Pic 188: Pick a New Avatar

This week I'm introducing the new Date Ariane 2 Avatars, because they are the easiest to change for this project. There is also some weirdness you might want to know.

"Wait does it have to do with Ariane having bangs now?", well that's a different issue I'll address at the end.

First bit of weirdness: They are practically the same character. Daz currently has two popular figures Genesis 8.1 which is one I use for most everything, because it is so well supported for at least the last 8 years, and Genesis 9 which came out I think 3 years ago? and has some improvement over Genesis 8.1, but not enough to abandon and start over.

The biggest change with Genesis 9 is that its a non-binary model. You can change any genesis 9 into the opposite gender fairly easily. Which is why the player avatars I'm using are Genesis 9 figures! Yes, one looks male and one looks female, and they have different genitals, hair styles and makeup, and for a while the same clothes, but I nixed that idea.

And for a while they even had the same skin texture, the advantage of having the same texture is that making male and female hand poses touching Ariane is a matter of changing a couple of shape morphs. Pose the male character giving a back rub, and in ten second flat it's the female character giving a backrub.

Two problems with this: 1.) male nipples using a female skin look oddly big, that I could live with, but 2.) the character on the left looks like they are still in High School. I did all the male avatars this way, and realized I made a mistake. So I changed to a ruddy skin, brown eyes, and a bit of beard stubble, and the character now looks age appropriate. Never had a problem like this with a male character before.

Switching between male to female (and vice versa), got a little longer, but still fairly easy. 

The female is a character shape obviously designed to look like Milla Jovovich, but giving her a different texture and a side part hair style she look a lot more like Jennifer Carpenter of Dexter fame.

What's included here are the pictures from the very beginning where you pick which avatar to use. If you are playing the "bonus" the avatars wear towels, so they are included too.

I'm working on the little popup avatars at the bottom of the screen and the change clothes avatars, about 70 in total. Changing these to new characters means they will pop up through out the game except third party view bedroom scenes which will use the old avatars until I update all those.

Ariane with Bangs?

Earlier this week on a public post, I posted a picture of Ariane with bangs, and wondered what everyone thought. It was pretty split even, as expected. Not sure what triggered this idea, partly it was that during Ariane in Paradise production, the wet hair with bangs looked more interesting than the dry hair without, the other inspiration was Samantha in Dating in a World on Fire who wears bangs and looks great with them.

There's a practical issue, too. The straight side parted hair I picked is very difficult to use on more than a few pictures, it looks odd when looking at it from the side. The hair with bangs is simpler, doesn't require extra steps to use, and looks good from all angles.

I decided a split bangs looks better than flat bangs, and in the discussion it was brought up that Ariane's cheek bones looked too wide from "classic". I actually realized that about half way through Ariane in Paradise, but couldn't change it then, so I'm changing it now. Ultmately, I think this looks the best.

The attached files contain the top picture, and a version without bangs to compare. All my social media have the bangs version, this is the easiest method to get used to the look. More on this next week.