The Lair of the Goblin Queen -- and so forth

 

Please see this full size -- it's quite a visual feast! Taking inspiration from Frazetta, I've put the G8 Female, and a G8 Male, into The Throne of the Barbarian King, and then lit it largely with its own torchlight. The G8F is Ginnie HD, wearing the Crimsoneye costume and Axarra headdess. The G8M is Michael 8 with the Dae face turned on 100%, and the Angelic Fallen tattoos added. All else is lighting. Oh -- Conan, here, is wearing the AS Hair for G8F; the prop works well on the male, though it's very glossy. I need to work out how to make it look less like a shampoo commercial -- or else, as I did here, zap it with some virtual paint to "paint it down." I'll come back to this barbarian soon ... I rather like the Conan thing we've got going on here!

And now for something completely different ... an android. doubtlessly. Compete with mauve hair and purple fingernails, and a costume that's been resurfaced with (!) car paint! The car paint shader was a freebie from Deviantart, and I went back to the page to find the link, to be include it here. Its a fabulous set of colors, shades, gloss, the works. Highly recommended -- click here to go there. And here's something pretty...

Right out of a storybook. What I must do (soon) is work out how to get fully photographic results with the horse. This is the exact same lighting set I used for a G8F fantasy gypsy-warrior a little while ago; on the human character, I got a photographic result. On the horse ... pretty, but nowhere near to photographic. This is one I must work out, because I'd love to get photo-realistic horse renders. 

That's all for now, from DAZ, but --

I've just started up Terragen for the first time in several years, and I'm making every rookie mistake! I've saddled myself with a 25 hour render, and it's 97% done by the time I get up next morning, figure something has to be wrong, research it, get a lead on what I did to sabotage myself ... it's not worth stopping it after 21 hours of render time, so I'll let it go, and finish -- and I won't make that mistake again! First experiments are jogging my memory nicely...

The object of running Terragen is to be able to create custom atmospherics for DAZ renders, so the 25-hour booboo I have finishing up sometime today, which involves sunlight sparkling on water, doesn't need to be repeated. From here on, I'll drop the skyline low in the shot, and just render the sky. Oddly enough, Terragen renders the skies quickly. Since this was the whole point of installing it --! More soon, but right now, the system will be tied up all day, finishing a pretty simple picture: mea culpa. My bad, as they say. Aarrghhh.  

 

Barbarians sack a fantasy Ancient Egypt ... plus Terragen and wallpaper

The barbarian is back! Conan who? Seriously, I'm just in a mood for Conan, something like a happy cross between Frank Frazetta and Boris and since I've got the biiiig new harddrive I have the space to install loads of 3D models that I bought anything up to four and five years ago, and couldn't install for need of harddrive space. This picture is full of experiments, too...

It's just an old fashioned raytrace out of Studio 3. I might see how this renders up in IRay tomorrow or the next day ... I just didn't have time to mess about in Studio 4.10 today. Studio 3 is so fast by comparison, the fact that the raytrace takes a bit longer means nothing. The job can still be done so quickly, you're done in half the time. Take a look at this big beauty at full size (1200x1800), and see the venous mapping in the torso and arm. Oooooh, nice!

Last night, around midnight, I was messing about with Terragen --

Am delighted with this -- for a start, I was in control of it, LOL, it didn't just "happen." The water is very shallow; that green color is the lake-bed, and I set that surface shader before flooding the terrain! The clouds have bulk and structure. Sooo nice. Almost reminds me of the River Iss segment of John Carter of Mars.

One more thing for you today: another wallpaper at 1920 x 1080 size:

Park that on your desktop, set all your icons off on the right side ... neat! It looks a treat ... you're welcome! Tomorrow, with any luck, let's see what my barbarian looks like in IRay! I do like the new battle-axe; it's part of a collection of antique and historical weapons that's been waiting for installation for about five years! Good gods, where does time go?

More soon! 

The Raze of Palenque, and SF heroes!

I promised you a barbarian, and here he is! I call this piece "The Raze of Palenque" ... but whether this Conan-clone (Clonan?) razed the temple or tried to save it is another question. I'm inclined to see Conan types as heroes, so maybe he waded in and saved the day. As you know, I'm a huge fan of Frank Frazetta, and I just felt like doing something in that vein today.

Actually, this is a very, very new spin on an ancient piece of work I did for a contracted book cover (The Swordmaker, from Renaissance eBooks, circa 2011, I think). The original work was set up as per instructions from the publisher, character, costume and all; but I always thought, "Dang, what a waste," because the art I was asked to execute was soooo pedestrian. I did the best one could with it, but ... sigh. At the end of the day it was a paycheck. What else is there? But, but, but...

No reason I can't lift out the character, even the pose, and do something fresh, spectacular and rewarding with it. Especially since eight years have gone by ... and don't think Renaissance is even still online. If the book is circulating anywhere, I don't know, so -- here we are.

(For the artists among you: believe it or not, Clonan here is an old fashioned deep shadow map render. I did a raytrace, yes, and this is one of the very few images that looks infinitely better on a plain old deep shadow map, which takes 1% of the rendering time! I have depth of field (DOF) turned ON, and a virtual f-stop of 50, to get this effect. A lot of what you see there was painted in Photoshop, however: you won't be able to score this right out of the render engine. Nice!)

Also --

...this is not a rerender, but a massive repainting of a 2012 image. I always loved this character, but I can't find the project files!!! 😭 Am right now searching high and low for them, on backup drives and so forth. Praying that I put them in some weird place ... I admit, I had a loony way of storing things back in those days. I actually deserve to lose itens. Ahem. Anyway --

Since I can't find (yet) the project files, I decided to put the old render into Photoshop and repaint it. Whoo! Gorgeous result. The original picture was a great idea, but the render was fraught with problems, including the fact that the mesh was trying desperately to come apart! I'd driven the bump mapping on the torso hard, to get real detail out of it, and it was showing the seams in the contours. Sooo, I've done a lot of work there, to correct that; hand-painted the hair, and the eyes; thrown the background out of focus to create proper DOF (which you get in low-light photography), and ... lots of little details, such as brightening up the building lights. It's a lovely result. Photoshop to the rescue yet again!

And...

Just a repost of an oldie, for fun. This one is fine just the way it is, even though it was done eight years ago and painted in ... GIMP! I didn't even have Photoshop at the time. But when a picture is right, it's just ... right. This one is called "Cyborg," for pretty obvious reasons. The only thing I've done with the gallery image is to enlarge is to it'll serve as a wallpaper, if you'd like to collect it. You're welcome ... enjoy.

That's all for today. Good news from the optometrist: my vision has actually improved in the last year, no need to change my glasses, and I don't have to go back till 2021. Phew. Next: call dentist, make next appointment to stand there folding hundred dollar bills into paper airplanes (or aeroplanes, if you prefer) and launching them at the man. Then, if I get a more or less clean bill from him, we can start putting together the funding to look at the computer: new boot drive with contents cloned over; new NVIDIA video card; new USB sockets that don't waggle about; DAZ Studio 4.9.9.9.9.9, or whatever it is (they'll do anything but go to Studio 5), Genesis 8, IRay, and lots and lots of skinmaps and costumes, to get back to where we are right now with Michael 4. Ouch. Bear with me. 😱

Barbarians rock! (In fiction and art, at least...)

Couldn't resist taking the "Desperado" character from the other day and casting him in the part of the brooding barbarian --

That's actually a very versatile character. Wonder what he'd look like in a space suit, with a ray gun?! Why don't we try that next? Put him on the cover of "Screamin' Science Fiction," for instance -- remember this:

I know, I know, I've been looking at too many barbarians lately. Blame Mike. He treated himself to one of the biggest books I have ever seen in my entire life. A$250 (yep, you read that right!) for the new Marvel Savage Sword of Conan collection:

It's the size of a brick, 1250 pages, on clay-coated paper, so heavy, you need muscles like the barbarian to hold it! Lift the cover, and...

Is anybody out there old enough (or crazy enough...) to remember these comics when they were new? Ahem. Guilty. Every page is faithfully reproduced -- articles, color covers, the whole deal. It really is an amazing job they've done. The only legendary Conan artist not represented in these pages is Frank Frazetta himself ... turns out, Marvel didn't actually publish his concept of Conan. I thought they did, but ... ah, well.

Speaking of Conan, has anybody been keeping track of the mooted King Conan movie? Oooh, how I wish they would just get this done:

If they wait much bleeding longer, they'll have to do it digitally! We're burning through time here. It'll be 2020 before you know it. Conan the Barbarian was made in something like 1980 ... and yeees, I saw it at the cinema (repeatedly).

Looking at all the monochrome artwork made me remember 8x10 movie stills. Does anybody remember 8x10 movie stills? I used to collect them. I have a huge collection of movie memorabilia ... packed, like so much of my, of course. Need a bigger house. Haven't seen my stuff in six or seven years (sob). And remembering movie stills got me to wondering ...

Yep, that's what they used to look like! That's not half bad, if I do say so myself.

More soon, but right now I have a virus that is ripping through my whole body, from my sinuses to every extremity. 'Scuse me whilst I make away, get a cup of tea, and pick up the last volume in the NARC: Endgame trilogy. I'm enjoying it immensely -- third time I've read it, too. I utterly adore Jarrat and Stone ... must render/paint them again, very soon. New images, new visualizations, using current skills and techniques.

Last note for today: have just posted to the travel blog: Halls Gap: "Under the Mountain" ... well worth a look.

The Barbarian ... Frank Frazetta style. (And flying Terragen to orbit!)

The Barbarian ... Frank Frazetta style

This might be the best single piece of work I've ever done, for dynamism, impact, technique across many levels and several programs (rendered in DAZ Studio, painted in Photoshop and Krita). It's a hybrid, neither completely a digital painting, nor completely a 3D render. (I've uploaded it at 2000 pixels high ... please do see it at full size!) It doesn't even look like a render --

What inspired me? Looking through the Icon art book. Seriously. I've always been a huge fan of the art of Frank Frazetta. His figures might not be as 'correct' as the textbook-perfect forms of artists like Boris and Julie Bell, but there's something about his work that connects with the viewer, a sense of immediacy, and kind of 'smack in the chops' impact, where the picture jumps off the page and hits you before you know what's happened! Stuff like this:

Fank Frazetta: yes copyright ... call this a free ad for Frank...

Frank Frazetta, as above. Free ad. Okay. 

Look, don't take my word for it. Go over to the Frank Frazetta gallery pages, or get on the facebook page, visit the Frazetta Museum site or even go to Pinterest, and ... see for yourself, if you don't already know what I'm rattling on about here! For me, Frazetta has always been one of the beacons of dynamic art. He was so different, not merely from Boris and Julie, but from virtually every other artist you can mention, and the dynamism speaks to me.

It was that dynamism I was after ... and the color control, symmetry, and so forth ... in 'The Barbarian.' Uh, Conan Who --? Nudge, wink. We'll certainly come back to this barbarian later. I can actually see him cast as something like Tarzan. Hmm. Lemme think a minute...

Also -- further Adventures in Terragen, as I negotiate the interface and find out what I can do. I was prepared to be amazed, and I am being amazed! Yesterday I worked --

From a patch of mud right at your feet (a fractal procedural terrain, for teeny detail):

...to a short from low orbit, right on the edge of the atmosphere of an exoplanet:

...and then back down to Earth for a 'beauty shot' where I was after something like the highlands of Scotland:

...Okay, the mountains are a bit too pointy to be Scotland! I know, it ain't perfect, but that does look like heather on the crags, and I do know how I did it, so I can do it again. Today, I'll experiment with water once more. The plan is to generate rocky islands in a sullen ocean under brooding, overcast skies (which itself will be a major project for a newbie like self), then drive the camera way up above the clouds, looking down from altitude, as if from an aircraft, and render the clouds from above. Now let's see if I can do it. In another week, I ought to be ready to work with 'objects' -- trees, boulders, plants --

Then the experiment will be how long the renders take, and if this little computer can actually do the work. If adding a tree (much less a forest) blows out the render time to a day, or several, I'll defer that kind of work for another time, when I can afford a much more powerful system. One thing I don't want to do is literally burn out this little thing. It's still new, and not woo wimpy  -- eight core processors -- but one thing about being disabled is, one learns to count the cost of things. I only bought this a few months ago, when my old laptop died after eight years of loyal service. I can't buy another computer (at those prices!) for some time. So, caution will be my watchword.