In a whimsical mood

In a mood for whimsy ... making magic. In fact, "there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, but it's not what you think --

In fact, it's not what anybody thinks! Couldn't resist doing the vignette storybook version of this. Shazz. Ha! I'd say it's Hazell Family: 0, Shaz 7. (Yes, that's one of my own characters, based on the Barbarian Queen, and tweaked into, uh, Shazz, who used to be Queen of the Fairies before the Hazell family bought the garden and ran over her kingdom with a ride-on lawnmower.

Also, working back and forth (repeatedly) in Photoshop and DAZ, using one of last week's Bryce landscapes as a background to do this:

The panorama is uploaded at 1600 wide, so if you'd like to see it full size, you can get the full whack out of it! Thinking about using it, or something like it, for the new masthead, blog header art. That wold work nicely, I think. It's based on this:

...and it suddenly dawned on me, what a great picture was waiting to be crafted, with the old Castle Creator props plus the "Guardian of the Citadel" you saw back on January 31. Turn him around, put the light from the left, plunk the castle waaaaay in the distance, using the Bryce shot as a backdrop. Fiddle with the camera settings to get the blur on the castle just right. Paint it all up in Photoshop to bring the foreground up to speed, and ... that's rather nice. Took about three hours from idea to done.

If I don't use one this as the new blog header, it'll be something similar. Odd, but after all these years, it's the first panorama I've done -- and you have to figure it out, because DAZ studio's virtual camera mimics a real camera and pulls things askew with the "fish eye lens effect," which of course an artist would never actually paint. There's two or three ways to do this, and I'll muck around with other methods next time.

What else? Not much. Just messing with digital sketches:

That started life as a "cartoon" render and had various things done to it in Photoshop ... still trying to teach myself how the blend modes affect each other when you stack them ten layers deep. And yesterday's Bryce outing was satisfying:

Bryce 7 Pro ... it works, Igor, it works!

The kind of reminds me of some photos I saw of the Orkney Islands. You're looking out for the Viking long ship. The good news is, I actually know what I did to get this effect, and can therefore do it again. [Rolls eyes] At last Bryce 7 Pro is starting to make a bit of sense (again). Neat atmospherics.

There's more, but it can wait. I'm tired enough to sign out now, go and make some tea and pick up a book! See you tomorrow, guys...

The cover artist's quotidian conundrum

Your mission, should you be unable to dodge it: After all this SF and fantasy art, with the tonnage of gravitas and all the high-powered heroes ... now, sit down and package a domestic comedy which doesn't have the slightest bit of gravitas or so much as an erg of high-power! Oh...boy.

For those who came in late:

Okay: so far it's been all guns and swords, rain forest, stone circles on the tundra, the planet Jupiter ... and now you have to design an engaging cover for a tale that's witty, quirky, often downright hilarious, set in an ordinary house, in an average Californian suburb, featuring an ailing cactus plant and an elderly lady with a deadly vacuum cleaner. Eep.

Well ... try this:

With about thirty minutes to spare -- literally -- I remembered that good old DAZ Studio renders to cartoons. What better way to change pace, strip away any hint of seriousness, than to fall back on comic art to illustrate a comic situation. And it works!

Which is not to say that comic art can't be absolutely astonishing. If you're 17 or older (!) go do a Google image search. Here's your search term: "Warlord of Mars Deja Thoris," Ye gods. It's a Dark Horse comic. (Where was John Carter when all this was going on?!) But --

All that blood 'n guts 'n bare flesh -- exactly what we don't want here, today. So ... a cartoon render (lightning fast), plus a quick recombination of old elements in the trusty Photoshop; then splatter a lot of digital paint around, and -- there. Done.

Incidentally, if you're trying to find this function in Studio, it's in your Render Settings dialog. Have fun playing!