Quote - Thanks for those dancer foot shots, helps alot. I think with the heel bone I can get that bendable arch going on. Yes I think feet are generally overlooked, but I've had requests from several people over the last year for a better more versatile foot, so I think it is something people want. Especially for dance like ballet the poses look wrong and sort of stiff without the feet being able to pose correctly.  I have this strange sort of theory that we as humans notice even the smallest defects in movement unconsciously if not consciously. I think it goes back to the animal instinctual urge to kill of the weak, sick and deformed and mate with the strongest and most fit. (told you it was strange LOL) That certainly leaves me out in the cold, glad it's not like that anymore.

That's not a strange theory; it's pretty much a fact in my book. As an animator, I do people watch, and once you make yourself aware of it, you find that people key off of all sorts of actions and behaviors without realizing it consciously. You also find that the degree of exposure plays a part. Watch how someone reacts to a person in minimal clothing, as opposed to something that drapes and covers most of the body; in the first case, you get more immediate reactions, but those change constantly, and never seem to get intense. In the latter case, there's almost always a 'solemness' to interactions....although I choose to call it a tenseness, because that is what it is. Deprive people of that visual feedback, and they get wary, unsure. You never have the level of tension, sexual or otherwise, at the beach or the pool, because everyone can tell if anyone is working up to violence....or anything else....and that lets the person relax more. A mall in winter, with everyone a walking bundle of thick clothes always seems to have a pervasive sense of waryness and tension; the 'walking in the unknown woods alone' syndrome.

And as for the feet...... Add me to the list of those who want articulated toes and arch. the Poser Shovel Foot is fine for shod animation; and by shod, I mean -fully- covered feet. Once you get to sandals, the big toe at least has to be boned; morphs can handle what the little toes do, for the most part. But when you deal with actual bare feet, you need control over those other toes, as well. Not so much for the actions you make them do, but the positions that uneven force distribution puts them into. You don't see much in the way of bare feet in CG for that reason; they can take nearly as much time as hands can.....sometimes even more, as people don't make a habit out of studying what the feet are doing. But if you have sandaled or bare feet, and you don't get it right, it totally blows the suspension of disbelief....and most people don't even realize =what= it was that did it. They just know something in the back of the brain said 'wrong'.

An excellent example of getting it right is in Bleach Episode 116, when Orihime is talking to Rangiku in the next room.