Bimbarella, Queen of Outer Space, Episode 47: The Ice Planet

"Let me understand this properly -- you're telling me I can't go rampaging around this planet dressed like this? Why not? You turned into a prude all of a sudden? Or is this planet inhabited by a whole population of prudes."

"No, dear, not at all, but --"

"Then, what have you go against what I'm wearing? You don't like pink? You used to like pink."


"And another thing -- you're always telling me to put something decent on my feet. So look! I've put on the biggest pair of cockroach-crushing boots I could find! And it still isn't good enough!"

"Bimbarella, love, will you just shut up for long enough to --"


"I just don't believe this! I've just had my hair bleached, and my tattoos brightened up, and my legs hot-waxed, and my --"

"Bimbarella! Shut up for four seconds, and turn around, goddamn it!"

"I don't wanna turn around. Why should I turn around? I'm tired of always doing what I'm told to do."

"You never do what you're told to do. When's the last time you did something you were told to do? Huh? You see? It's so long ago, you can't even remember!"

"Well ... phooey. Pardon the French."

"Will you .... just ... turn ... around!"

"Oh, all right. Have it your way."

"Okay, so I'm turned around. What am I looking at?"

"Well, I realize this is going to be a stretch of your capabilities, but ... have you looked outside?"

"Outside?"

"Outside. It's an ice planet, for gawdsakes! There's glaciers as far as the eye can see. You can't go rampaging around out there dressed -- like -- that!"

"Oh."

"Yes, oh."

"Well, I could put something warmer on ... but then nobody'd be able to see that I've just had my tattoos done, and my legs, and all. I could put a hat on. But I'd get hat hair, and I've just had my hair done..."


"...so I suppose you'll just have to go without me. I'll just have to stay behind, and sit here --"

"And pout."

"I like pouting. I'm good at it."

"You get plenty of practise."


"So I'll just stay here, then, and mind the ship."

"Don't touch anything. Don't push any buttons. The last time you started pushing buttons --"

"All I wanted was a lousy cup of double-decaf latte with mocha sprinkles."

"-- you found the ejection seat. I didn't even know this ship even had an ejection seat."

"Well, we came and got you, and you weren't really hurt, and it was a nice day, so I don't know what you're complaining about."

"Bimbarella! Just don't -- push -- any --buttons! Not till I get back."


"So whaddaya want me to do?"

"Mind the ship. Keep warm. And get in some pouting practise."

"Bring me back some coffee."

Jade, 29 August

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!

Beauty at the bottom of my garden!

When I was a kid, they still used to tell stories of hobs and boggarts and wee folk -- every area had its local species, and a lot of them still lived in the areas where humans were starting to build subdivisions ... with the result that the old saying about "faeries at the bottom of the garden" had to be true at least some of the time ... not because the fairies moved to live behind your henhouse, but because Uncle George built the damn' henhouse right on top of the site where people had been seeing wee folk for about a thousand years before City Hall decided to subdivide the woodland.

So the legends of "faeries at the bottom of the garden" arose. Of course, these days the stories are utterly pooh-poohed, and rightly so, because there are no faerie at the bottom of anyone's garden. Which makes sense when you think about it. What life form in its right collective mind would want to stick around where you dump your dead lawnmowers, and those leftover rolls of linoleum, and the old paint cans? Let's face it, there's so much toxic waste at the bottom of the garden, somebody as small as the wee folk would keel over dead, and no amount of clapping would bring 'em back. Of course they moved out. They're short, not dumb.

But as the Greens and the Tree Huggers get mobilized, some very nice, clean gardens are starting to come back, and hey -- you never know. When's the last time you actually bothered to go out and look? Well, look again...

Ye gods, that wasn't there the last time you looked! The only thing missing is the wings ... so let's do something about that:

Whoops ... darn it all, it looks like you've been spotted. They have sharper senses than humans do, and even better. They can camouflage themselves. Their wings turn silver-green to match the shrubbery, and those ferns Auntie Joyce chucked out last year because she thought they were dead, and they rooted themselves in and started colonizing the whole garden.

They come in all kinds, these faer folk; some of them are downright wicked and some are conniving, treacherous. Walt Disney had no idea. Only one thing you really, really have to watch out for, though...

You must be very, very sure not to fall in love with one of these wee characters ... for a very good reason... This beauty is just about six inches tall. And -- well, maybe it's just me, but I'd have to guess that would wreak havoc with your love life.

Jade, 26 August

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!

DAZ Michael 4 ... poster boy

3D art and digital painting are the perfect medium of expression for book covers -- especially ebooks. More and more these days, publishers need good art delivered fast for a modest price, and if you ask someone to paint you an actual, genuine painting, it's going to take so long, the "modest price" that's payable is all very well, but the artist will die of starvation ... which is what they used to do a century ago, and more!

The fantastic thing about doing the whole thing digitally is that after you've bought the 3D models, you can mix and match them ad infinitum, and the only element holding you down is your own imagination.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of book covers. A lot. And the more you do, the more your imagination seems to get itself into gear. It's an art medium I like a great deal.

In these images, I created only two backgrounds, and then swapped colors around ... you're looking at DAZ Michael 4, wearing a nice skinmap (it might be Chase; I honestly can't remember), and in four of the shots, the Rock Star Hair by Neftis; and he's wearing the M4 Real Jeans. The rest is all lights, poses and camera angles, and you could literally go on forever, re-re-re-posing the model, resetting the lights, playing with colors ... on top of which, you can also change the skinmaps, and you can alter the physique at whim.

Anyway, this is what I've been doing today -- thought I'd share of few of the renders!

Jade, August 25

Lighting and shadows

Studies in light and shadow ... 3D work tickling the borders of both real art and also photorealism. These were looooong renders -- each took about a half hour, because there are many lights set and the images are heavy in props, textures, transparencies, the whole gamut.

This is Michael 4 set up with my old "Sinbad" character; he's wearing the Mon Chevalier hair, carrying the hand torch fro Fantasy Visions, standing in a set made up of a couple of DM's trees, and whole bunch of assorted props, to which I've overlaid my own textures. That's the Lockwood shirt and the Journeyer Scout pants, but I've changed the textures, displacement maps, opacity maps -- the lot. And then there's about six lights set up, with deep shadow maps set. Like I said, a loooong time to render these! But the mix of colors -- it all starts with the rich Bryce backdrop -- is so nice.

Now, something very different


I was asked the other day how complex composite artwork is done (or can be done), and since I just did this book cover today, I thought it made a good example. Bottom right, in the montage above ... how many layers are you seeing?

The answer is, you're seeing five layers even before the text objects are added for the final cover. How's it done? By the numbers:

1) Start with a clear idea of what you want to end up with.
2) Put together the BOTTOM layer first ... the background. This one was made up of two images -- a shot of Mars from space, and a NASA image of the Horsehead Nebula which has been dropped back into monochrome. The two are painted together n a program like Gimp or Micrographx, or whatever you use. (I used Micrographx, which is a golden oldie -- it works with masks and inks, not layers. It's what I'm used to ... I also am a golden oldie, I guess.)
3) Save the artwork and import it into DAZ as the backdrop. Design the first character ... the one in the background. Position him juuuuuust right in front of the backdrop ... then take the backdrop OUT, make the background pure black, and render the figure.
4) Go back into your paint program and use your inks (or whatever your program calls them) to combine the figure and the backdrop to get the effect you want. Save it.
5) Import this saved version into DAZ as a new composite backdrop, and create your second character. Get him posed just right. Set up your lights and so on -- render this.
6) Import this render into something like Gimp, which allows you to paint with fancy brushes. Paint on the final layer of effects with whatever brushes you need, and save the whole thing one last time.
7) If you're finishing the cover yourself, now you ship the work into your DTP program (I use Serif) and add the text objects where needed...
8) Export this final composite at 300dpi. Done.

That's it for today ... it's really late, and I'm really tired! Didn't have a chance to post anything at all yesterday -- life is about work right now. Such fun.

Jade, 23 August

DAZ Michael 4 ... getting into trouble again

Storyboarding. Nothing at all like skateboarding or snowboarding. It's something you do when you're halfway between the script and the "roll cameras" moment on the set of a movie. These days, a lot of directors use a thing they call "pre-viz," or a video pre-visualisation of the action that's about to be filmed (or taped), but for about a century now, its all been about storyboards ... and if movies and starting to drift away toward the video equivalent, well, graphic novels aren't.

In fact, a graphic novel is the souped-up version of storyboarding. Just the way the director started with an idea that turned into a script, the writer/artist combo behind graphic novels starts out with an idea that turns into a script. The director would have an artist sketch out the shots as storyboards so he could get the cameras right and get the flow of the shots in his mind's eye. But the writer/artist combo working on a graphic novel aren't heading off to a soundstage. They're developing the script into the finished version right there on the page (or screen). The storyboards are the end product ... so make 'em phenomenal.

Most movies actually start their lives looking like this:
...and end up thrilling you after the color and sound and special effects have been added. But supposing you stopped at fantastic images ... each panel in the storyboard is fully developed into a finished "pane," accompanied by dialog and enough narrative to tell the story...

That's quite an idea. And the end product would be more than a story, less than a movie -- something new(ish). Comics have beaten this path ahead of us! But not in this kind of resolution on the artwork. Even the recent digitally designed comics aren't like this -- well, not yet. Someone has to be first, put it to the test, see it it works.

Anyway -- as you can see, Michael 4 went out to meet someone. A tryst? With whom, for what? And by the looks of this, something didn't go quite according to plan. Now, if I can just figure out what's going on here --!

Jade, 21 August

3D SF sets, props, and the shape of fiction publishing to come

This is the Station 15 set I mentioned the other day -- obviously with Michael 4 posed in it. In fact, it's not until you pose a figure in the set that you can get a sense of depth and perspective. You don't realize how big these sets are till you stand someone in them!

The set itself is another of the huge and complex models we'll be using as the backdrops for science fiction tales ... we're heading towards graphic novels, and also a kind of "hybrid" literary animal. I have an idea in mind, which I think might just work. There's no way to tell, really, till you put something together and bounce it off readers/viewers. The time to do that is almost upon us. the iPod raised a ruckus in the content-provision world. Suddenly, black and white text-only ebooks are looking dry and dull. Publishers are trying to figure out ways to insert videos, sound, images, animations into books.

Now, part of you wants to say, "Why would you want to?" Because (fact!) if you shove enough other media into a book, it sure as heck won't be a book anymore.

This is perfectly true -- in fact, this is the whole point. The truth is, less and less people are reading, and they're doing it less and less of the time. People are starting to want instant gratification ... which they can get from movies far easier than they can from books! You watch a movie, the whole thing is over and done in 2 - 3 hours --

In fact (and this smarts) I've heard lately that a swathe of the audience doesn't have the attention span to sit through a movie. As a writer, artist, editor, you have to figure out how to tell your story in 30-40 minutes, max, otherwise it's too long, folks drift away.

(This is the same kind of mentality that loves 3-minute songs to death, but can't sand classical music, and when you ask them why they don't like classics, one of the things they say is, "It goes on too long." I put this to you: what's the diff between a symphony in four movements, each distinctly different, total running 30 minutes, and an album of 10 songs all sounding exactly the same ... "thump, thump, thump" in the base for a half hour, people shouting lyrics of which you can't actually make out more than the occasional word, which is usually an expletive anyway, plus a great many overdriven guitars rendering up a backing sound out of which it's practically impossible to pick a melodic line ...? To someone who doesn't like this kind of music, it seems that the same sound is being heard for half an hour.)

Take all that and switch the medium from music to literature. You get a whole lotta people saying, "I don't read because books go on too long." And fewer people (but it's still a worrying number) saying, "I don't watch movies cuz they go on too long."

ADD. Right. Message received and understood. So the publishers' next challenge is to figure out how to deliver stories in a medium that will hold the interest of modern consumers, who can't make it through the length of a novel (or a symphony, or, increasingly, even a movie).

And you know what solution pops out of the bottom of this equation. Graphic novels. Comic books -- digital ones, these days. I have the strongest intuition that to survive as a storyteller in the future, a writer is going to have to work in tandem with -- not so much an editor, as with artists. In one way it's exciting. In another way it's bit frightening. But some of us are out there trying to put together the skill suites to succeed in the changing marketplace, and with any luck at all, we'll make it work. Like this:

See you tomorrow for some full-on fantasy. Michael 4 is about to get into a lot of trouble...

Jade, 20 August

Gypsy girl ... tell your fortune?

The gypsy fortune teller ... and some really gorgeous images today. This is a set from Renderosity ... The Old Patio. It's a fantastic set, with amazing textures. All I had to do was set two lights up top (on the exact same position: one pale yellow-green, one pale rose-orange, and then you could change the color temperature of the lighting at whim, just by turning up or down one of the lights. I turned on the deep shadow map for just one of the lights, not both, and set the shadows to be soft rather than hard, because the backdrop looks like you're an a forest and it's coming on towards late afternoon ... and you were ready to hit "render" right there.

The Old Patio set comes with two benches, urns, hanging plantpots, and a fantastic floor. Highly recommended. So easy to use, and it's just gorgeous.

Now, the model is a Victoria 4 designed by yours truly, wearing the Witch Hazel skirt, and would you believe that's the leather top from the Shadow Dancer set? I applied my own textures and displacement maps. The Sandals (you can't see them in this shoot, but you will in the next one) are the Horizon Redux strappy sandals, with my own textures applied.

The hair, though, is new: Gypsy Hair ... and it's gorgeous! It was on sale at DAZ the other day, for about $5. You can change the color of the bandanna for literally any color you can think of, and the hair too. Easy to use, and so nice.

Join me tomorrow: I'm test-driving a fantastic SF laboratory set called Station 15, which is going to become one or more of the labs in the NARC and Hellgate renders. Another fantastic set, a lot of fun to work with.

Jade, 19 August

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!

Bryce 7 Pro, Vue, and a whole lot more

Video missing ... the link called a YouTube video, and it's just not there anymore. From memory, it was the promo for Bryce 7 Pro. DAZ must have removed it for some reason. It would have been a piece of history...

For some time you've been hearing me say I wasn't deliriously happy with Bryce, and I've been switching over to Vue a fraction at a time. Well, that juuuuust might be changing, because Bryce 7 Pro just arrived, and it's on sale at DAZ right now for about $54; and the moment Dave saw the promo reel, well, that was that. It was in the shopping cart!

Just take a squiz at that promo reel, above! Yeeeouch. Now, before you get too dazzled, take another squiz at the Vue 7 promo reel:

(Both of these will play FULL SCREEN ... and it's worth watching 'em)

And before you get too blown away, here's the rub -- and this is what dumps you unceremoniously back into reality:

The Vue 7 promo was not done with any of the affordable levels of Vue, which start out at about $199, if you want halfway decent functionality. It was done with one of the top-end levels of the program, and ... welllll, for that price, I'd want to stick a key in the ignition and drive away in it. We're talking four figures here.

By contrast, Bryce 7 Pro is about hundred bucks at full price, and if you happen along (which we did) at a time when you can get it on sale at 45% off (which we did!) you wind up with a prog that's going to give Vue some serious competition, for, uh, $54.

Now, I'm not saying I like the Bryce interface -- I don't! But the program will do some amazing things, if you can get your head around it. Time to learn! I cut my teeth on Bryce 5.5, which was the freebie, when Bryce 7 came out a while back. Time to switch up to Version 7 Pro, and just learn it.

Nothing momentous today, guys -- I've been working flat-out for the last nine hours, without a break. My brains are scrambled. Time to go drool in front of a movie, chill out, unwind and so forth. Will be back tomorrow with something more corehent...

Jade, 18 August

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!

The vampire displays a rare set of canines

At last, I managed to get an African skinmap ... and it's a beauty. The tones are rich, warm and beautiful, and when you bring the camera in tight, the texture of the map is also highly detailed.

This is the Zareb skinmap, but not the Zareb face. This face is one of my own. Rather a nice face ... makes me imagine a just-qualified young doctor of economics who's about to become the political leader of a stride-torn nation, and who's been surprised while on vacation after defending his PhD, and told he has to catch the next flight back to a home he hasn't seen in a decade, and take the reins.

Ouch. There's a monster novel in that, but I'd never be qualified in a zillion years to write it.

Anyway, the whole point of the renders is to try out a new skinmap, and I'll tell you, Zareb is a lovely, lovely map. Now, if only someone would do a great mane of dreads for M4, I could see about designing a face for Rogan -- "Rogue" -- from The Lords of Harbendane. I would dearly love to do that, but I don't think anyone's done dreads for M4 yet. We live in hopes!

Interested? Click here. One caveat: be aware of GLBT content, because it's a Mel Keegan novel, which means one of the romances will be gay. Might not be for younger readers, due to some very realistic battle scenes etc.

And now for something completely different!

The vampire Vladislav N. Stolitchniev has been annoyed enough to show his fangs! Now, I was going to be conservative about the fangs, and I came up with this:

To which Dave said, "You have GOT to be kidding, what a waste of an opportunity!" So here's the same image, with "Fangs by Dave" ...

And both of those were uploaded at 1:1 size, so you can click on them and see them just as they were rendered. Look at those fangs! Way to go, Dave. That'd sure keep me home nights...

Jade, 17 August

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!

Anyone seen Indiana Jones around here lately?

Do you ever have one of those fantasies where you're lost in the jungle, and it's steaming hot, and you meet this "native guide" who looks at you like you've gone bonkers, because you've been wandering in circles about 100 yards from the biggest landmark in a thousand square miles, and this "native guide" guy is like a dream come true, right out of a Hollywood fantasy ...? And what happens next after the tribal shaman gives you a taste of the magic potion to save your life? You get the gift of longevity, get weird powers, have a blazing affair with the one who rescued you, and, uh, like that.

No, I don't have those fantasies either. (Ahem!) But I did see The Champions, and Indiana Jones, about thirty years ago. (Golly, is it that long?) And The Phantom, now I come to think about it! Billy Zane in the purple spandex. Uh huh.

The set is the Palenque Ruins, which I got in the massive DAZ sale a few weeks ago, when virtually my entire wish list went on sale at the same time:

And you wouldn't believe (or maybe you would) how many items off that wish list splurge I still need to unpack and play with!

The character is JM Falcon; lovely skinmap -- I tweaked the face a bit. The hair is Spartacos, The costume ... well, Victoria 4.2 was wearing it, the last time you saw it. It take a whale of a fiddle to get it to fit Michael 4, but it actually does eventually. Plus the trees from the DM Fantasy Visions, and --- there you go! One jungle fantasy, made to measure.

Jade, 15 August

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!

Too early to be getting ready for Halloween? Nope!

Busy like you wouldn't believe today, guys ... painting bookcovers which could easily be recognized as having a "Halloween" flavor. At Christmas I was painting Easter stuff, and at Halloween I'll be painting Christmas cards. It's all about the lag time in manufacture and promotions of whatever products and ad campaigns you're working with/for.


So here are some very nice examples of what I'm up to ... different from the usual fare, and being used as a "stop gap" here, because I'm out of time! Nice art, though ... some of these pieces are worked up from items you've seen in some form or other on the blog here, but the leader shots (the generic torso art, which has become a genre all of its own lately) are new...

Sorry ... the remainder of these images were stored elsewhere, and have vanished. An account was abandoned, something like Photobucket or whatever, and there were a lot of casualties...

With a tiny bit of luck I'll be back tomorrow with time for something fresh and new, so -- see you then!

Jade, 14 August

***Posted by MK: my connection is intermittent, too slow for this. Seriously, guys, I've got dialup speeds. How are you expected to do anything these days, at 1990 dialup speeds?!!!