The illegitimate daughter of a prominent space whaler, Greta has spent the better part of her adolescence on a hormone-fueled crusade against pollution of the cosmic environment and unsustainable mining.
Figured since I have plenty of apparel items, I’d try a new look that’s completely different from my usual look…
Which brings up another tip for creating portraits, don’t be afraid to try a totally different look with your character portrait… You might be pleasantly surprised with the results.
Let’s share a trick about color matching make-up and skin complexion… assuming you already know the basics of color matching and how to use a color wheel, et cetera, there is one thing I noticed about how realistic the EVE portraits are, and that’s that there are actually “warm” and “cold” dark complexions. Dark skins, you name them as you please but here around my neck of the woods they’re just “black”, are not just shades of brown. Brown is a shade of red and thus color matching darker complexions should be fine when color matching for red, right? Well… not just that. Some dark complexions have a underlying shade of… blue! And it makes a whole difference on how do they color match, since warm make up colors might clash horribly with “cold” skin complexions.
As you might notice, they have different complexions (same mother, different fathers) and they’re wearing different mascara shades and lipstick.
Why? Matilda C. Fock (above) has a “warm” skin. Cecilia M. Fock (below) has a “cold” skin. Matilda is wearing a pink eyeliner, which makes a straight color match to her brown eyes (red+red) and her “warm” complexion with a red hue. Cecilia is wearing a green eyeliner which makes a straight match to her greenish eyes (green+green) and an adjacent match (green+blue) to her “cold” skin complexion, with a subtle bluish hue.
Lipstick also had to match complexions, many reds/pinks look off on Cecilia thus I went for a very dark brown, which enhances her full lips, whereas Matilda sports a two-tone pink which matches the mascara.
And this is something I never thought I would ever want or need to learn because of… a spaceships videogame. Make up tips? Seriously?
What I did notice is that the lighting options in the portraits also have warm and cold variations, with more yellows in one than in the other. So even if you have chosen your character’s skin complexion, you can still adjust a lot about how the portrait looks just by selecting one lighting option or another.
It is something I had never really noticed until I played with the portrait generator. I’m no photographer, but I’m sure people who are already know these things.
Yes, lighting is yet another level of complexity, specially since the light sources are fixed and we can only pan/spin/tilt the characters a little. Now I don’t remember the lighting on those portraits (they’re from 2015) but Matidla could use some tweaking, unless the silver glare on her coat was a conscious decission…
(I also read more than is advisable about portrait photography, which ended in much frustration because the creator is as it is)
Another tip, btw, is to look for the breathing animation and the cycling of face animation to get the right microexpression. FAI, the slider that pulls the mouth corners has asymmetrical results, but the animation on the posing screen makes for a fairly symetricall pull just for a few frames, and the rendered portrait reflects exactly those frames of the 3D animation cycle. So… wait for your characters to move their face around and check for the sweet spot of expression and then wait and wait until it cycles again AND matches the right spot for breathing animation (whether you want your ladies with full up and forward bosom or full down and back bosom or something inbetween).
I’d like to see you or anybody else quickly go through an apparel collection as extensive as mine… Total amount of apparel in my collection is 760 items…
Total Male Items = 352
Total Female Items = 393
Total Unisex Items = 15
For this portrait I picked a background that I figured wouldn’t be a distraction from the character but would also complement and enhance the character’s apparel color…
She looks like a very able ‘secretary’ and her outfit is truly magnificent from head ( glasses ) to toe ( boots ).
I’m not fond of the color but the style and material are amazing!