CG storyboards

Long time, no post ... I know! September turned to be the equal of August, in terms of workload, and it's blurred by. Last time I remember looking at the calendar, it was about the 10th, and since then I have no idea what happened...

Well, I do know a couple of things. The Rugby Union World Cup is being played in New Zealand. Dave and I love the sport, so we're watching the games which are telecast (and there's not enough of them; some of the good ones have been bypassed), and in the last week we've organized ourselves an Android tablet, which Dave will enjoy playing with, and which I'll use to test some new "interactive ebook" ideas I've come up with lately.

I might ... mind you, might ... be about to spring something brilliant on you. Stay tuned. If this works out, it will be something new, and something rather special, but I'm the first one to admit that it's a bit early in the project to be sharing too many details. All I need is the time to properly develop this, and the first step is to test out the workability of the format. Hence, the Android tablet. It's a neat little thing, looks like every other tablet you ever saw, including the new color Kindle device (which isn't on sale in Australia, so shopping for one of those isn't even an option). The first thing we need to do is get the aps sorted out -- specifically, the aps to read PDF and epub. It's going to be interesting.

What's the deal with today's renders? Drama. No particular reason. I just felt like working with an athletic young man with a sword. (Let me rephrase that...) Anybody out there remember Duncan McLeod? Note to self: I need to tack down Highlander on dvd. Today's renders are a lot like storyboards, those images used to help a director thrash out the framework of a movie scene, so that he has something to work with when the cast and crew gathers on the set. An artist sweats blood on the concepts, and then the director uses them as inspiration, chucks out the artist's work entirely and obeys his muse, which commands him to do something entirely different.

Here's Michael 4 wearing a face and body morph designed by me, and the Neftis Classic Slick Hair set to red, and Billy T's M4 Real Jeans, and the GA Matthias skinmap. The sword is Merlin's Katana; the set is a great "closed set," the DreamHome Basement, and I have two spotlights and two distant lights on it. No particular messing about with textures and whatnot ... this is just everything "as it comes," to feed the drama...

Here's the scenario: he got a phone call to come to this place, this time, to pick up a package, and when he got there -- well, they're waiting for him, and he kicks himself because he suspected it was a trap all along. Now he'll need to bluff his way out, and it that doesn't work ... it's a very good thing he's a highly-skilled swordsman.

Vignette drama to go. Or is it the prolog to something big? Hmmm...

Jade, 29 September

Post 600 -- would you believe it?

For Post 600 it had to be something special. Something with the richness of high fantasy, and great beauty, and so forth -- and a piece that took some considerable time, and skill. This one seems to fit the bill. It has an almost classical feel, reminding you of the paintings which were produced in the late nineteenth century, illustrating the collections of Irish mythology which were being compiled at the time, before the stories were lost forever. I'm thinking of the work of Lady Gregory, obviously.

Here's the same piece, recut as a bookcover:


And because we're having a birthday of sorts here ... I have an ebook for you...

Edit: the book needs to be recut, re-illustrated. It will be, early in 2024. It's just too old now ... the art is just too primitive to look good today. For the moment, it's retired -- which is a great shame, because although the art is, frankly, over the hill, the verse is timeless. Let me see what I can do with this.
 

MEL KEEGAN: Ballads and Verse, illustrated by Jade. Poet and artist collaborated on a work of beauty, an amalgam of verse and art. Part of the book was released before, for Christmas 2004 ... parts of it have never been seen before. It's a big download! Because of the weight of artwork, the file size is about 12MB -- and we can't compress it any further, guys, because the artwork suffers too mjuch. But it'll be well worth the download. All the verse from the 2004 issue is included, plus the sonnet from The Swordsman and the two long ballads, The Voice of the South Wind, and On the Full Moon of September (always leave 'em chuckling). Here are a couple of screencaptures:




In the meantime, this guy is well worth a look at full size:



Happy post 600!

Jade, 23 September

New leathers on a favorite old character

Here's a priceless opportunity to play with one of my favorite characters -- a face and body morph of my own, which I call Leon. If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you surely recognize him! Actually, I was experimenting with a new set of textures ... bought myself a few items on sale at Renderosity this morning, so had some renders processing through in the background while I worked on a paying job in the foreground.

So I persuaded Leon to put on Sickle Yield's Rogue Armory Pants and strut his stuff while I changed the textures over and over. It's the FS Leather 2 pack -- a couple of dozen very different leather textures, high rez and seamless, so they apply very nicely indeed.

The pants prop proves to be problematical when the figure moves into anything remotely like an extreme poses. These are some more poses from the Amazing Bodies set (plus one or two from elsewhere, and some fine tuning along the way). The more extreme the pose, the more the .OBJ tends to warp out of any kind of surface which will accept a texture, so you have to be very careful how you use the prop, and whatever textures. (It also has no morph to create a contour in the crotch ... one wishes it did. A somewhat heroic he-man like this ought to have at least a suggestion of the clan jewels! Yeah, yeah, I could achieve the same effect with the deformer tools, but it's too fiddly to do the job quickly, and I never have time to mess about.)

In fact, in the top picture, to get around the .OBJ warping problem I had to hand-paint the render to get the somewhat poor render characteristics ... but, having said that, zapping on a few strokes in Photoshop and calling it post work, is so easy, it's not really worth a grumble! And yes, I know that the warping is a problem of "conforming" costumes, whereas you can work with "dynamic" costumes and escape the issue ... but I haven't yet shelled out a ton of money for either DAZ Studio 4 Pro/Advanced, or Poser, with its Cloth Room, so the dynamic costuming options are out of reach right now. Eventually, I'll shell out the money -- but a MUCH more powerful computer comes first. I've heard that unless you're running DAZ Studio 4 on a 64 Bit System, it's the proverbial rough trot -- and of course to get into the new Genesis figures, Studio 4 is where it starts and ends. I do intend to come back and post about the new Genesis figures. I know alllll about 'em. I just don't have the hardware to run 'em.

By the time I was done experimenting with the leathers I was on a tea break -- so I took the opportunity to paint up a couple of these to nice effect with the candle glow and some smoke. And the signature piece was fully painted with some zaps and swirls and so forth, and the moon in the sky. Nice.

That's DAZ's Michael 4 wearing my Leon face and body morph, plus the M4 High Rez skinmap and the Midnight Prince hair, set to auburn. The costume is, as I said, Sickle Yield's Rogue Armory pants; the coat is the duster from the M4 Cowboy costume set. All the leather textures are drawn from the FS Leather 2 pack. The set is DM's Kerrick's Throne, with only the building and lamps loaded. The sky was a render I did in Bryce a loooong time ago (never throw anything away), and the trees are several iterations of Merlin's Silver Birch, from the Merlin's Trees pack. The brushes are Ron's Smoke, and Ron's Steam and Smoke.

Next post is #600, and it'll be something special!

Jade, September 20

Big story in a small space ... without words.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this lot must be worth a whole novella. I don't think I need to add a syllable about the plot unfolding here, so ... add flesh to these bones yourself, right? It's the old, old story, told about a thousand times before, but never quite like this!

I think the last time I saw this story, it was a damsel on a pirate ship, and she ended up First Mate of the vessel, and then shoved the Skipper overboard when no one was looking and remarked on how rough the sea was that day.

What you have here is the "camera one" sequence. You're seeing one character, from one POV, while the scene plays out. There would also be a "camera two" on the characters with whom this young spacer is negotiating, while at gunpoint, and a wide camera on the whole group. These are virtually storyboards for a steamy little science fiction drama played out on a highly detailed, closed set.

And the tale turns out well for the spacer. Get held up and ripped off by space pirates, and, uh, "negotiate" your way out of it, and wind up as a pirate spacer yourself ... with an earring, no less, and the freedom of the ship. Neat. Now, there's a story for you.

One wonders if the skipper of this pirate crew will get shoved out of an airlock when no one's looking, and our young spacer remarks on how unreliable the airlocks on this ship can be at this time of year...

This is DAZ Michael 4 wearing the SAV-Eros skinmap, face morph and Sav-Eros short hair. The costume is Utilitize, lashed up with the SH Hadcore addon textures. The set is Sector 15 by Stonemason. The poses are all adapted from the Amazing Bodies set. The earring is from the Gypsy Hair prop, actually designed for V4, but as with most props, you can make anything fit anyone.

And I just noticed, it's the Equinox of Spring in a few days ... what happened to 2011? It's winding up to summer already, and I've been so busy this year, I've hardly noticed it passing by! Waaaah! I want it back! Not much chance of that, though, so we'll just look forward to 2012, firm in the faith that the Mayan calendar cycles to zero and (duh) resets itself, and starts over. Let's face it -- calendars usually do.

Jade, 16 September