face was irritating me, but I always try to start with generally ideal proportions when I design my FemSheps, then I adjust until I'm pleased with the appearance.

Your results may vary. Void where prohibited. In laboratory tests, Default Jane was found to cause mild to moderate heebie-jeebies in a statistically significant percentage of users. See insert for indications and character interaction warnings.

Modifié par SkaldFish, 19 juin 2011 - 09:11 .

[Kreid]

I think they will redesign her in a more "Admiral Hackett" way, as in, no modeled after someone but clearly better than average CC models with custom skin textures and the likes, shall look good.

[SkaldFish]

RPGamer13 wrote...
My criticisms are as follows:

I don't like the orientation of her nose, should be level with the ground and rather than size of the nose I'd argue it's the fact that the nose area is too far back that makes it look off.

I agree the eyes are too far apart

The chin thing though is subjective.  While for the size of the head, I agree that the chin is a bit too tall, but how far it protrudes and the width of the chin is another issue.  Some women have chins that protrude that far, and some even further.  I've also seen real life women with chins about as wide. Now, whether someone considers those desirable traits or not differs from person to person.

Good points, and I agree. Most of these things are subjective when it comes to each player creating a face s/he likes, and I didn't mean to suggest I had some license to make absolute judgments. I should have clarified that what I mean by listing all those variations is that they are outside those ideal proportion measurements. For example, the chin isn't objectively "too big," but it's too big to fall within the ideal proportions.

And again, the ideals are just a starting point, guide, and sanity check for making sure the face doesn't start to feel distorted. I find creating realistic-looking faces in the ME CC to be very difficult, so I lean on all the help I can get!

[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.

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

Modifié par SkaldFish, 19 juin 2011 - 09:58 .

[sterling_archer]

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.

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

I see it now. It definently looks a lot better.

*goes to use facecode*

[sagefic]

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.

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

I think you made an excellent point right there, Skald. The default Jane never looked right to me, and I could never think why. But seeing the original and the "fixed" version, it's abundantly clear that default Jane just does not look right.

And the modded jane, well, she looks like a lot of custom femsheps that i've seen, probably because people have unconciously tried to go back and fix what looks wrong. really hope that the femshep shown on cover art and in trailer can be like your modded jane there.

[Thrombin]

Strange, your modified Jane looks more like my Jane than the default Jane in your picture. Maybe I tweaked it slightly all those years ago and forgot I'd done it 

Or maybe, as you say, just the fact that I went into the CC before deciding not to change anything caused some subtle changes anyway.

By the way, how do you use face codes? I've seen them before but don't remember any option to enter them.

Modifié par Thrombin, 19 juin 2011 - 10:41 .

[Inspectre]

Bogsnot1 wrote...

Theyre not going to suddenly change the default for ME3, especially now that femshep will grace the cover of the Collectors Edition.

Her face had better be obscured, for Biowares sake.

Thrombin wrote...

Or maybe, as you say, just the fact that
I went into the CC before deciding not to change anything caused some
subtle changes anyway.

This precisely.  If you don't just hit 'accept', it changes the face.

Modifié par Dragon XIX, 19 juin 2011 - 10:52 .

[Exicuren]

I think that if they are going to change the face of default Fem shep they should use the model they used for morrigan in DA (sorry, can't remember her name).

[SkaldFish]

Dragon XIX wrote...

<snip/>

If you don't just hit 'accept', it changes the face.

Sure does. Not a huge change, but you can see it. The hair and eyebrows are a bit lighter, nose is slightly different, skin texture changes, etc.

To me the main thing that makes this tweaked version look different, though, is reducing the eye depth and pulling back the brow, and lowering both the eyes and the eyebrows. It's very apparent in the screen shot if you look at her left eye (on our right) then compare that edge of the face with the default's.

[SkaldFish]

Thrombin wrote...

Strange, your modified Jane looks more like my Jane than the default Jane in your picture. Maybe I tweaked it slightly all those years ago and forgot I'd done it 

Or maybe, as you say, just the fact that I went into the CC before deciding not to change anything caused some subtle changes anyway.

By the way, how do you use face codes? I've seen them before but don't remember any option to enter them.

You can't use the face codes mid-game, but if you're starting a new game you just opt for a custom appearance and there's a text box at the bottom of the screen where you can paste in your face code. Mid-game you'd have to get a headmorph file from someone and use the Gibbed Save Editor to load it into a save game.

[Battlepope190]

I won't mind if they do end up using a slightly modded "Jane" for the trailer and cover, but I think it'd be kinda neat if they took a poll of various community submitted Femshep models and used the one with the highest votes.

[habitat 67]

Battlepope190 wrote...

I won't mind if they do end up using a slightly modded "Jane" for the trailer and cover, but I think it'd be kinda neat if they took a poll of various community submitted Femshep models and used the one with the highest votes.

No.