Saturday, March 13, 2010

3D fantasy hero for a new age





The fantasy hero ... in a new age. No grunting barbarian, this! Way back when, the fantasy hero was Conan or Kull, with a whole lot of muscle and just about enough brains to get through life, so long as somebody else did the IRS paperwork. Today...

You notice how 90% of the fantasy novels -- and almost all the really good ones! -- are written by women? So it's no surprise that fantasy heroes are a different breed lately. I'm not going to say 'sensitive and feeling,' though that's true too! But intelligent, driven by conscience, bruised by the hard knocks life dishes out, and more than likely as hungry for acceptance and love as the next person. Dragonslayers need love too.

I often seem to come back to this model. He's so much one of my favorites, I gave him a name. Call him Leon. What I need to do is come back to this character and index all the places where you can see him on this blog. In fact, that would also make it easy for me to find him myself!

He's Michael 4, wearing a face designed by me, and Midnight Prince hair set to burgundy, and the Narquilir shirt set to leather, and the pants from the Hardcore M4 pack, and moccasin boots from the Wood God set. The background is Backdrop Easy set to old stone wall and dirt floor; the garden is made up of numerous environment props from the Faery Tale and Heart of the Forest sets; the top of the wall is the top-beam from the EROC column construction set. Behind the wall are four or five tree props -- the same prop as the tree-in-planter from the DM Instances kit -- a kind of ruined Spanish Mission. The big tree trunk with the ivy is a new prop for me -- "ultimate forest" tree trunk, in high-rez. Nice! I only set two lights, believe it or not: one is overhead, one is at ground level, pointed up to simulate light reflecting off the ground. The backdrop -- sky and golden tree -- is a photo, somewhere in the hills here, last fall.

The effect is actually lovely. I like this a lot.

Jade, 14 March

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this.