Opinion of Using Demo in Final Products

[Fanta UwU]

I’m curious as to what people think when a product picture of a shape or skin on a mesh head demo. Is it tacky, make people less likely to buy, etc?

I made a shape and I also have a skin that looks absolutely beautiful with the shape, which the shape I want to include with the skin. 

So I’m curious how people feel when a skin and/or shape is using a mesh head demo on MP or any advert on SL and Flickr. 

[Fanta UwU]

Picture of skin and shape made (eyebrows is part of a different skin I made). The product picture will likely look like this (with some editing but not on the face/skin area... Only to make it 'spiffy'. But yeah, is the cutouts of the demo and such not... good? for a product pic? Or is it fine?

[Tazzie Tuque]

you mean you are putting the shape and/or skin on a mesh demo head'  like the head has demo on it, or there is a chunk missing out of the chin .. and other things creators use on demos??  if so then the answer to  your question from me would be:  Don't do it!  IF you have an absolutely beautiful skin why would you want to display it on a demo head??  and up I would take a quick look at it and probably pass,.  I would want to see how it looks on a proper head before I would take a second look.

[Fanta UwU]

8 minutes ago, Tazzie Tuque said:

you mean you are putting the shape and/or skin on a mesh demo head'  like the head has demo on it, or there is a chunk missing out of the chin .. and other things creators use on demos??  if so then the answer to  your question from me would be:  Don't do it!  IF you have an absolutely beautiful skin why would you want to display it on a demo head??  and up I would take a quick look at it and probably pass,.  I would want to see how it looks on a proper head before I would take a second look.

Yeah. I figured that. XD It was mostly the shape I was concerned about and the skin looked super cute on that specific head and shape. HOWEVER! I did achieve roughly the same look on Babyface (the skin and shape above was Strange001)

https://gyazo.com/5802329eec47a9935c23fdf56b511522

The gyazo is on Genus Babyface001. Which some tweaks to the shape ofc, to make up any differences

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Well.. your "beautiful skin" has a clearly visible neck seam and looks extremely bland, perhaps due to too heavy lightning or something. But if you're lucky, the hairy bits (?) dangling from the ears are enough of a distraction.
Or in other words: I don't think either pic would attract potential buyers, with the first one with half the face missing would even fall in a "lol, no" scammish corner.

 

Besides that: since a shape includes the whole body, not just the head, you should work on a clear full body shot. 

[MaxMare]

I find that incredibly tacky, unprofessional and cheap, so definitive NO. There is a cost to running a business, no matter what you do and you should look at it as initial investment. 

I think you need to work on that skin some more tho and  I don`t mean to offend, but it does look unfinished...second and very important part is presentation, look into materials and lighting and play around with windlight settings...

Most skins on the market atm have been made by blending real life stock photos and hand painted parts, it adds a lot more realism...Please don`t take this the wrong way, but  I think you should spend some more time learning and practicing....not sure why you insist in putting this up for sale as is?

as an old saying goes:  "you will never have a second chance to make the first impression"

[Fanta UwU]

1 hour ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Well.. your "beautiful skin" has a clearly visible neck seam and looks extremely bland, perhaps due to too heavy lightning or something. But if you're lucky, the hairy bits (?) dangling from the ears are enough of a distraction.
Or in other words: I don't think either pic would attract potential buyers, with the first one with half the face missing would even fall in a "lol, no" scammish corner.

 

Besides that: since a shape includes the whole body, not just the head, you should work on a clear full body shot. 

Neck seam is due to Genus and Legacy not being exactly ‘compatible’. I haven’t had neck seam issues on Lelutka Evo, so it must be something between the materials difference. I tried to figure out how to fix it but alas, I cannot no matter what due to materials difference.

As for the lighting, I was using a skinlight called Alpine  

But yeah, I will say I am learning.This is a huge step-up from my first skin (this skin is my... fourth? one). I am still learning how to use textures and highlights and blush. But personally, I love it. Probs because I made it so I’m biased and proud of it... 

The crease of the eyes and the nose are a huge improvement of my previous ones. But thank you for telling me that ❤️ I’ll try to work on it more. 

[Fanta UwU]

6 minutes ago, MaxMare said:

I find that incredibly tacky, unprofessional and cheap, so definitive NO. There is a cost to running a business, no matter what you do and you should look at it as initial investment. 

I think you need to work on that skin some more tho and  I don`t mean to offend, but it does look unfinished...second and very important part is presentation, look into materials and lighting and play around with windlight settings...

Most skins on the market atm have been made by blending real life stock photos and hand painted parts, it adds a lot more realism...Please don`t take this the wrong way, but  I think you should spend some more time learning and practicing....not sure why you insist in putting this up for sale as is?

as an old saying goes:  "you will never have a second chance to make the first impression"

Uhm. As for the whole stock photo thing and blending and such, I really rather not... I don’t know, I rather have it truly painted and not some overlay of a real face.

But thank you. I’ll practice more in terms of making everything painted and not some stock photo morph/overlay. 

Edited July 8, 2020 by Muiregwen

[Fendi Miles]

In my opinion I wouldn't do the demo as the product picture  if only because skin sellers these days seem to make their images as hq and almost "fake" as they can get away with sometimes 😝 also... some of these replies feel quite rude lol. Everyone starts somewhere, I wish I could try skins, but I gave up when I saw the skin maps 🤣

there is truly a market for everything and everyone, even If you're new at skins and still practicing it doesn't hurt releasing some stuff. When you're better down the line you can always remove them if you'd like.

[Fanta UwU]

58 minutes ago, Fendi Miles said:

In my opinion I wouldn't do the demo as the product picture  if only because skin sellers these days seem to make their images as hq and almost "fake" as they can get away with sometimes 😝 also... some of these replies feel quite rude lol. Everyone starts somewhere, I wish I could try skins, but I gave up when I saw the skin maps 🤣

there is truly a market for everything and everyone, even If you're new at skins and still practicing it doesn't hurt releasing some stuff. When you're better down the line you can always remove them if you'd like.

I will agree some of them felt quite rude. Thank you for saying that about the learning and that it doesn’t hurt to release stuff; its very encouraging actually and make me inspired even! And that is a thing where I don’t exactly want to HD it up and make it look so fake too. I prefer keeping things mostly ‘unedited’. 

[Fendi Miles]

12 minutes ago, Muiregwen said:

I will agree some of them felt quite rude. Thank you for saying that about the learning and that it doesn’t hurt to release stuff; its very encouraging actually and make me inspired even! And that is a thing where I don’t exactly want to HD it up and make it look so fake too. I prefer keeping things mostly ‘unedited’. 

I have so many skins in my inventory from the years that aren't sold anymore & discontinued. Even the "best" skin creators right now will be outdated or not as good as their work in a couple years, so it definitely won't hurt! Unedited isn't a bad idea either, whatever you find works for you & that you like! 

[MaxMare]

I am sorry if I came off rude, that was not my intention.

I agree everyone has to start from somewhere and getting encouragement is great, but  the truth is, you will learn more from accepting criticism than praise, and that is me speaking from experience...

Also, creators who started 5 or 10 years ago had the luxury of  starting with amateurish stuff cause everyone was learning and overall quality of things was much much lower then today, nowadays, we have entire teams of artists and 3D developers with degrees in respective fields come to SL with mad skills which makes things that much harder for self-taught folks...

Edit: I saw you asked for some advice in another thread, but I can just say it here....if you prefer to learn how to actually draw skins without the use of photos, check Pinterest, there are tons of mini tutorials on how to draw/paint facial features or anatomy in general, you can also find detailed skin tone palettes that may help you build your own...That said, you can still use parts of photo texture, i.e. lips, naval, nipples, hairline, ears, eyebrows and so on, as long as you blend those seamlessly with the hand painted parts....There are also cool books with anatomy for artists or you can even use medical ones..

I hope you have a tablet with a pressure pen, would be a lot easier then using a mouse...

Edited July 10, 2020 by MaxMare

[Fanta UwU]

3 hours ago, MaxMare said:

I am sorry if I came off rude, that was not my intention.

I agree everyone has to start from somewhere and getting encouragement is great, but  the truth is, you will learn more from accepting criticism than praise, and that is me speaking from experience...

Also, creators who started 5 or 10 years ago had the luxury of  starting with amateurish stuff cause everyone was learning and overall quality of things was much much lower then today, nowadays, we have entire teams of artists and 3D developers with degrees in respective fields come to SL with mad skills which makes things that much harder for self-taught folks...

Edit: I saw you asked for some advice in another thread, but I can just say it here....if you prefer to learn how to actually draw skins without the use of photos, check Pinterest, there are tons of mini tutorials on how to draw/paint facial features or anatomy in general, you can also find detailed skin tone palettes that may help you build your own...That said, you can still use parts of photo texture, i.e. lips, naval, nipples, hairline, ears, eyebrows and so on, as long as you blend those seamlessly with the hand painted parts....There are also cool books with anatomy for artists or you can even use medical ones..

I hope you have a tablet with a pressure pen, would be a lot easier then using a mouse...

I wasn’t exactly seeking praise. It came off as rude as well... it was criticism, yes, but nothing much on how I can improve on it and/or solutions. 

And yes, I do have a tablet actually, since I thought it would be good to have one for my work! Its even those ‘cintiq’ styled tablets (was only 250).

Thank you though, the edit was actually more something useful than simply saying I needed to ‘practice’ and ‘work on it’.

 

 

EDIT: i found skin brushes for Gimp that help with giving a ‘pores’ ‘freckled’ look. 

Edited July 10, 2020 by Muiregwen

[Wulfie Reanimator]

On 7/8/2020 at 10:54 AM, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Well.. your "beautiful skin" has a clearly visible neck seam

It's not because of the texture, but because of mismatching normals between the head and the body. That can only be fixed by changing the lighting (angle, or maxing out the ambiance to remove shadows, CalWL windlight). Or you can make the mesh and match the normals. 

But yeah, demo head for a product picture would look pretty bad. I wouldn't buy one, unless there was at least one non-demo head where the full skin was showing. (Also assuming the skin had a demo I could try myself.)

Also, whether or not you're a beginner doesn't excuse bad presentation. A customer doesn't generally think "yeah that looks pretty bad but I'll spend my money on it anyway to encourage them." Some might, but I seriously doubt you'd find people in the double digits doing that unless they have a lot of expendable income.

But for what it's worth, the skin looks okay, I'd almost buy it since I like most of these "super soft" skins that are mostly gradients. I especially like the nose. But the lips and inner-eyelids look a bit off (too saturated/orange), so I'd personally pass on it if I saw it on MP.

Edited July 10, 2020 by Wulfie Reanimator

[Fanta UwU]

24 minutes ago, Wulfie Reanimator said:

It's not because of the texture, but because of mismatching normals between the head and the body. That can only be fixed by changing the lighting (angle, or maxing out the ambiance to remove shadows, CalWL windlight). Or you can make the mesh and match the normals. 

But yeah, demo head for a product picture would look pretty bad. I wouldn't buy one, unless there was at least one non-demo head where the full skin was showing. (Also assuming the skin had a demo I could try myself.)

Also, whether or not you're a beginner doesn't excuse bad presentation. A customer doesn't generally think "yeah that looks pretty bad but I'll spend my money on it anyway to encourage them." Some might, but I seriously doubt you'd find people in the double digits doing that unless they have a lot of expendable income.

But for what it's worth, the skin looks okay, I'd almost buy it since I like most of these "super soft" skins that are mostly gradients. I especially like the nose. But the lips and inner-eyelids look a bit off (too saturated/orange), so I'd personally pass on it if I saw it on MP.

Gotcha. No demo heads for presentations. 👍 I got the general gist of it that people don’t like that! But I tested the shape on Babyface and I got a relatively the same look with it instead of the strange one. 
And yeah, I wish the neck seam wasn’t there but it could’t exactly be helped unless I wanted to present it on low settings where the seam wasn’t there. Which isn’t particularly ideal, so windlight it is.  
Okay. Yeah, I knew soft skins were a thing, especially popular amongst asian-like skin types. But I’ll try to fix the orange around the eyes (it looks better on darker tones I have prepared actually. So I guess I have to play with layer filters)  

Thank you  

[Ze Helix]

I have seen shapes sold using skin demos and mesh body/head demos. Yes its tacky and unprofessional and yes I think it will make people less likely to buy. Demos are unattractive and some people purchase just because the vendor image is so attractive they want to emulate it. However I personally would still consider buying a skin or shape that is shown on a demo head. I care more about the product I'm actually getting than the vendor image. I can accept that someone might have fun creating a skin or shape to sell without wanting to spend ~6k for their vendor images. This still promotes the demo head or skin creator too, in its own way, since even if the vendor is using demo products the people buying the shape will certainly want to buy and use the full product.

Also, I love hand painted skins. They have their place in my inventory alongside more photorealistic style skins. They create a different sort of avatar.

[Stephanie Misfit]

No way would I buy something presented like that. It looks terrible and it indicates that you don't take your business seriously. There's an easy solution though, just ask for help in the appropriate section of the forum. You will probably find someone who owns the correct full version of the head who is willing to model for you in exchange for receiving your products for free.