There are, here at the BEArchive, a number of artists I would deem experts and even Masters, who are far better qualified than I to give practical instruction to the neophyte morpher. On the scale of things, I have been involved in this somewhat peculiar hobby of ours for only a brief while. What follows, therefore, is offered humbly, because I would like to make a few comments, which I hope will be received as the friendly suggestions given by one apprentice to another.

I would call this an early case of excessive ambition. It began with a fairly large, well-focused "morph me" request which suffers from poor lighting and an unfortunate interplay of shadows and sheen on the model's blouse, giving a "sense" of squarish angularity to her bust. The attempt at a BE suffers on several points, not the least of which is the excessive color manipulation used in attempting to match the transplanted face to the model's skin tones, which affected other colors as well. Perhaps most glaring is the painted shading on the model's blouse, which gives a rather flat, toony impression, rather than the intended sense of weighty voluptuousness. Did it not provide so excellent an example of a gunshot to my own foot, this morph would never have left my harddrive.

It has often seemed to me that many morphers begin by shooting themselves in the foot. One need only look at the typical "morph me" request in the User's Gallery for an example. These images are perhaps 200 x 400 pixels in size and weigh in at a meager ten or twenty Kb. They are snapshots, by and large, and severely lacking in the quantity or depth of the digital "clay" required for a morpher to sculpt a quality composition.

I would urge the new morpher to consider this clay before beginning to sculpt. Look at the resolution, measured in pixels, width by height. Look at the kilobytes. My own monitor is set for 800 x 600 pixels and I would not waste my time working on an image unless it fills an appreciable portion of my screen, or overflows it in one dimension or the other. Neither would I consider "treating" an image of less than 50Kb (unless it is otherwise especially remarkable). Resolution and file size are primary indicators of the amount of data available to be worked with, and the fineness with which colors meet and blend, and in this instance "less" is "less," and will yield poor results.

You may spend hours on one composition. Do not begin by shooting yourself in the foot.

Consider the focus of the image. Look at the areas where highly contrasting colors meet. Can you see jagged edges, or must you zoom in before jaggies appear? (On superior images you may have to zoom in till the model's face fills your screen before jaggies appear.) Also, are there areas of nearly homogeneous color (frequently "skin" color) marred by "artifacts" or patches of badly rendered color? Any blemishes in the original image will only grow more apparent and more jarring when you expand the regions containing such blemishes. If, by way of technique, you usually "shrink the girl," you may blur away some artifacts in the process, but you will still be left to deal with the blemishes in the areas left unshrunk.

There are, of course, many ways to clean up blemishes. There are a thousand techniques for doing anything. There are also a few billion pictures being posted to the internet every millisecond or so. Do not begin by shooting yourself in the foot.

If you are entirely brand new to the "hobby," you might also want to consider the details of the model's pose. A model in profile is generally much easier to deal with than any other pose simply because you have only one "appurtenance" to work on, and if you would like this lady to become truly behemoth you need not take time to wonder how two such enormous glands might fit, and fit together, on a comparatively slender ribcage.

Here is a morph from an image which provides all the material for a fine BE, if the morpher can but find a way to use it properly. The original image is not sharply focused, though in this case something of a "dreamy haze" might contribute rather than detract. It's a matter of esthetics and personal preference. I chose to sharpen the image slightly to better agree with the clarity of the transplanted face. The breasts were manipulated individually and additional grafts from the original image were blended in so that the breast shades would blend into the chest, and so the shadowed areas beneath the right arm and at the upper extent of the cleavage would not be covered up and lost. The nipples are transplants, if memory serves correct, (though, like the face, they are from another photo of Ms. V). You may judge this morph as more or less successful (and certainly there are flaws), but to my eyes it is far and away superior to the other image accompanying this article.

Consider those items which might tend to obscure the model's points of prominence, once enlarged, such as her arms, hair, legs, and other items such as pillows or drapes in the image. Hair with its frizzy outlines can be particularly difficult to deal with, even with the most powerful masking programs available. An experienced morpher can work around almost any obstacle, but if your skills are still very basic, you might consider saving such challenges for the future.

Do not spend time on images where the model is standing two hundred yards away from the camera lens, in a coal mine, wearing black lingerie, at night. Look first for those images where the model is located in the same room as the camera, near enough to see her face, and poses some contrast with the colors of the image background - enough that she is, in fact, visible. (I say this in jest, and yet I recall one series of Minka photos where she is attired in red, standing against a red background, and several large portions of her body not limited to her chest blend so perfectly with the background they seem to have vanished.)

Consider the size and shape of the model's assets. A very diminutive pair will tend to resemble a pair of flattened disks if simply doubled or tripled in size, and will take a great deal of shaping and additional enhancing before assuming anything like a "natural" look. If you have seen any images of the semi-legendary Alicia in the User's Gallery you will have some sense for what I mean. Alicia is quite the diminutive girl. Some very talented people have morphed her, and I can only imagine the effort required for the more successful attempts. I would venture to say it is far easier to give a lady of Alicia's stature a transplant from some other model, even with all the troublesome complexities of a transplant, than to blow her up. Busty Dusty or any of the other super-sized girls you have no doubt seen are by comparison a neophyte's dream, simply because, on average, bigger expands "more better." Or at least with less labor.

Finally, I would encourage you to ask one question of yourself: if you were to look at fifty images of the model you want to morph, would the image you are considering stand out? Would it really catch the eye? Is there something distinctive about it, the background, the lighting, the expression on the model's face, her attire...? When all else is equal, it is the truly distinctive images which yield morphs of distinction. Seek out such images.

And do not begin by shooting yourself in the foot.