Ten years of The Dude - Part One: Kayla Carter

Ladies and gentlemen, can you believe it? I've been doing this for ten years. That's right. Technically I already hit that landmark in February, because February 28th 2015 is the exact day that I decided to start learning how to render images, but July 25th was my first official release on A3D. Alright so... I'm a couple days late. Kind of in character for me, isn't it?

I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do for my 10 year anniversary initially. Because I'm already producing a set that I've been mentioning for years, and I've already got some amazing sets lined up for A3D release as well that you guys have been seeing my produce over the last few months.

Then it hit me. Wouldn't it be fun to do a big retrospective on all of my characters? Look at old renders, talk about inspiration, evolution, etc. So here we are. This is the first of a series of posts that I'm gonna be posting across the coming week, and who better to start with than the leading lady of Lust Unleashed, Kayla Carter herself!

What a beauty. Everything you would want a bimbo to be, giant cock included. But like everyone else in the LU cast, she came a long way, and the vision I had for her initially isn't necessarily who she turned out to be. She's definitely the mainstay of mainstays though, and if you guys have been following me for a while, you'll know that my first ever set (The Museum) was a Kayla x Yelena release.

I remember distinctly where Kayla got her name from - her first name from, where else, Michaela Baines from Transformers. Megan Fox was my idea of a perfect girl for years, though of course she was never a blonde. But just the sound of that name, Michaela/Kayla had become mentally hard locked to the concept of a hottie. I went specifically with Kayla because I knew that in the US, Michaela was sometimes written as McKayla, so Kayla was just short for that. I also just love how American variants of names are sometimes completely detached from their origin in terms of spelling, and to me the more detached the name is the more it fits a bimbo.

That was, of course, because I envisioned Kayla as a brainless bimbo at first. That changed very quickly.

Her last name Carter was a confluence of the name Carter at around the 2010-2015 period. You'd hear a lot of Lil Wayne around that time, even in Europe, and I knew that his albums were called Tha Carter. Then there was the movie John Carter of Mars. And lastly there was the leader of Noble Team in Halo Reach, Carter-A259. So Carter was just a name that was sorta on my mind, and I loved the alliteration. Kayla Carter. It just sounded good. So that's what it became.

And so the rendering began.

Yup, here we are. This is a render that predates July 2015. Probably comes from April or May, when I was still practicing. Kayla and Yelena in their very first iterations. I had no idea how to render hair at that point so Kayla's hairstyle has this weird granite look. But here we have the origin of that bang in front of her face that she rocked for years. My original idea for Kayla was a bit of an alt girl, but I very quickly decided that didn't work out. That's an idea I would transfer over to Taylor years later.

I had absolutely no idea what constituted good lighting at the time. And actually, looking back at my renders over the years, I feel like it's something that I only slowly came into. It really was distinctly my style that carried me in the earlier years, and not so much the visual quality of renders. There were definitely artists out there creating more visually appealing material than I was, but hilariously I didn't think so at the time. I thought I was groundbreaking. It was that dumb, confident ego that kept me creating set after set, and that's what allowed me to be successful at this. Who knows what would've happened if I had a more realistic perception of the quality of my work, lol.

Kayla's dick at the time was a prop I had plucked off the web somewhere, and I quickly realised this wasn't gonna cut it. What I wanted was a fully integrated prop that was part of her body, but this was an entirely separated mesh that demanded I go into photoshop for each render where the seam between Kayla's body and the cock's mesh was visible to edit it out. That was a standard part of my workflow at the time, insofar as it could really be called a "flow". Render an image, edit out the seams. Super tedious work that I usually only did at the very last minute as deadlines for A3D release were breathing down my neck.

But there it was, Kayla's custom cock. I made this one myself with the idea of being able to attach it to Kayla. Which... I had no idea how to do. I didn't understand how geografting worked and I realised that I would still have to edit out the seams anyway. So barely any progress, but at least I would have Kayla rock a dick with a unique look. A good look? Well, that was up for debate. Honestly looking back I'm not a fan of these at all. But for someone who had no idea how to do anything in Zbrush, I thought that sculpting my own functional 3D prop was pretty impressive regardless.

And it did get my through my early years of making sets!

Now we're getting into late 2016 era renders. Kayla got a new cock and her model was upgraded to run on Genesis 3. Hence I also had to change her hairstyle, because I couldn't get her old V4 hairstyle to fit properly anymore! I searched high and low for something with a bang, and ended up having to go for the classic bang + ponytail she rocked for years.

Still, there's SO much to criticise here. Again, the lighting is awful. The cocksculpt leaves... a lot to be desired. And the warped mesh on that pink dress? Ugh. And her tits! Look at her nipples!

Again, my eye for a certain aesthetic was there, but the execution... it left a lot to be desired. I'm just so glad it appealed to folks anyway, haha.

But, every now and again there were images I really liked! This one is one of them. And don't get me wrong, it's still pretty flawed (her character lighting is way overexposed on one side and her skin shader is a bit dull), but in this shot I think we're starting to get somewhere. Funny though, look at how much smaller that old cock mesh is? Size creep is a thing I guess. And no, I'm not going back :P I really like where the ladies are atm.

This was a test render for Kayla's upgrade to Genesis 8. This was the first time I started to experiment with the businesswoman aesthetic. Much of the Kayla you know today is here because she's still a Genesis 8 figure, but I've made some tweaks over time. This is a not a hairstyle that I decided to keep for her, because I figured that even as the CEO of Carter Industries she would embrace a more slutty look than a formal look, but this style did make a reappearance on Taylor later.

I continued using Kayla's G3 hairstyle on G8 later, but if you're paying careful attention you might notice why I eventually stopped. There's a weird bend in hair ponytail just below her ears, which was a result of the autofitting process of G3 assets onto G8 characters. I could've made a custom morph for it but that would only amend the issue in certain poses. Long term, the reality was that I simply had to phase the ponytail out. It had served Kayla faithfully for years here.

But her current look is almost all there! And not just that, look at how much more I am in control of shaders, lighting, everything that makes a render pretty. And this, btw, is still not as good as what I make now. Her skin has no subsurface effects on it whatsoever, which makes her look extremely flat to the point of being unusable in daylight renders. But in scenes with warm interior lighting like this one, all the girls looked perfectly fine. Hence why I've done so many interior scenes and have recently started doing more outdoor stuff.

And here we have her. Current Kayla Carter in all her cumslut glory. A ravenous slut obsessed with her own cock, and with all the dickgirls she's been involved in making. Of course this hairstyle is a bit of indulgence on my part, I love working with sim hair these days and I think she just looks so wonderfully slutty with this long blonde hair. But if you want a Kayla that's closer to her "official" look, then here she is.

Ten years sure count for a lot, don't they? All I can say is that she's a complete and total success. And it's your support that made it happen. Thank you, sincerely.

Let's talk about Breanna tomorrow!