I gave myself an assignment ... a project to see what could be done at this stage (!) of my development in this software -- I've only been doing this work for about 10 weeks, and I have so much left to learn that I just (urk) ordered the instruction book, which costs a cool fifty bucks with postage to Australia. About $33, posted inside the USA, obviously... there are good things and bad things about living in Aus. The climate, the cosmopolitan society, the political, spiritual and sexual freedom -- all these are the reasons we live here. International postage, and the cost of plane tickets to go anywhere ...?! Well, there'll be downsides to sitting on a cloud, wearing gold wings and twanging harps, so who am I to complain?Anyway --!
Spent fifteen minutes over hot chocolate last night, looking at other artists' work, and was impressed, as usual, with the Yaoi art. It gets a bit raunchy for inclusion on an open blog like this, and I'm not about to emulate that aspect of it (well, not here, anyway!), but I wanted to see what could be done to achieve something with the look of a comic, and a Yaoi comic at that, but still be in believable 3D, rather than the attenuated "big eye" style of manga which ... well, if I tell the truth, it doesn't do much for me.
I used the Saxon Hero plate for the background -- swapped left to right, with its colors reduced to 16, and then swapped out (all done in Irfanview). Click on the pic above, see it in 800 pixels high -- see what a difference it makes! Then I took the Platinum model, gave him a sorrowful look (looks like he has boyfriend trouble), and big, big blue eyes with looooong curly lashes. I went through about 40 shades of yellow to find the right hair color (when you learn how to use "surfaces" in DAZ properly, it's not hard to control every strand of hair).
The tweaked old plate was imported as the background; the image was rendered in DAZ and then shipped into Serif to have its overlays, uh, laid over.
I must look deeper into the Yaoi-look style. This is going to be fun!
Incidentally, if you were interested in the DAZ instructional tome, you can find it on their site. I've just ordered this ... so allow 3-4 weeks for it to be delivered down here to Australia, and then I'll review the book -- also the CD ROM which is enclosed.In the meantime, click here and then search on "Figures, Characters and Avatars: The Official Guide to Using DAZ Studio," and you'll go straight to it. Here's the kicker: there isn't another book on the market on DAZ ... which is amazing.
I might write one ... in the fullness of time, when I've got the whole thing figured out myself! Like I said above, I still have a hell of a lot to learn. The thing is, though, it's a lot of fun. It doesn't feel like learning.
After looking at the cover of the manual, you're asking yourself, does Jade ever paint females?! Not often. Why not? Because there's tens of thousands of images out there of gorgeous females and fantasy females and downright impossible-looking females. Images of gorgeous guys, fantasy guys, are in short supply by comparison. Besides which, I enjoy painting beautiful men a whole lot more. And this is my blog, so ... [sticks out tongue and makes raspberry sound]
Jade, 26 October.
