Hi all,

I realise many un-morphed ‘out-of-the-box’ figures have a face only a Mother could love; but I’ve yet to see a single image, including Daz’s own promo images, that has made The Girl look anything less than hideous.

While it’s no secret I’m an enormous Apollo fan, I’m anything but a Daz hater. I enjoy using V4 and M4, and on occasion have used A4 (the shape of which could arguably have been achieved had V4 been released with decent scaling...but I digress).

I’m certainly not trying to start a flame war here, but I’m incredibly curious as to why anyone would buy The Girl 4 from Daz.

Thoughts?

its all a matter of perspective and taste.  i think she can be quite cute, especially mixed and matched with the a4, and v4 morphs.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1861938

but if tooney, whimsical, fantasy, etc isnt your cup of tea, then no, she probably isnt for you - which is why variety is the spice of life :)

When Kim Goossens first created "The Girl," it was pretty clear why anyone would want her - she was a beautiful, innocent-looking young lady: ** Original Girl**

There are many users who get quite good results from The Girl, and as with anything, there are many who don't. As with any realistic model (or real woman, in the hands of a photographer or artist), it is more the work of the artist(s) than it is the form of the model that determines how "beautiful" the result is.

And, of course, let's not forget that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as well ;-).

I agree with you both. Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder.

While I don’t have a plethora of cute images under my belt; the handful I do have I’d like to think are reasonably successful. But then, that again depends on what my goals were (I’m going ‘round in circles now!). J

BrandyE, I’ll happily concede that good images can be made with the figure, as your image is indeed very cute. Great quality render too.

She is, however, unmistakably The Girl; and my M.O. is very much to lose as many visual clues as possible that link my image it’s original model. While I’m always honest in the description of my images, I take a great deal of care in ensuring my morph’s origins aren’t instantly recognisable.

I find, quite simply, that with The Girl I’m working against the grain, so to speak.

Again, just a matter of opinion.

The Girl is styled along the lines of classic American animation. Especially Disney and Warner Brothers. Just as Aiko is styled along the lines of Japanese animation and manga.

So she will appeal mostly to fans of that art style.

I recall (as a kid) seeing the belgian "girl" comic strips by dany.  tried to search for 'em, but no good results on google.  poser users as a demographic have deep pockets and will buy anything that is heavily promoted and appears in these website galleries.  the euro-american demographic is resistant to anime/hentai/manga style characters but will shell out for european-looking things AFAIK. so "miss thing" is targetted to the euro-american poser demographic.  my guess is that (as a group) they will shell out at least $400K for it (and related accessories) before the business cycle moves on to the next version.

G4 is essentially a full body morph which can be added to the V4 mesh (like the Elite morphs).  It is variable, like most other FBMs.  Thus, the shape can be dialed in or out.  In fact, the exaggeration of the extremities and head can likewise be dialed in or out, independantly.  Thus it can be used as an additional (albeit cartoonish) variant to V4.

I agree with Klebnor. The Girl 4 is best treated like another set of morphs for V4. It's amazing how adding just a touch of  the G4 head and/or body morphs will enhance the look of a character. I'm talking about values in the range of .1 to .3.

There seems to be a contradictory "law" regarding these sorts of character meshes: If it's cute out of the box, it's unlikely that many good renders will come of it. 

I was pretty surprised when the first DAZ adaptation of Girl came out. There was a sudden glut of really bad by-the-numbers sorts of renders, but then, "dressing up Barbie and hitting the render button" is a huge part of this scene ... just not to all of our tastes. It was the same with Koshini ... a very cute character that led to thousands of hideous renders, a tiny minority of good ones.

While it's true that every now and then you see a G4 render that's pretty darned good, that sort of mesh isn't really well-suited to very artistic sorts of art IMO. In general the best you can hope for is a pin-up or otherwise cutesy sort of image that's good enough to make an impression. The irony of course is, as ptrope already stated, that Goosens' original renders with his creation were incredibly charming ... he captured the quintessence of a sort of adorable "girl" we usually associate with images from past iconography, and made her seem current again. Merely having a Poserized facsimile of that original mesh on your HD isn't going to guarantee images of the same allure as Goosens'. As with anything, it takes some work and ideally, a bit of artistic insight and finesse. 

Quote - I’m certainly not trying to start a flame war here, but I’m incredibly curious as to why anyone would buy The Girl 4 from Daz.

 

Thoughts?

Tomatoes!

I happen to like slender women in real life and most of my 3D scenes used to illustrate fictional text reflect that. However, since I am illustrating fiction, the readers have a desire for characters with big ripe Tomatoes. Read a post recently where they compared The Girl 4 to the old US based TV series Baywatch and Pamela Anderson or the queen of big tomatoes.

You spin one dial and the Tomatoes get bigger, the waist shrinks (which accents the size of the Tomatoes), hips get bigger and the weird part is so do her arms. Plus V4 has ugly big feet  to start with and The Girl 4's feet are even bigger yet!. I assume the thinking was G4 needs a studier foundation to support her larger upper super structure.

I see G4 as a nitch character !

The G4 is probably the single best figure ever devised after A3. 

I tend to agree, although I can't bring myself to use more than .5 on the FBM.  I also remove the scale (head and extremities), then scale up the V4 head to 110%.  This way hair works without a lot of fussing.

Klebnor

 I have always been a fan of The Girl, although it seemed for a long time that the clothing line went to the fetish world....Nothing wrong with that just gets boring after awhile.

I find the the re-introduction of G4 a nice addition to the V4 arsenal of morphing tools. 

The V4 Morphs++ and Muscle Morphs really add a lot of flexibility to her look something that was lacking in the original. IMO Daz did a nice job making this V4 Morph conversion.

As for the niche corner, I would totally agree, She has her place but not she is not for everyone.

Anyway, I just wanted to throw an unsolicited .02 in... Dance

I recall (as a kid) seeing the belgian "girl" comic strips by dany. *tried to search for 'em, but no good results on google.

Here :

http://www.digibulles.com/Dany/

Warning : not every "girl" walks around fully dressed ...

Dany did more than just girls : the psychedelic series "Olivier Rameau", the adventurous series "Harlequin" (with Van Hamme, somewhat preceding XIII), and much, much more. He was even guest of honour of the "Foire de l'Erotisme 2008" in Brussels.

Back in the 90's there was a CD based (or VCD - remember them?) monthly magazine available in Holland (and I suspect elsewhere) that featured these types of cartoons.  It seems to me it was something like  "Rote Oortjes" or similar.  It must have featured the work of this Dany, or else someone copying his style.  Is it still around?  I've been in the US for 10 years+ and never seen it here.

Klebnor aus Arschaffenburg

Quote - The Girl is styled along the lines of classic American animation. Especially Disney and Warner Brothers. Just as Aiko is styled along the lines of Japanese animation and manga.

So she will appeal mostly to fans of that art style.

Sorry, no. She's very Euro and has been from the very beginning. I remember seeing the Dany books in Montreal in the late 90s, and about the closest thing the US has to this is Little Annie Fanny.

" Rooie Oortjes" (dutch) or "Klin deuil" (french) is a series of comic books first, on this Belgian dutch-spoken site you can find all the (dutch language) albums :

http://www.stripinfo.be/strip.php?reeks=1949

(click on the names for more info and for some of you beware for the vast number of scantily clad women found here).

Daniel Henrotin (aka Dany) participated in several of them, drawing and/or writing scenarios. A typical album consists out of 1 page gags based on cliché jokes about men vs women. I think sometimes the cover artwork is worth more than the contents.

Can be found in about every decent comic book shop in Belgium and even at any other bookshop or newspaper stand you might find them. But since they are showing nudity and are relatively non-violent I doubt they would sell in the USA.

Hey, jgodeau, thanks for the link.  That's exactly what I was looking for.  Don't know why I thought it was Rote, although that means Red, so maybe that was some association I made back then.

By the way, I prefer my nudity non-violent!

Klebnor

quote :

*Don't know why I thought it was Rote

Maybe because some of the comics bear a 4-language title such as this one :[

http://www.stripinfo.be/strip.php?strip=65505](http://www.stripinfo.be/strip.php?strip=65505)

yeah, I just assumed the daz "girl" was originally based on dany's "la femme" body and head shape because it looks the same (given the limitations of poser bending, expressions and rendering) but I dunno if dany gets any royalties or was even acknowledged in any way, nor if anybody has e-mailed him.  if the daz "girl" was originally based on dany's "girl" (as "la femme" was translated for anglophones), then the model was intended for nudie pix, porno, pin-ups and that.

Attached Link: Original The Girl

from an interview with Kim Goosens

"She is a character created after a girlfriend I know. I wanted to create a female character that is seducive and see how far I could go in this. "

Kim Goossens lives in Antwerp, Belgium.  It is just possible that he saw some of the Dany cartoons during his formative years.