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| A little science fiction humor in DAZ and Photoshop: "Paging Mr, Amadeus De La Rocca. Will you please come and retrieve your android. Fees apply. |
Technically it's too hot to be doing this, but I am so bored! The a/c is running around the clock, so it's probably okay to run the computers at high-throttle. Soooo...
The story behind the picture goes like this: First, you ought to recognize the immortal vampire, Amadeus. The only thing he's done as he ages 200 years into our future is dye his hair, because he'll stick out like the proverbial sore whatever in 2220, with white hair. He thought it was a brilliant idea to order an android personal assistant, to be delivered via the spaceport ... but they come in unprogrammed, and something in the spaceport tracking systems gets their systems going. His new PA turned itself on and wandered off, wreaking all kinds of havoc. Amadeus was trying to get parking (never easy) when he heard his name over the public address:
"Paging Mr. Amadeus de la Rocca, would you please come and retrieve your android. Fees apply." Uh huh ... and you should recognize the patrol officer from the scene a few days ago! This is the nightshift at the spaceport. Takes a hard-nosed cop with a lifetime of experience with people (not to mention androids and, uh, vampires) to sort out these situations! So here's poor Amadeus trying to explain his way out of this, thinking, "Oh, I'm getting to old for this crap," while the nice officer explains that it is his fault, even though he wasn't even there ... because he neglected to specify the proper EM shielding for his purchase before it was shipped ... snarfle.
The challenge was to make two versions of Michael 4 look real -- then make Victoria 4 look like a machine, a toaster, whatever. I think I succeeded. See its face in closeup! However, its name is Betsy, and when it's been programmed it'll be a lot more lifelike. I'll render that, too...
Didn't do Terragen today, because I stayed playing with the Dystopia City Blocks (in DAZ), and then on a whim sent them to Bryce (Why? Because you can, and I was bored). Boy, what a surprise. Here's the city skyline --
Dawn:
Noon:
Sundown:
And then came the huge surprise ... because although I bought the Dystopia City Blocks in a sale about nine years ago, I had no idea they did this in Bryce:
Night, after sundown:
This shot doesn't show the sky too well -- it's actually late twilight, the sun is well down. Here's the thing, though: the city lights came on automatically when I put the sun under the horizon! 😲
Now, that was a whopper of a surprise, and it got me inspired to do this, snarfle:
Couldn't resist. Rendered the whole thing in Bryce and shipped it into Serif to have the text overlays. I enjoyed this project enormously ... it only took an hour. (No, there is no such writer as "Phoebe Q. Dillbottle." But if that novel is as funny as it ought to be, I'd read it...)
As I said, that only blew off an hour, including the Bryce render! So instead of twiddling my thumbs I went back into Photoshop and played with false color experiments:
That was actually quite interesting, and I learned a lot. It's not art, really ... you throw in masses of overlays and underlays, filters and blends and ... on and on, and you get some weird results, and eventually it gels into something that's quite attractive. Not a photo, but not a painting.
If you want to muck about with this yourself, be my guest:
There's the source photo (from my phone) and the sketch, at full size, ready to go. Have fun! Now ... I gotta get these machines turned off. You could fry eggs on them, and it can't be good for them. It's 110 degrees right outside the back door -- beside which, it's also dinner time!
