The truth about Shapes

Go back and read the thread again, because you clearly haven't understood it.

I repeat...

I'm afraid your repetition totally dodges my point.

It refered to you saying that you can spot large exaggerations but easily miss smaller ones. You assume that both the large and the small are unintenional - mistakes. There's no reason to assume that. And there's ne reason to assume that your estimate of an exaggeration, large or small, is someone else's exaggeration.

Wow....still going....

It seems to me that Phils real argument has nothing to do with making pleasing to the eye shapes.......and more to do with basic tool using knowledge. It's rather the same thing as trying to suggest everyone knows how to hit a piano key....and since we all know a pretty tune when we hear it.....we ought to be able to create a melody fairly simply given our 'ability' to hit a piano key.

If I follow that line of logic I ought to be able to do a lot of things based on that fact that I've been alive for 40 years and have 'life' experience. And, I can even give it some merit.....after all....I 4yo can usually draw a stick figure because the child recognizes the basic upright 4 limbed human figure. The part where the argument loses weight is in assuming that just because we recognize balance in the human form IRL...we can therefor reproduce it fairly accurately. Not true. Balance of the human form is a subtlety that while you might realizes it pleases you....you're not necessarily going to be able to pinpoint why.

Marylin Munroe is a good example of a human face that defies the symetry normally associated with an attractive face.....We studied this in school and I'll never forget it. Her face does not follow the rules of what scientists found to be the formula for attractiveness....and it is indeed a mathmatical formula. So....the puzzle is....what makes her face work....she's obviously a beautiful woman. Apparently her physicality alligned in just the right way. My point is.....even though we 'see' what appeals to us.....it doesn't mean we are all able to pick apart the finer points of that appeal and recreate it. Even such a seemingly simple thing as setting sliders to make a 3d body......is NOT a fundamental skill just because we all know what a human looks like.

I totally get your argument Phil...and I think you mean to say that anyone can use the sliders...and that is true. But I disagree (also based on life experience) that anyone can produce a reasonable human shape. I think perhaps the ONLY reason it's somewhat true in SL....is because we're given a decent starting point with the basic avatar form.

This is for Chris' benefit, and for anyone else who hasn't quite followed this thread...

The OP said:

It is totally true, although longer than 5 minutes would usually be needed.

Then someone suggested that it needs an artistic eye to make a shape propotionally good, and that not everyone has it.

I disagreed, and said that, because we all have a whole lifetime's experience of seeing human shapes in the millions, we can all see whether or not parts of an avatar are noticeably disproportional to the other parts, just as we can with real people.

A few people disagreed with that.

That's the thread in a hutshell. Any need for further discussion?

But see, that's the very point you're dodging. If, due to our real life experience, we all are given ability to tell when the shape is out of proportion ... how is it even possible that some people can spot mistakes that i can't? I should be able to spot them too, right? The moment you accept the possibility that "my estimate of exaggeration isn't someone else's estimate of exaggeration", we arrive to the point where some people might be naturally more gifted when it comes to shape creation, because if nothing else they're more skilled at making them faultless. Also, if you accept that some people can spot mistakes that others cannot... then it blows the hole in your stance that all mishaped AVs must be result of deliberate decision. After all, it might as well be some exaggerations really _are_ case of people not able to tell these are actually exaggerations, non?

Wow! This is amazing.

I won't discuss most of your post, Milla. It merits discussion, but this thread is beginning to deteriorate from a sensible discussion, to people popping into it late on and not really understanding what the discussion is about, and even throwing in the odd little barb.

That was one of my earlier points. We start with a well proportioned shape - not a blank sheet.

I don't quite see it that way, but we'd need to see an example of someone's small exaggeration that you didn't spot. I'd conjecture that the exaggeration isn't an error, but rather it is within the range of normal proportions, and that there was no reason for you spot it. We all have different ideas as to what is pleasing to us and what is not. Something that I find aesthetically pleasing, you might find to be an exaggeration. For instance, many SL femal avs choose to have huge boobs. Maybe they find them pleasing, or maybe they think that guys find them pleasing. Some guys would find them pleasing, but I'm not one of them.

The very movement of that first slider is launching the user into creativity, no?

I think this thread has gone the way of so many others. One persons opinion has polarised against someone elses. We love to categorise, find the extremes:
A is an excellent designer, B a terrible one.

I think some people have high ability for reeling out shapes to order. Others just can't get to grips with one; and stretched in between are the other 99% of us. There isn't a definite line where one side is a good eye for proportion and the other side a bad. Life's a compromise, SL and RL

Did I say Joannah has the sexiest freckles in SL?

Colette, that's exactly how I think when I'm buying shapes. I want this shape to look like me, but I'm not skilled enough to get it there. I learn from your work, just as I learn painting from looking at old masters.

I already gave you two in this thread alone, looking at Milla's picture (small hands on long lanky body) and Imnotgoing's photos (huge head on the kid av). I saw things that they didn't, and in retrospect it's easier to see, no? Did you notice something off before I said anything?

I didn't look at them - before or after your earlier comments about them. Milla is a shape maker/seller, so I imagine that those small exaggerations (to you) are not wrong to her.

The hands clearly are intended because they reflect her rl proportions but look at the torso and hips - they are exaggerations beyond the "normal" range of proportions and it might be hard to see sometimes based on the angle when creating the shape, but no one looks like that without having been in traction.

I don't know about you, but big numbers like that turn me on.

This is the best response to the original poster in this whole thread. That anyone could imagine EVERYONE being able to successfully manipulate that many possible combinations to a pleasing outcome is absurd.



The point is; Some people are better at it then others. If you are one of the people who find it easy to make a pleasing shape, more power to you. But not everyone does. So no, shape-makers aren't being predatory or unethical, they are just providing a service, simple as that. With 11,643,588,000,000,000,000,000,000 available combinations, I would say that creating something unique and special is completely possible, especially for someone artistically inclined to such an end. So there is also no misrepresentation.

I've bought a few shapes over the years. Even way after knowing how to make my own shape. And in resposive to the original poster again... No, I've never felt cheated or deceived. Because in this world I can do just about anything, make just about anything, but still only have a limited amount of time. And besides, I can never get the damn ass right.

When I pay someone to do something that I don't have time to do myself, I tend to pay the ones with the most talent (to my eye). So no, it's not unethical that someone would charge me for something I can do myself if I dont want to take the time to go thru 11,643,588,000,000,000,000,000,000 different possiblities or don't have the talent to put together those 11,643,588,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations the way I want them to look.

Making a basic average avatar shape is easy. But if I am looking for a better avatar shape then just something basic and average, I'm going to look for someone talented to pay to make one, coz I suck at it. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

Do you have other angles of those models? Id do both of them for you for free Pie, we've only known each other forevars.

It was a specific famous one. This particular one was petite, with a tiny bust but generous hips and bottom for her frame.

Without reading the gazillion posts covering this question...your suspicion is correct! Unfortunately some skins come with a 'shape' already included and are not editable, so be careful what you buy...if you want to edit your shape otherwise you just may be SOL on editing your shape to that lovely skin you just bought.

Oh and Phil the red jacket was mentioned 3 times in this thread (well 4 now)

Well, there you go then. To one person the hands look badly done, but to another, they look fine. It's wholly subjective.

I haven't seen them, but since Milla is a shapemaker/seller, and an RL artist as well (I think Milla is the RL sculptor), I'd have to assume that, like the hands, they are not only intentional, but also look right to her - which is the only thing that really matters.

Phil, the pictures are a few pages back in this very thread. For me, they are on page 5. Depends on your pagination.

We keep going in circles on the issue of proportionality and what "looks right." If you use a relativistic scale and say well it looks right ... to him/her ...well then there is no such thing as a bad shape, is there? But if you can step back and objectively say, these proportions are outside the range of normal, without making a judgment about it, then we may have made some progress.

Everyone - even the people wearing pneumatic Ethiopian shapes, thinks that their shape looks good, and emphasizes the things they want to emphasize. But that doesn't make those shapes within the range of normal, or "look right." Candidly, that torso /hip combination is so sharp, it crossed the line from lanky to unrealistic. I can see how it could happen based on the way the camera positions itself when editing the body, but when you look at it from that angle it is pretty obvious it is beyond normal.

If it's intentional, fine. Same with the buggy Anime eyes that some people choose to wear, that take up 1/8 of their head. It's the look they want and it's not meant to be proportional. Live and let live. But the rest of us who assume that realism is the goal, or realism enhanced (e.g., large bust & bum) is the goal, may think that the shape looks like crap. We make the judgment call because of our own preferences and biases.

Yep - I had seen it. I'd commented that the waist could be a little thicker for my taste

I assume that you are talking about its thinness, and not about the sharp angles around the hips, which I'd put down to SL's display of it. I agree that she's very thin - unusually so - but I do think that there are people who are that thin. Even so, it doesn't matter whether there are people as thin as that or not, because it's the look that Milla wanted. I don't think she is so thin because Milla believes that that's the average build; i.e. I doubt that it's a mistake.

Chris nailed it on the head when he wrote this: "When it comes to transferring that vision to a medium, no I do not have that talent."

That's the point.

It's something like the art of a professional photographer. Everybody can use the same camera and still, you need the talent to transfer the vision to a medium to produce an artistic picture, although the only thing you have to do is to push a button.

Yes, I am discussing its thinness, compounded by the hips being way too long. The thinness is okay, because people ARE that thin - but stick it on those long hips and it looks like the shape came out of a medieval stretching machine. Had the waist been thicker, it would have been more plausible that the avatar was tall (without appearing stretched out) and naturally lean. Let's take Gisele Bundchen - she is tall and slim, but her waist is such that she doesn't really curve much in the middle. This curve in the middle is the problem for that kind of build. If you want that height and a curve in the middle, the hips have got to be wider, not necessarily longer, but that might also require a tad more body fat to not look like a skeleton.



2nd from the left is the look - tall and thin. But not stretched out in the middle.



Big difference.