If the response is well-received then does someone want to host the download? My FreeStuff downloads are costing me about $5.00 a day right now and I can't afford to add anything else, I'm already hitting about 5GB a week in downloads and am allowed 5GB a month for free. (Hair not included, Koz's Free Male Hair)

I think he looks really wonderful. I would be very interested him him :)

Who's Steve Buscemi? Kayjay97: I'm packaging the zip file today as soon as I know what kind of interest he'll generate I'll upload him to Free Stuff. I just need to figure out where to host him from. Thanks! I'm serious Ratteler, I don't know who that is!

It's Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs!

I remember Mr. Pink too! Checked his filmography, iI must be wrong about Aliens, but I loved him in ConAir as the Mangler convict.

He's a regular cast member of "The Sopranos" now. Tony's cousin. But then again, everyone is Tony's cousin. 8-)

Interesting character I like the morphs.....though my only comment about the textures is that the nose and lips seem to have a different tone than the rest of the figure. Your skin has a yellow hue to it, but the nose is very pink...and the lips have a dark purple hue to them which makes it almost look like lipstick. (actually same goes for his genitals too...they are far more pink than the rest of his skin tone.) Hope you dont mind the comments Rawn

Nice looking texture...I will check back to see if you get an offer for hosting space. Sorry I don't have a site or would let you use a chunk of it.

No Rawn, I don't mind the comments and they are appreciated. This project started 2 dyas ago when the old complaints about Michael's genitals arose again. I thought it can't be that difficult to do realistic genitals for Michael. So, I did a little research grabbed some porno(not from my personal collection, by the way) and mapped out the textures. When I applied them I found the problem lies with texturing to the body. I haven't created the tone MAT's to change the skin tone on the genitals yet. The complaint that came out of that thread was the perfectness of all the Michael Textures available, so I thought I'd make a quick Freebie based upon the complaints. I took a Real Skin Head texture I was working on and a different medium res body texture I had already made and mixed them up. The skin color differences arose from blending the tone of the body texture, which was tanned, and toning the face texture to match close enough. Obviously, I didn't spend enough time blending the tones for a high quality texture. Also, if you are male, check out your own package and I think you'll find that your genital coloring doesn't really match you skin color either. Overall, your comments are right on and are definitely appreciated. I will spend some more time cleaning up some of the skin tones before I start giving him away because I don't want to release anything, even a freebie that's inferior. I may not have as much experience as most folks here, but I do have the same amount of pride. In order to grow as an artist and as a human being, one must be prepared to accept criticism as a fact, and apply it's intent to the project at hand in order to truly grow beyond the experience. (Oh wow, where did that come from, somehow I just flashed back to one of my 70's Zen philosophy seminars!)Thanks again, and if you see anything else please, don't hesitate! Dale

He's looking good. A realistic male is very much needed. I'd like to see the body tone paler though - I don't think a guy looking like this would be on the sunbed much ;-) I can help with hosting when he's ready, drop me an IM.

Perhaps some body hair and a little five o'clock shadow. An adult male usually has some beard shading, even if they're close-shaven. I like the idea of a little more realistic looking character though. Most of the textures seem to be male-model types, not average guy types. We need more like your guy, desperately. I'm really looking forward to the finished product.

On closeup he does have a 5 o'clock shadow on chin, jawline, and up to sideburns. Since it's part of the texture map it won't well unitl I create the bump file for it. Karen, his face is made from a pale european male photos and the body was a medium res photo-skin texture I already had created. I would rather have the body paler so I didn't have to tint the face skin to match, however, this was supposed to be a quickie experiment that's turned into a project. I'll try to come up with an acceptable lighter-skinned texture for the body as well. For now, think of him as being mixed hispanic and eastern european! Thanks for the comments again. I will utilize them all one way or another!

he's stunning, looks almost exactly like someone i know, and if i had any income, i'd help! i would certainly purchase the character when i have a job again. bravo!

Thanks Ricardo719, you won't have to pay, he'll be a freebie. I'm just going to do some tuning up on him. Thanks for the comments!

Good I like him, I think his package is a little too large for his stature unless he is a porn star You notice how people start relating to characters like that How many people do you know look like Mike??? I hope more people are encouraged to create more life like average Joe models. There is too much fantasy art & muscle bound characters here already. This gives the artist some characters which can add more realism and interest to their compostion. Instead of Mike & Vicky slaying dragons maybe we have some nastagic pictures of a skinny and gangly Mickey and slightly Pudgy Vicky and a gang of other average looking people(slobs) all looking different. crowding at the malt shop sharing and gobling down some ketchup drenched french fries.... Or maybe some Peter Faulk types I would love to see more Norman Rockwell type art and human drama instead of all the Boris Vallejo and Starwars art...Which already saturates these sites.....

d-larsen, he looks great ! ... i like the fact that you have been able to depart from the standard Michael 3 look. You have done a great job here :)

I got so interested in the project, I forgot I don't even have Mike 3. I wish someone would do something like this for M1 or M2. Oh, well...

Thanks so much for all the comments! I really can't wait to finish touching up. I'm going back and lightening the skin tone because I wasn't really happy with the darker body and lighter face. Of course that's created all sorts of new issues to deal with. I'll keep you posted and keep giving me feedback, please it sparks new ideas for other projects as well. Look for Alexi to be available free very soon!

Attached Link: http://www.digitalbabes2.com

I personally like the darker skin ... any chance you'll set him up with more than one skin tone?

and p.s. thanks for the link to koz's hair ... how wonderful! his styles are perfect for your new model "Alexi" ;^)

I've kept the darker skin textures while I'm working on the lighter one as well. Probably will release both since all it takes is a Mat file to load the different textures. My attempts to bleach out the darker tone is not working out very well. I may have to start from scratch on new lighter body tone. When you are dealing with real skin photos it is not easy to bleach tones out and maintain the details.

what method are you using to lighten the skin tone? when i've wanted to change skin tone on a photograph, i use adobe photodeluxe and tweak color, contrast, and saturation to get the effect that i want. if i can be of assistance, please let me know!

I also find the pink nose and mauve lips a bit jarring ..destaurating or hue shifting should help Male genitalia is often a very different colour from the main skin .. I've had the opportunity to observe quite a few naked people (clothing optional swimming pool). For color shifting full textures I use an antique photoshop filter called 'Convolver', its one of Kai's. Mine's fairly old and creaky, but I use it all the time. It does all sorts of radical or delicate hue shifts, channel inverts, embossing and so forth with losing color or muddying the image. If you can't find Convolver, I'd suggest getting very familar with Adjustment (hue/Sat) layers and layer masks, as thats another way to preserve the full range of tones while shifting/bleaching the colour. There are also filters around meant for color correcting to stitch images together, but they do nicely for matching source photos as well to even skin tones. d-larsen if you get stuck making him paler send me the files, and I can whip out a couple tones for ya :) Lyrra

I used everything in Photoshop I can think of. I've tried all those plus desaturizating and recoloring, replacing colors, contrast, brightness, filters and layers. So, I took the base texture lightened it to match the new head, and placed a partial layer of new skin at a medium resolution and opaqued it at 75%. So far it's working out well. I'm finally blending now and replacing the nipples and creating a new pubic hair later because I stupidly had merged the original. Thanks for the offer I appreciate it!

Thanks Lyrra, you slipped that one in while was answering ricardo's post! I think I've found a solution for now but will look for Convolver when I'm done. If I'm still not happy I'll PM you. hanks again for the offer I may take you up on it. Dale

Lyrra makes a good point; if the lips were just slightly lighter color, and the nose matched the facial color better ... but ... i still think that Alexi is stunning! i hadn't noticed those things the first time around, because i was just "jarred" by the resemblance to my friend, michael ... and i can't wait to try to "render" him when Alexi is ready. ;^) rock on, Dale!

he's LQQKin' good ;^)

Attached Link: He's Here!!!!

OMG DALE! >standing ovation< You sure worked your magic! He's so perfect! Take a bow! ;^) Ricardo

Thanks much Ricardo! By the way, here's the original face Alexie is made from:

wow, wonderful face, beautiful features! i can see where he would be an inspiration. ;^)