Stellar Blade owes its sexiness to a real-life model – how Eve’s body was designed
Sony Interactive Entertainment will release Stellar Blade for the PS5 on April 26. The game is being developed by Shift Up, known for Goddess of Victory: NIKKE. In an interview with Push Square, Shift Up’s director Hyung-Tae Kim revealed that a real-life model was used for the body of Stellar Blade’s protagonist Eve.
Stellar Blade is an action-adventure game in which you fight to reclaim a post-apocalyptic Earth from the Naytiba, mysterious invaders that are attacking the human race. You fight as Eve, a soldier from the off-world human colony. Eve will join forces with Adam, a survivor born on Earth, and Lily, an engineer sent to Earth to fight the Naytiba.
You venture from Zion, the last human city, to various semi-open-world areas where you can acquire equipment, unlock skills, fight Naytiba, and collect Hypercells; the energy source that sustains Zion. Combat is characterized by speedy and flashy combo actions, featuring mechanics such as perfect parrying and perfect evasion.
The director of Stellar Blade, Hyung-Tae Kim, is a creator known for his character designs for Magna Carta, Destiny’s Child, and Goddess of Victory: NIKKE. For Stellar Blade’s protagonist Eve, he said he wanted to express his personal style of design that he has developed over the years, while also making sure not to stray too far from the game’s setting. He added that his intention with Eve’s design was to make her stand out against the post-apocalyptic world, creating a sense of contrast (via Famitsu).
Eve’s appearance is characterized by soft facial features, and a slender but shapely figure. Her sexy physique definitely makes her look “out of this world” against the post-apocalyptic backdrop, which is very typical of a Hyung-Tae Kim design.
However, Kim has mentioned that Eve’s body was created based on Jae-Eun Shin, a real-life Korean influencer. The rumor had been out for some time, but Push Square recently confirmed the facts with Kim. He explained that the team’s pursuit to “come up with the most attractive looking body for the user” led them to work with Shin. Eva’s body was created by scanning Shin’s body, but her face was designed from scratch.
Jae-Eun Shin is a South Korean model born in 1991. At present, she has about 590,000 followers on Instagram, 180,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), and 140,000 subscribers on YouTube. She has made appearances in video game advertisements and music videos in Korea, and seems to be well-known for her sexy figure.
She posted a video (shown above) on YouTube in May 2020 which shows her whole body being 3D scanned. Although there are no details disclosed, this could be footage of the body casting for Eve.
As an aside, another recent example of a real person providing a body for a video game character is in Resident Evil 4. At the time of the game’s release, cosplayer/model PeachMilky reported that she was the model for Ashley’s body (Related article). Having video game character’s bodies modeled based on real-life celebrities may become an increasingly popular trend.
Stellar Blade is scheduled to released on April 26 for the PS5. Preorders start on February 7.
Written by. Amber V. based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2024-02-06 15:27 JST)
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For the model i do think they did scan her body as a base, but took more artistic decisions overall throughout her body to craft something that feels close to life without being an uncanny valley in 3D, but also closer to a character that has fanservice on a mass appeal level that provides a spectacle for audiences. It actually has huge support because it feels like a lot of games are self censoring and do not have the fanservice factor anymore that has been relegated to the Gacha Mines or goes through self censorship for whatever reason that they can not truly express themselves. If Shift Up ends up not doing that they might be winning out which should actually sound alarm bells in Japan itself and for a JP loyalist like me.
As for Capcom while i do like all their works, i played through the Remakes, their models have not hit the mark as much as they used to, not just Ashley but Claire Redfield, Lady from DMC5(her face is off to me) because even though they are based on real life models and slightly different from what the artists originally made, people will notice faults right away because it’s a real life model and not with artists going over it, who understand what appeals to more audiences to alter parts of the body to fine craft ideal beautiful, sexy or cute characters.
I will end off by saying there needs to be a realization that Realism is not the be all and end all because anyone can do realistic scans nowadays, Style and Artistic approaches matter much more in the process because it stands out. Capcom could make fanservice designs that are better than Stellar Blades or any Japanese company just as they have done since forever because of the Japanese Spirit being infused in the games that has touched the hearts, souls of many, but it has felt like a step backwards in the industry as a whole due to resting on their laurels and brand that they have built for a long time by being complacent, thinking it will always be there and nothing will creep up on them from behind. Which Complacency/Self Censorship = Mediocrity = Decline in my eyes.
Video games are not about the characters’ reality. If that were the case, the games wouldn’t have their dynamics