My judgment so far: I don't know if I'll get as good with this as many other people I follow and admire on Deviant Art, but it's fun and easier than I thought to make some decent images, so I'll likely stick with it. Which means I've given myself a (very cautious) green light to go ahead and purchase a little content.
Now obviously one of my main goals is to create my own version of Duster so I can create images of her. I was tempted to commission one of the artists on DA to create a version of her I could use but... if I do that, how am I gonna learn how to create characters in DAZ? Besides, I know this will be a labour of love for me. Who else but me is gonna spend hours in DAZ Studio tweaking every little detail to get my vision of Duster just right?
Now as you read in Part 1 (and may have already known), in my head Duster is "played" by Playboy's January 1979 Playmate Candy Loving. Here's a refresher of what this babe of yesteryear looked like:
One of the first things I learned as I watched and read 3D art tutorials on character creation was to not work from a base character (like, say, the Genesis 2 Female), but from someone else's customized character that's reasonably close to the final result you want. From what I've seen already in DAZ Studio, it'll save you hours of work.
Coincidentally another thing I heard about digital art characters is that Victoria is one of the most popular around. My friend EXitZero, in particular, told me he works almost entirely from a Victoria 4 base character for his many superheroines—including his version of Duster. Well, wouldn't you know it, DAZ offered a great deal a few weeks back on four versions of Victoria: 4.2, 5, 6, and 7. So I snatched them up. Knowing how popular Vicky is with digital artists I thought it would be a wise investment.
I was still hunting for other morphed figures I could build Duster from, but then I had a close look at the Victorias. Now V4 has been around for quite a while and there's a ton of content developed for her, including a lot of free stuff. Victoria 5 was based on the first generation of DAZ's Genesis figures; I think they must have come out with Genesis 2 pretty quickly because there doesn't seem to be a lot of content available expressly for V5 or plain ol' Genesis. V6 is based on G2, while V7 is based on the latest and greatest G3. However that means there's currently not a lot of free content for those characters (certainly not compared to V4) and not even a lot of for-pay content yet for V7 either, though that is changing with each passing day.
This meant I had to make an important decision. Would I start building Duster on the very popular Victoria 4, or would I jump to one of the newer generations? My friends with Poser experience could probably help me more with V4 and I would probably find more content at lower prices for her. V6 and V7, on the other hand, offered a more realistic look and better integration with DAZ Studio. I would also need to invest in the head and body morphing tools for whichever figure I chose, so the decision (or the wrong one) came with a price tag.
Well, in many ways, the decision was made for me when I opened up Victoria 6, gave her brown eyes, and rendered her base appearance.
Take a good look at her and then look at Candy. And back again. I think you'll see what I saw: Damn, they could be sisters. Some alterations will be needed to capture Candy's look, but... it'll be fine-tuning, really.
So that's it, decision made. My version of Duster will be built on a foundation of Victoria 6 and, beneath her, the Genesis 2 Female. I'll be sharing my trials and tribulations of that process starting in part 3...
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