The tomb raider is out of luck this time!

As the post title says -- the "tomb raider" is out of luck this time. This one was guarded ... but someone as big as you are, armed with a Very Big Spear. A closer look --

Two hunks for the price of one, I guess! This is "The Man in the Hat," whom you've seen before. It's actually this guy, whom you saw in December (dang, is it really that long?!) ...

And that's the exact same Michael 4 character who becomes the Jones-like guy, when you put the hat on him, much less if you give him the whip and the revolver! Is there a story that goes with this? Not as such, unless it's that the tomb raider dude tried his luck here and found that this one is guarded! The hunk who began life a few days ago as Imhotep is on duty here ... he looks a heck of a lot better with hair, no?

And just for fun ... imagine that this is a scene from a move. Here's the movie still version:

I actually like monochrome a lot. There was also something called Sepiatone, a long, long time ago. Anyone old enough to remember that? I'm not, actually, but I'll confess to being something of a movie trivia devotee. Somewhere among my collection of stuff, I have some images that are so old, they were printed in Sepia. They're either worth a fortune or ought to be used to line budge cages, depending on whom you talk to. Ahem. So, this is what a Sepia movie still would look like:

Okay, that's all from me for today. I'd intended to do more, but it's been an OOTDD, One Of Those Damned Days, when you feel baaaad, and there ain't nothing for it but to scramble through and try again tomorrow. Going for tea now. Tomorrow's another day.

Viking warrior - the Bifrost key ... an Arabian pony at evening, and dawn in Terragen

Beauty shots ...  bit of fantasy ... a rather beautiful Arabian pony! There's a story goes along with the new character, the Viking warrior (berserker?) and that sword ...

Who out there hasn't seen the Thor - Dark World - Ragnarök trilogy? Who could have failed to notice Heimdall (be still, my beating heart) and that sword, which is the key to the Bifrost. Incidentally, the sword has one, if not two names. I've heard it called Gultoppr, and also Hofund. I'm no specialist, nor an Asatruar (not quite yet...), so I couldn't tell you which is the proper name. But I was looking through images a while ago and couldn't help noticing...

...I have a 3D sword prop that's awfully like it. Not a dead ringer, but enough like it to give me ideas. So here's the plot:

Asgard falls (kind of sounds like Gallifrey Falls No More!) and many objects of power are scattered across the cosmos. Some fall to earth, and occasionally are found -- like the Weirdstone of Brisingaman (which you can get as a free download in pdf right now. You're welcome). Enter our Viking warrior, who stumbles across a relic of incredible power:

Call him Ragnar. He doesn't realize at first what it is, and then weird, and wyrd, thing begin to happen. Oh yes, he's found Gultoppr, Heimdall's lost sword. It's far too powerful for Ragnar, he wants only to be rid of it before it utterly consumes him.

So our young Ragnar takes it to the last of the Asatruar priests, perhaps in Iceland, and offers it: " 'Tis the Bifrost sword itself," he says, "take it from me, now, for I've no wanting for it!"

But the priest won't touch it. Instead, he -- or she (and she would be much more interesting: anyone remember the witch, the rune-caster, Kitala, in The Vikings? --

-- yes, definitely a priestess) says it must go back to Heimdall, who is the only one who can handle it, since the passing of the All-Father. 

Now, by what magic does one raise Heimdall? And what happens when Gultoppr, the Bifrost sword, is returned to him? Whooo! 

I do love to spin stories. I just very seldom write them (though I have sold three to magazines in the last year or so, as it happens; and won an honorable mention in a competition on top of that). 

Thanks for indulging me as I tell stories in a thimble here, almost like extended captions to the images I dream up along the way! 😎

I was rather pleased with the pony. It's the fabulous mane that makes it:

And I'm not going to tell you I painted that. The process takes way too long. Believe me. However, I was digging through old, old files and stumbled over buried treasure. A set of "manes and tails for horses" packed as Photoshop layers, pre-painted by a phenomenally talented artist about ten years ago. I just now touched down on Renderosity and yes (thank gods!) you can still get them, and a whole lot more than were available the last time I looked. Soon as I get my computer upgrade, I feel a shopping spree coming on! These days the artist, CWRW produces the most outrageously gorgeous fine art prints you have ever seen (or not seen). They're expensive, but ... phew. Google on "CWRW horse art," and see what comes up. 

Last thing for today is the "Minutes Before Dawn" Terragen render, which took 90 minutes last evening. It's the longest Terragen render I've done so far, because that sky took 90% of that render time. I'm working my way to thunderheads ... think I know how it's done! We're getting there. The last things I need to figure out are how to properly handle power fractal terrains ... I'm doing far too much guessing right now: the penny ain't quite dropped yet. Then, I must get the depth of field function worked out. Then (gulp) working with objects. I might chicken out and read the tutorial before I start trying to feed objects into the program ... then all bets are off, because if -- if -- if -- it looks like it's going to burn out this poor, skinny little HP laptop, the rest will have to wait. But not for too long! 😁

Snake Charmer ... and a thoroughly alien world

CG character design: Snake Charmer

The Conjurer becomes the Snake Charmer ... except it isn't a snake. It's a little creature that looks alien -- in fact, the same critter that was the size of a house in the render last week! One of the best things about working in CG is that you can change the dimensions of anything and everything. I guess what you have here is the hatchling version of the gigantic creature the magician was "charming" on stage in the other render. (I was looking at an image a few days ago: a baby dragon sitting in the palm of someone's hand, and I thought ... hey, I can do something like that, but not with a dragon! This little fellow is known as the Dinoconda. Lovely thing to work with.) 

Nice! The "plastic" appearance of Michael 4 is thoroughly gone; there's a lot of integrity in these renders now.

I've been working in super-saturated colors lately, because I love firelight, lamplight and so on: it paints surfaces in reds and golds, which my eye just adores. But the other night we were watching one of the new CG animated movies, Resident Evil: Vendetta. Have you seen it? This one has some of the best CG character creation, mocap, texturing and lighting I've ever seen. About 35% of the time you just can not tell that these aren't real human beings. (Sure, 65% of the time,  you can tell. The character that lets this one down the most is the girl: it's a Japanese movie, so they made a doll. It just doesn't look real, sorry dues. But two out of three of the main male characters look very real indeed.) How good is this:

The rendering in this one is superb. Better even than Final Fantasy II, which -- even though it was made almost 20 years ago -- is still the best of the FF movies (notice, I said movies: not talking about the game here). 

And looking at the understated color in the stills here got me to thinking about working with desaturated colors, so I stripped most of the color out of the Snake Charmer, and this is what you have:

...that has a charm all its own. But I still prefer the color saturated one. Could be just a trick of my eyesight, but I do love color.

Also been puttering in Bryce 7 Pro. Trying to get photorealism, and not managing it yet. Starting to wonder what in the world I'm doing, or not doing! Here's the best I've managed to date:

Bryce 7 Pro: highlands. Not too bad, but...

It's not bad, but it's far from what I'd call photorealistic! Am getting cross with myself for not being able to figure this out, because I know for absolute sure, Bryce will do this. Like...

I have no idea where this comes from (thank you, Pinterest ... a credit would help, now and then, guys!) but to my eye it has David Brinnen "stamped all over it." I'd give you odds, this is David Brinnen's work. I'd buy his tutorials, if I could afford them, but at A$50 a pop, they're out of my price bracket. Need to figure this out on my own. So ... keep going.

So, in a fit of pique about not being able to generate a really photographic picture (yet), I thought, ah, stuff it. Let's do SF instead. Alien landscape. Right:

Alien landscape in Bryce 7 Pro

So there we are, done for the day, I think ... it's hot and humid, and I need to get a cool drink, sit in front of the a/c and pick up my book. More soon. 

(I'd love to tell you I'm writing something, but I'm not. It's too hot lately to even think. I did sell another short story, though. That makes three short story sales so far, which is very neat. And I won an Honorable Mention in the SF Writers of the Future competition a few months ago, which was also very nice. But no, I'm not writing anything at the moment. Too hot. Maybe when the summer is over...)

The nineteenth century poster boy, and the "fifty year storm"

The quintessential nineteenth century hunk ... in DAZ Studio, of course! What can you say? Technology by DAZ, face and bod by moi. He's wearing the JM Alexandre skinmap, and the hair is a Michael 3 toupee, "Ricardi Hair," which you can get to almost fit properly, if you jiggle the settings using the "Victoria 4 Male" fit. It still needs painting in the "post" phase, which is why I seldom use it; but it was just right for this piece, where our 1865 mariner needs to be deliciously windswept. Yes, it's another book cover. There's a bunch more to go, to get this whole assignment done. Phew.

(Incidentally,  if you enjoy classic cinema-- some people do, some don't, I know  -- there's two you need to track down. The World in his Arms, with Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn captaining two schooners in a white-water race to Alaska: fantastic. Plus Reap the Wild Wind, with a stunningly young John Wayne, and Hollywood's iconic tomboy (precursor to Ripley and Sara Connor), Paulette Goddard: ship wrecking on the Florida Keys. Alas, they don't make movies like this anymore. Wish they did.) Anyway --

It's DAZ Studio and Photoshop again. Truth is, if I did this in LuxRender, I'd still be working on it; but I've pulled every trick I know on both foreground and background. You name it, the technique is invested in this one, from the"venous map" applied to Michael -- makes the veins rise in his torso and arms (I used the venous map from JM Falcon, applied as a displacement map) -- to the camera settings, lighting settings, then tons of over-painting. The background itself is a full-on digital painting which began as two photos. One was from Wikimedia (a schooner at sea, c. 1900), the other, a storm sky photographed from the beach a long time ago. Then the painting began!

Quite a drama unfolded as I tried to upload this one last night. I did the work while a "fifty year storm" barreled in off the Southern Ocean, and literally as my finger hovered over the "upload files" button, the lights flickered, flickered again, and the power went off. Uh huh. Here we go --

The storm crossing Brighton, South Australia...

...and at Woomera, faaaar away in the interior.

The big picture, from the Himawari weather satellite. Dang.

Boiled down to a story that fits in a thimble, what happened was: severe weather (over 100,000 lightning strikes) caused the main power generators to "trip." They scrammed, it took many hours to get them back online. Twenty-two power transmission pylons were totaled; the whole state of South Australia blacked out  -- yep, there's hell to pay, that this can happen to so large an area. The how and why, and what to do about it, will be beaten up for days. Hopefully, something will be done about it. Soon. 

Next day, there's still about fifty thousand homes without power, and the sting in the tail of the storm isn't yet spent . Our power came back on after about five hours in the dark -- we were lucky. Got the central heating on at once, because things got very cold, very fast. Today, rain continues to lash; thunder and hail are forecast for this afternoon. Dave and I are going to run errands in the lull, and be back inside when the "fun" starts ... with a good supply of candles, flashlights, batteries and fully-charged mobile devices. Like last night. 

So let's get this uploaded before anything more dramatic can happen!