What Celebrity Does the New Ariane Look Like?

In an effort to get more images of the new Ariane out there, as well as have a little fun, I want to try and answer a question that I have been asking myself since I finalized the new Ariane.  Is there a celebrity that she looks like?

The question hit me over the head while walking through a shopping mall and seeing the “classic” Ariane staring back at me through the display window at Ann Taylor.  It was actually a picture of Demi Moore, who between age and some plastic surgery did not look like the girl I remember from Ghost, but is now a spot on match for the old Ariane.  It kind of freaked me out a little.

So I decided I want to find a celebrity that looks like the “new” Ariane.  So I started my search where Ariane began with Audrey Hepburn. Three incarnations of Ariane’s ago I designed her to look just like Audrey, but various model changes kind of morphed her away from that ideal.  Does the new Ariane look at all like Audrey.  Well there is a little bit of a resemblance in general, but far from perfect.  If I were to attempt to make her look like Audrey now, the only thing I would not touch would be the nose.  The biggest difference is in the strong square jawline.  It is a seemingly masculine feature that looks weird on most women, but somehow Audrey Hepburn and Angelina Jolie look beautiful with one.

So the next candidate for new Ariane celebrity look alike also showed up at my trip to a mall where I saw a promo poster for a new family film Dolphin Tale, and thought Ashley Judd could be a candidate.  Maybe it was the long black hair in the poster that made me consider her, because when I put the two together, there does not seem to be much resemblance…or is there?  Looking closer, the eyes are obviously way off, but nose, mouth, and jawline are pretty close. Hmm…

A better candidate would be Vanessa Hudgens, this young former child star from the Disney factory of young celebrities, was one of the hot chicks from Sucker Punch. I saw a picture of her online and thought she would be the one.  Going over the various pictures of her online however, convinced me she isnt.  Her problem is the exact opposite of Ashley Judd.  Her eyes are a perfect match, but Vanessa’s nose is wider, and instead of a slight overbite, she has a slight underbite.

Three examples of “almost” gave me an idea.  So thanks to MorphThing.com, I created a composite of Ashley Judd, Vanessa Hudgens, and Audrey Hepburn.  The results are the best yet!

There you have it.  Ariane is a composite of all three combined.

If you have any other celebrity suggestions, bring them up in the comments.

A Final V4 Ariane and Poser 9 is Out

After struggling with the intricacies of slider bars, trying to balance  between matching the proportions of “classic” Ariane, and what actually looks good, I ultimately decided to just keep it simple.  I found a pre-designed V4 head that is close, made a grand total of 8 minor adjustments to get closer, and deemed it “close enough”.  The new Ariane is not as “classic” as my earlier experiments, but she has got her youth and cuteness back, which ultimately is more important in the long run.  I’ll get used to the higher forehead and wider cheeks.  I have already pretty much locked down this model, and rerendered all the sequel picks.

And speaking of rerendering, Poser 9 was officially released today, and I already got it.  I try to keep up with the tech as much as possible, though I am not obsessive about it. My work up to now has been handled by Poser 7, and before that was Poser 5.  I skip versions.

The big new feature is something called Vertex Weight Map Rigging, and I have no idea what it means.  Apparently it has something to do with making more realistic wrinkles. Whatever.

For me the new features I am likely to use the most is scene grouping, partial rendering (render the background, then the foreground), camera controls (you used to have to memorize your camera settings before zooming in to make adjustments, now that is all automatic), better library tools and objects as lights (Finally! All my other 3D programs have had this feature for years).  There is also full COLLADA file support, which is what Second Life mesh files use.

I may post a formal review later.  Meanwhile, I’m going to go play with my new toys.

How Google Plus became “Uncool”

You would think that a company worth half a trillion dollars would take their reputation a little more seriously.  Apparently Google is unaware that its latest “social network” offering Google Plus has become the most hated social network ever.  Today admitting that you have a Google Plus account is as bad as admitting you had an aol.com account back in the 90′s.  It has become the symbol of the brazen corporatization of the social internet.  Negative press is coming from major publications and from across the blogosphere.  What is amazing to see is that Google’s reaction to all this negative press is to stick to their guns and make matters worse.

The principle reason for all this negativity can be explained with one made up word: Nymwars.

Google Plus started on June 23rd, and was by invitation only.  Apparently someone at Google saw The Social Network and decided to follow the creed that “exclusivity creates demand”, so they limited the number of people that could join Google Plus, and somehow ended up with 25 Million within a month.  That to me sounded fishy right away.

Then came the Nymwars, Google started booting out people with funny names on suspicion that they were “fake”.  Google demands that all users of Google Plus use their real legal names or go somewhere else.  Being someone who goes by four different names (my legal name being my least used) this debate over “What is a real name?” has been very surreal one.  To me, Google is acting like a narrow minded bigot who thinks all sex is hetero and in the missionary position.  There are lots of different kinds of names.  I am someone who never goes by my legal name, and it is extremely helpful, because anyone who calls or writes to me using my real legal name is instantly someone who I don’t want to deal with. Friends, family, and even all my financials are all under another name.  At work I go by a nickname, a variation of my legal name, that everyone uses for brevity.  Finally everyone online knows me as Ariane, or ArianeB.  I cannot join Google Plus and stay within the rules they prescribe, so I don’t.

People that follow the rules, with foreign names, single word names, and words in their names not normally associated with being names are being unfairly targeted by the Google gestapo demanding, “Papers Please!” in order to get back in.  Their new “Verified” tags are down right embarrassing, and just making the situation worse.  If it was just their stupid social network, nobody would give a damn, but Google is threatening people who don’t comply with termination of all Google based services, some of which people need for their employment.  Such tactics are creating a small but growing movement away from all things Google.

Why is Google doing it?  Why are they threatening their customers on some made up issue?  It is because they think they can get rich off of it. Fake names are not real customers, according to Google.  They want your information, so they can sell it to advertisers.  They are like those ugly naked creatures from Futurama: Bender’s Big Score, who profit off people’s gullability that Google is not evil.

Here is the bottom line.  I work in the tech industry, with lots and lots of fellow computer geeks who are always on the cutting edge of internet culture.  When Google released “exclusive” invitations to Plus, most of the company had invites within days.  Just two months later, and nobody at work is talking about Google Plus anymore.  I can’t find anyone who uses their account, and those of us who do not have accounts, don’t really want them. It is has been shunned as “uncool” by the techie masses.

Google Plus is another flash in the pan idea, from the makers of Google Wave, Google Buzz, Google Orkut, and Google Lively.  I’ll admit that Google Plus is built on superior technology and tools than Facebook, and that is what drove initial interest, but cool tech only goes so far.  Reputation is everything, and the quicker Google figures that out the quicker they will dump Google Plus, Google Profiles, and everything else associated with this marketing disaster.

More Info on “The Sequel”

A lot of people have the wrong idea about “the sequel”, and it is probably my fault for calling it “the sequel”, so maybe I should take a post to clarify my master plan and set the record straight.  I suspect that, like the character update, there will be those that will say “That sounds awesome!”, and others that will say “That sounds stupid!”, but I am mostly doing this to satisfy my creative endeavors, not to please everybody.

So here is the deal.  The project is not really a “sequel” in the literal sense.  The truth is, the original Date Simulator pretty exhausted all of my ideas in regards to what can happen on a date that makes sense in the rather chaotic format that it was presented in.  There is nothing new to do in the confines of that format.

So I am changing formats.  Specifically, the new game will take the form of a Visual Novel, a game format I originally wrote about a year ago.  I am writing the game using a visual novel engine called Renpy, which can create playable programs for PC, Mac, Linux and Android.  (Technically speaking, the Dating Simulator is itself a “visual novel” but lacking sophisticated dialogue and coherent plot it is sort of an odd example of what they are like.)

Visual Novels are extremely popular in Japan and to a lesser extent Korea, but they have never caught on in America.  The primary subject matter of these visual novels is romance (renai), and sex (hentai), and a fairly large fraction contain erotic images (eroge).  Having played about a dozen visual novels (there are not that many available in English), it is obvious to me why they are not popular in America and everywhere else not Japanese.  Mostly it is because no one has ever created a visual novel to really try to appeal to people outside of Japan.  Not that there haven’t been attempts, but the creators of such attempts still fall back on visual novel conventions that annoy western audiences.  Lots of rambling chit chat, settings like prep schools that don’t really exist in America, Manga style art work, girls that are way too young looking to be “legal”.

My philosophical goal is to write the “Great American Visual Novel”, though that is unlikely to be the case in the long run.  A much less lofty ambition is to take the Visual Novel format and westernize it.  Like the most popular Japanese Visual Novels, mine will be about romance and sex.  Also like most popular Japanese Visual Novels, there will be a large number of potential dates.

Pretty much every other convention is being tossed aside:   First of all, potential dates are women, not girls.  Second, Manga art is out, 3D art is in.  Third, an actual plot, with good guys, bad guys, surprising twists, and humor.  Fourth, a focus on American style modern story telling, inspired by Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Joss Whedon and  others.  Fifth, instead of a story that takes weeks to develop your character and your relationships, it all takes place in a single day.  With all of this in mind, my current working title is Date Night in America, which I know is a bit cheesy, but it conveys the theme and philosophy of the project.  If anyone has a better title, I am definitely open to suggestions.

“The sequel” is a Visual Novel, and it is only a sequel in the sense that it is set in the same universe as the Dating Simulator, and time line wise set after the events of the dating simulator.  There are about 8 date-able women, there are about 4 others you can at least engage in conversation.  There are also at least 6 male characters that service the plot(s).  Ariane is one of those 12 female characters, so is Rebecca, and so are three others that make cameo appearances in the first Dating Simulator.  There are basically 6 major story threads, and I am purposely making all 6 very different in style from one another.   The  Renpy engine allows music, sound effects, video, animation, and special effects, and I plan to use all that I can.  A feature to save and load games is built right in (this is a heavily requested feature of the Dating Simulator, but simply not possible in the html/javascript format).

I still unfortunately have a long way to go.  I think of building the game like playing a video game.  I am currently “grinding” right now working to finish story #1, but I know I got a “big boss fight” in the form of creating an animation, before I can level up and move onto story #2.

Pictured above: Top row – The Smart girl, the Good Girl, the Rock Star, the Super Model*. Second Row – The College Student, the Athlete, Rebecca*, the Air Head  Bottom Row: The Artist, the Business Woman*, the Bad Girl, the Wing Man.  * = Appeared previously in The Dating Simulator.  Some of these are subject to change.