Wilbur HD G8M = Seb HD G8M?

3D Vitality

Hi,

they seem to be pretty similar to me, perhaps they use the same skin ressource...

It would be really nice if we could get more characters with a (fast) recognizable difference / diversity, male and female.

Who actually checks it when the product is submitted? Is there a similarity test at all?

Just curious ...

watchdog79

Well, while they each come from a different PA, they do show some similarities, but also some distinct differences.

However, if you go through the catalogue of Emrys (Seb HD), you will notice a lot of the characters look quite similar. I find this quite common.

I think that if the PA's want to stay in the customers' sights, they need to produce new things every now and then, to be listed on the daily offers page in the store. While I may have bought some character 6 months ago and won't buy the new one with similar looks, someone else may find the new one interesting and buy him/her. The other customer may never search for Emrys in the store and may never come accross the older character.

After a while, those of us with better developped facial recognition skills may be able to simply look at the daily offers page and say: "Oh, a new Mousso's", or "That's definitely an Emrys character". Some artists may actually like and prefer characters from certain PA's. I may find myself more willing to buy a new character from certain PA's immediately upon recognition, because I know what standard to expect in the package.

MimicMolly

Sometimes the promo pics make the characters look the same. I feel this way about Mousso's characters and Kayleyss' characters, yet when I load them up in DS and finally render them, they look different. I'd be nice to see these two rendered together under default lights. Perhaps, we'd know for sure how different or how samey they are.

watchdog79

MimicMolly said:

Sometimes the promo pics make the characters look the same. I feel this way about Mousso's characters and Kayleyss' characters, yet when I load them up in DS and finally render them, they look different. I'd be nice to see these two rendered together under default lights. Perhaps, we'd know for sure how different or how samey they are.

It is often the eyes what triggers the recognition of the characters' "family". They are especially prominent on female characters, as they are enhanced by make-up and a sort of an eye magnet on the main promos.

Another thing for me about female characters is the hair. Combined with somewhat similar eyes, similarly looking hair can make the characters look like sisters.

Sevrin

They look different enough to me, although they could be related.  I don't buy a lot of male characters, but I did buy Seb recently.  I just can't download him right now.

Hylas

I think Wilbur and Seb do look similar, but not more so than the gazillion conventionally attractive young white ladies that get published every day. I'm all for distinctive and diverse characters but Wilbur/Seb are an odd example to pick if you want to discuss a lack of diversity amongst the characters.

***

I often recognise Emrys' work on sight but I would not have guessed that Seb is by them... I find him quite unusual!

I find that almost every PA has their own distinctive, easily recognisable style. This is definitely true for Emrys as well but they are actually a PA who has a quite diverse portfolio, with male and female characters of various ethnicities and ages, and not all of them are conventionally attractive. Compare that to the portfolios of Thorne, RareStone, or Vyktohria... (no shade, I love the work of every PA I just mentioned!)

 

 

RCTSpanky

Especially the male characers looks sometimes very similar. Have a look at the stores of Emrys (Seb HD). All his male characters have the same form of the eyes. Even more blatant are the three male characters in Catalyst. They all look the same (sometimes more, sometimes less wrinkles).

Drutherson 8 looks to me like a smaller copy of Floyd 8 (which you can also see from the fact that some morphs for the clothes for Floyd were made and not renamed afterwards). Maybe there are reasons, why vendors produce so many similaries instead of more individuals.

MeneerWolfman

Agree on Emrys, the faces are almost interchangeable. Same with Vyusur, they look like they all came from the same family.

It's good (I guess) if you really like that design, and if you're putting in that much effort, you should like what you're making. 

However, I feel like it boxes the vendor in as either A.) not much of a reason to buy a second figure as they look so similar or B.) if you don't like that look you're not going ever buy any of the figures. It never hurts to mix it up a bit, it's one of the things I enjoy about some vendors. I may not like every last character they produce, but if their artistic quality is good, so I know what to expect quality wise but get a unique and distinctive design. Male-M3dia is the first vendor that jumps to mine that does a great job of varying up the character designs between products.

 

nicstt

They look different to me.

daveso

they all come from the same base. 

SBibb

I think Wilbur looks more close to Harold ( https://www.daz3d.com/harold-hd-for-genesis-8-male ) than Seb, and I'd be more likely to confuse those two than either of them with Seb. Even so, there's quite a few differences between the main promo images. Wilbur's jaw is less squared, his cheeks appear more thin/papery, the forehead wrinkles don't line in the same way, the crow's feet around the eyes land a bit differently. They easily look like they could be related, while not being the same. (As has been said earlier... kind of like how Emry's characters are very recognizable, as is Mousso, CarbonCrow, iSourceTextures, etc...)

As for Wilbur and Seb, I think Seb is more smiley (I wouldn't expect him to have a resting frown), and has a slightly more rounded jawline. His ears appear thicker, and his cheeks appear more fleshed out. Forehead wrinkles line differently, too.

They may not be hugely different, but I do think there's enough differences that they don't look the same.

plasma_ring

3D Vitality said:

Hi,

they seem to be pretty similar to me, perhaps they use the same skin ressource...

It would be really nice if we could get more characters with a (fast) recognizable difference / diversity, male and female.

Who actually checks it when the product is submitted? Is there a similarity test at all?

Just curious ...

I don't think this would ever happen, but trying to filter out characters to make sure they're very different would probably have the opposite effect.

• Vaguely similar outliers are more likely to be viewed as overrepresented if there's more than one of them, and slight differences in a homogenous group are more likely to slide. As an example, many of the younger white female DO core characters have similar face shapes and skin tones but are differentiated by theme (she's a mom! She's a spy! She's a sophisticated fashion model! She's a more alt fashion model! She's feisty!), while many of the other female core characters are differentiated by ethnicity/age and only represented once or twice at most. Whether or not you think this is by design or whether you believe it's justified--and I do think it's getting better--it's a thing that happens at the level where Daz makes a choice of what to offer in the store. 
• The rejoinder to that is usually, "Well, Daz takes what sells!" and that's kind of the problem--if you know people are going to buy 1,000 variations on one type of model and not another, there probably still won't be a noticeable increase in model diversity unless Daz decides to stop selling as many of the models they've historically sold tons of. So there's a nonzero chance that the person making the call of what to reject will think Elysia and Dallas are different enough that people will want to buy them, but scrutinize Darya and Zola more closely if they think it's more or less possible to recreate Darya by combining Zola with other options available in the store.
• It could lead to a burst of wild innovation among vendors, or it could lead to people feeling it's a bigger risk to try to create certain types of characters, or to offer characters at all. I bought Seb, but would probably not buy Wilbur--not because they're too similar (I don't think they are) but because I prefer one artist's approach over the other. If "similar concept, different execution" was enough for stuff to get rejected, it'd probably just mean the figure market wouldn't be very good money.  

 

nemesis10

I suddenly feel very ethnic; Raiya's Darya has a very distinctive look that reminds me a tiny bit of Jennifer Hudson while Zola reminds me of Thandie Newton while Elysia and Dallas could be the tarted up version of one another!