In the digital art dep't: So about this face...
I mentioned in a post the other day that the above image had popped up the other day in one of the routine promotional emails from Daz Studio, and it had been niggling at me... making me wonder which of my characters it could be used for.
At least one commenter—it was @rubbahslippah—suggested that it might be the Middle Kingdoms' Queen Eftgan. My first response was "Hmm, naah..." as I already had a figure I was using for her.
But after considering that for a while, it occurred to me that the figure in question had been giving me trouble. Over recent months I've been gradually converting most of the figures I use to the newer and somewhat more flexible Genesis 9 standard. But the earlier Eftgan figure hadn't taken well to the conversion, so that I was having second thoughts about its use and what to do next.
With that realization in mind, I took advantage of a monthly sale coupon and grabbed the figure attached to the face above—which is called KOO Esmee HD, from a maker called Kooki99—and started working with her. And I think she's a good choice for Eftgan. Here she is in daily casuals. (The Darthene royal arms are midnight blue and silver, and the "dress code" for civil service livery has a lot of wiggle room in it. So if you're wearing at least something in dark blue when you're at work, no one's going to make too much of a fuss.)
Anyway, a tip of the hat to @rubbahslippah: that was a good call. Thanks for that! :)
...By the way, for those interested: the blond hair color is natural for many darker-skinned Darthenes. Eftgan's former lover and now-wife Segnbora spends much of Tales of the Five #2: The Landlady staying with a family of whom about a third also feature this look.
In Eftgan's case, the Darthene royal line has a fair amount of Steldene ancestry scattered up and down its history... and those Steldenes possess the same TYRP1 gene that some Melanesian peoples (specifically the Solomon Islanders) on our own Earth have. This gene, on chromosome 9, produces blond hair natively and without the involvement of other ethnic groups whose blond hair is differently derived. (A team of Stanford University researchers and geneticists was responsible for tracking down and identifying this gene: an article about it is here.)
Meanwhile, here are Eftgan and Segnbora having a nightcap in that most famous of Darthis city's dive bars, the Stuck Pig. ...Apologies for not having done a full make-sure-everything-drapes-properly animation run on Eftgan's clothes... this being why her sleeve seems to have sunk into the surface of the bar. I started an animation run, and Segnbora's hair (which is also animation-sensitive) promptly exploded and tried to throttle them both. (eyeroll) Bloody dForce...
