Digital Beauties

December 23, 2001 6:43 PM

Digital Beauties is a book full of beauties...er computer animated beauties that is. Courtesy of the german online magazine (in english) Taschen.
posted by HoldenCaulfield (13 comments total)

Too bad you have to pay for it. :-(
Any1 know of a crack?

BTW, my eyes really hurt!
posted by 6 at 6:49 PM on December 23, 2001

lens flare YES!
posted by mcsweetie at 7:16 PM on December 23, 2001

Making 3D people is so easy if you use something like Poser
posted by riffola at 7:47 PM on December 23, 2001

Ah Taschen, only natural for them ;)
posted by Hackworth at 8:11 PM on December 23, 2001

Call me nostalgic, but there's something about an actual person that just makes her so much more appealing. Can't quite put my finger on what it is, though.
posted by pardonyou? at 8:22 PM on December 23, 2001

(warning: goofy porn links)
Ahh Poser, tool for visualizing all kinds of disturbing desires.
All links courtesy POE
posted by malphigian at 8:48 PM on December 23, 2001

riffola: its late and my sarcasm detector is on the fritz, please tell me you're joking about poser =)

I've only ever seen ONE artist impress me with poser, and that's only because he heavily Photoshops his renders. Stunning work though.

Creating a convincing human being is probably the hardest thing to accomplish in animation. The talent in that book is impressive, even though I think the publishers compromised its validity a little bit by focusing only on women, but that's Taschen for ya. I recognized one of the sample artists though, whose work is very impressive. His gallery is worth looking at, even if a lot of his work is a little on the cheesecake side.

Still, video game characters are getting cuter by the day (image from Final Fantasy X)
posted by GeekAnimator at 9:30 PM on December 23, 2001

Well I was referring to the first image the one with the girl in black that looks like a Poser 4 model.

Renderosity.com has a gallery where you can view what some people can do with Poser. Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5. (All 5 images are made by Catharina Przezak.)
posted by riffola at 2:45 AM on December 24, 2001

riffola:

Interesting images, but all somehow, uh... dead looking. Shiney, unfocused eyes and no one home.

Oh, well, technology and art marches on...
posted by jpburns at 6:23 AM on December 24, 2001

On one hand, it's an art - a skilled one at that, and I think it's swell. (But not the porno stuff.)

On the other hand, I think stuff like this has the potential to set even more unrealistic goals for young women to attain with their bodies. They've already got unrealistic models in the mass media who are real people - what happens when computer models become a force with, well, Lara Croft-like proportions? How will that potentially screw up our youth?
posted by hijinx at 7:11 AM on December 24, 2001

"... How will that potentially screw up our youth?..."

That depends on how stupid their parents are and how seriously they try and feed their kids the stuff that having a ideal shape is something that is literally impossible - as opposed to simply impossible for them.

The healthy attitude to teach your child is this:

The world is full of many people, some of them will be better looking than you, just like some people are faster than you and some are smarter than you. This doesn't make them automatically stupid or evil, and hating them for looking that way is ignorant.

If your daughter cannot look at a picture of someone thinner/prettier than her without needing therapy for a few decades then their was a lot more screwed up with her than what size bikini she needed.

So it turns out that a young girl will have to accept that she may not have an ideal body... most young boys had to accept they wouldn't ever be James Bond.

A decent grip on the nature of reality will prevent problems.
posted by soulhuntre at 4:02 PM on December 24, 2001

most young boys had to accept they wouldn't ever be James Bond

I'm still waiting to meet Pussy Galore.
posted by owillis at 7:12 PM on December 24, 2001

soulhuntre: That depends on how stupid their parents are and how seriously they try and feed their kids the stuff that having a ideal shape is something that is literally impossible....

I concur with you but only to a point; the media is increasingly used as a babysitter-cum-entertainment device and thus, a majority of kids feel bad about themselves. It's true in both boys and girls, but girls get it moreso because it carries on into puberty and adulthood.

What if parents do take that healthy attitude you mention, yet things such as Digital Beauties fall into the hands of impressionable kids? Girls could wonder, internally, if they're doing enough to look like that - after all, people who aren't real don't have to obey the laws of physics. Like Barbie.

So it turns out that a young girl will have to accept that she may not have an ideal body... most young boys had to accept they wouldn't ever be James Bond.

That's apples and oranges, really. The problems associated with women and hatred or displeasure of their bodies goes far, far beyond childhood; it's really become a larger part of the female role in our society, which is sad. Boys? Ah, we get to worry about our fantasies as kids going away and look at soft core porn art all we want.
posted by hijinx at 8:20 AM on December 26, 2001