Having just finished the last NARC trilogy, I find myself having terrible Jarrat and Stone withdrawal symptoms, so I've cycled right back to the beginning and am four chapters into Death's Head ... for about the twentieth time. Sorry. Can't help it. Blame Mel Keegan, it's all his fault. I could live in this universe. In fact, I think of it as my second home, keep running back there when Real Life gets so boring, shooting yourself starts to sound like a reasonable alternative. So --
Another Jarrat and Stone render, using every bit of skill and resource I have today. Must go back and re-do a lot of the 2011 shots. They were such good ideas, but these days I can do them sooo much better. Ack. Just for fun --
The 8x10 movie still version of this, as if NARC is a major motion picture series (golly, I wish it were) ...
Going back through the old, old files, I find myself fascinated by this character:
He's actually appeared in two guises: he was a vampire originally, and then he guest-starred in the unfinished (sorry!) Abraxas story, as Leon's cousin. Happy happy, joy joy, I just stumbled over the project files, so I can reopen them and return to this character. Let's make him a vampire again, and have some fun with this. How about ... Amadeus's arch nemesis, or rival?!
(On the subject of Abraxas: you may not believe this, but I have intended to get back to it, finish it out, every single day since it was suspended. It got away from me when Stuff Happened: in 2012 we had to move house from one massive place to another ... I "did my back" during that move, and it never came good. Going on seven years later, I still have spinal degeneration, it's one of the things contributing to my current disability. Then, Mom entered the very last phase of her life, and made her exit in 2017 after a couple of years that were ... beyond description. She lived the most amazing life, but the last few of her years almost put me in the ground. Eight months before she passed on, I began to suffer pancreatitis, and it took two surgeries to get through that (late 2017), then most of 2018 to recover. Then, it was disability, the inability to even walk ... and you know how depressed you can get about that?? Uh huh. Since I last wrote a chapter of Abraxas, you name it, it's happened to me. Now, so long has gone by, I'm not sure I could get back into it and actually write it; but what I can do is "tell you the story," the short version of What Happened Then. Let me get to this, and get it done, and illustrate it with some lovely art. Then we'll call Abraxas complete, one way and another.)
Searching through the old project folders, I also found this:
A terrific abstract piece done (!) in Bryce 7 Pro. The only thing is, I have no idea, none whatsoever, of how it was done. The only lucky thing is that I found the project file ... I can open it, reverse engineer it, work out what the [deleted expletive] I did to get this effect!
However, I do know what I did to produce this:
That was wrangled in Photoshop, when I was tinkering around with all their filters and effects, still learning my way around the program. I'm pretty sure I never uploaded it, and it's actually rather charming, so ... here it is.
More soon, but not tomorrow: we're taking the day and heading south into the Fleurieu for a "grand tour" of the coasts and lunch at Sails, at Clayton Bay, to celebrate Mike's birthday. This will be fun.
