Representation matters. The World is not European. I’m sick of seeing white-washed product pages all over the place.
This post aims to highlight and bring attention to those 3D figures and characters that are not white, because diversity & inclusion matters, and the World is not European. Young 3D artists from around the World deserve to have access to products and see promotional images that are representative of themselves or their culture.
Unlike my other post which aims to highlight those characters and products that are anatomically correct, this post doesn’t care about that. What matter is if the character or figure is non-European. If you know of a figure or character for sale that is not European, please let me know by replying below or sending me a PM! I want this to be an open and collaborative effort.
Also, I can’t do this alone. There are simply too many products and too many marketplaces for one person to keep track of. So if you’d like to help out I’d greatly appreciate it! Feel free to PM me or reply with any contributions, suggestions, or corrections.
Last, this post is not aimed to be discriminatory or exclusatory in any way. It’s simply meant to highlight non-European characters for those artists looking for more diversity in their works. And hopefully to encourage a little more diversity in the 3D marketplace because quite frankly there’s many more flavors of ice cream other than vanilla.
Phx Chantalle and Phx Ohanzi are people of color. And the current project I’m working on will be a person(or two) of color as well. About half my Daz3d catalog is populated with POCs.
I guess that has largely to do with how many stereotypes are sought for non-white characters vs white characters. There are enough options within the few stereotypes for which non-white characters are sought for. So unless there is demand for filling white stereotypes with non-white characters (which is driven my factors beyond the realm of 3D art), any new non-white character would still have to compete with its peers for the few stereotypes that allow their representation.
Interesting point, thank you. I’m just looking to highlight those non-European characters to (a) draw attention to them, (b) hopefully reduce the white washing going forward, and (c) provide a resource for people looking lor this type of content.
I forgot to add, when many of us PAs use 3d.sk photo resources for our texture work, the majority of royalty free photos offered for sale there are of white individuals. Are there other sites where different photo sets can be purchased? Yes, but for many years, 3d.sk was a relatively reasonably priced resource.
3d.sk is based in Slovakia. Their photo references tend to reflect their population.
Daz3d/Rendo vendors are a small portion of their customer base(I would be surprised if 50-75 vendors currently have memberships with them). That’s not enough of a voice to get them to change their current business model, which is usually to pull people off the street to photograph.
Yes, Daz3d just announced a “partnership” with them, but notice how Daz3d is not mentioned on their website.
I can’t speak for any other vendor but myself. I cancelled my membership to 3d.sk years ago for lack of diversity and scattershot quality on photo sets… Making 3d content is not my main source of income, so I have the “luxury” of making what interests me(and I have 11 years of sales data to back this up).
Whenever I make a male character, I am choosing to take a financial hit. Every time I make a female of color, I am choosing to take a financial hit. If this was my main source of income, the ethnic breakdown of my catalog would skew to white, European females.
It is also incumbent on the customer base to vote with their wallet. PAs would not continue to make white, European females if they did not sell. While I cannot speak for other vendors, I am confident in saying that there probably is no vendor out there going, “Gee, Becky Sue for G8F just sold really poorly. I think I’ll do another really similar!”
