Oh-ho-ho!  My first Poser project was a celebrity look-alike, and I've tried it repeatedly for weeks at a time since then.  Trying to make figures look like actual people has just never worked out very well for me.  I've found that creating a face without any specific model often produces prettier results, at least with the way I do things in Poser.  I guess some people have that portrait artist's eye and some don't.

I've been at this for about two years now (Poser in general, that is), and I've had very little success with character packs previously.  What always seems to happen when I release a new character at 'Rosity is that about two people will buy it the first day it's available and then no sales are ever made after that.  What's worse, those two buyers always seem to have completely blank profiles/portfolios.  My most recent creation, Rachel for V4, broke that pattern briefly when someone bought her about two weeks after her release and actually published a render of her in the gallery (her textures, at least).  To be honest, my earlier works aren't very good at all in retrospect, but I suppose that's natural as I keep getting better and better.  If I can get just one character pack on the market that sells on some semblance of a regular basis, I'll be happy.  I'm not looking to make a living off Poser content, but I would like to make some money to offset what I spend on other third-party content.

Anyway, I've spent some time staring at my best yet render of Natalie's face.  I've also put the preview in Smooth Shaded mode and repeatedly INJected and REMoved Natalie's morphs, and the change seems significant.  Would any of you be willing to actually try using the morphs yourself if I sent them to you privately?  I can post renders 'til I'm blue in the face, but I think what another artist can do with them will be far more telling. 

The reason for me being so cautious about changing the morph settings is that a truly beautiful face that looks good in more than one light set or camera angle is not as easy to come by as one might think.  I can't tell you how many times I've created a beautiful face in one light set then done a render using a different light arrangement that ends up making my beauty look like a beast!  My most recent problem has been Natalie's upper lip.  I've been back and forth with the LipTopEdgeHeight and LipTopCenterHeight morphs just because the top lip looks fine in one light set but too large in another.  I think I've finally nailed the right setting, but it's still quite annoying. 

In terms of the actual look I'm aiming for, it's sort of guided by the characteristics I personally find most attractive in a woman.  Doe eyes, plush lips, soft and rounded face, high cheekbones,  smallish nose, etc.  At the same time, I'm trying to avoid keeping these attributes within natural bounds so she doesn't look like some hyper-idealized doll.