Bit of this, bit of that -- and a neat SF plot

Quite a grabbag of images today ... actually, things I did the other day and one or two finished off today, because (!) the Kreeping Krud has hit me in its gastric form, and I really, seriously, honestly, feel like I'd be better off if someone just shot me!

Part of my imagination wants to see the whole suite of images, above, as part of the same story. Something about a "first contact" encounter ... but an accidental one, where the crew of this vessel, which is on a survey mission, run into a more primitive culture. Try this one on for size:

Magic works on this planet, which dazzles the crew of the starship -- at least till their science office figures out that the magic is down to a lodestone which could be mined there, if a trade agreement was signed! But the primitives have an oracle, or a Seer, who can glimpse the future, and she sees a time when industry has wrecked the planet, darkened the sky, mucked up the rivers and oceans, and she counsels the Duke to say, "No!" Which of course aggravates the crew of the starship, who try to cheat the local indigenous population ... and it blows up into a war: magic against technology, lightning staffs against laser pistols. Coooool story, that.

Michael 4 is wearing the Yannis skinmap and face morphs, and the Rock Star hair. The costume is the shirt and pants from Powerage's Supreme Armor, and the Journeyer Scout boots. The sky is an old Bryce sky I did about a year ago. The castle is one of the standing props from the Castle Creator set -- I put an atmospheric layer in front of it, so it looks like it's a bit misted with disance -- that was done in DAZ, not as digital post work. The render of the castle on the river has some overainting with Ron's Birds, and the moon also added as an .abr brush object. The starship is the Allied Fleets Frigate, set against a processed backdrop ceated from a Hubble space telescope picture to which has been added some light effects, as a "merge mode" overlay. Just backdrops -- not the planetarium.

Gotta go now. Gotta lie down, or find the cyanide, mix it with the 2oz of tequila, add a dash of deadly nightshade, stir in 2.5 jiggers of belladonna, drop of two of strychnine, couple of cubes of rat baits (diced, tossed i confectioner's sugar), little dab of Blitzem! anti-slug formula. Blend for one minute on medium, add two ice cubes and a couple of olives, and serve with a slice of lemon, optional salt on the rim of the glass.

Right now, I could go for that...

Jade, 11 June

***Posted by MK because the internet is AWOL. Intermittent crap.

Daydreams of books not (yet?) written

Designing "spec" covers is an interesting project. Basically, you're making images which are the covers for books that haven't been written yet -- or, if they have been written, you don't know what they are!

The covers are "off the peg" artwork which is the answer to a prayer for writers who're self-marketing on a budget. They couldn't afford to get into the rarefied atmosphere where the big-time artists live, and would have a hard time affording the price of a commission even with a jobbing artist, like myself. (A commission involves a heck of a lot of work, and frequently demands props and so forth which have to be bought specially for the job. So commissions are usually double to triple the price of art that can be offered on an "off the peg" basis...)

But there's no reason "off the peg" covers, done on spec, can't be pretty. In fact, they can be halfway to astonishing.

Here are five which fall into the "erotic science fiction" bracket. I'm working on a suite of spec covers which spans abstract, inspirational, travel, spiritual, fantasy, science fiction, romance, and the ever-popular erotica. I won't bore you with pictures of flowers and landscapes and ocean waves ... but I thought you might enjoy something like this!

Jade, 10 June

Camera's eye view ... CG doodling -- book cover concept "sketches" and so on

Working with concepts today -- exploring the part of 3D work that's one of the most important, and the one that's most overlooked. The camera position...

So I thought I'd combine ideas and play around with three or four things at once. I wanted to check out the impact of abstract backgrounds and a sharp foreground subject, and I have to say, the effect is striking. The more extreme the camera angle and the more paint-splatter-abstract the background, the better it seems to work! These are along the lines of book cover concepts -- hard-hitting stories about a strong central character. In fact, a couple of these are just begging to have a book go along with them!

And then, still playing about with the camera rather than any other element...

The set is by Powerage, their Viex Quartier set ... a tatty, shabby street scene in small-town France, all peeling paint and crumbling masonry, very evocative -- even before you add a luxury limousine (the model is from Vanishing Point), and then start to do camerawork that seems to suggest a scene from a movie. Hmmm...

Nothing especially startling here -- as the post title says, mostly it's CG doodling, renders which I have going through in the background while I plow through the most boring work known to mankind. Gotta pay the bills, you see. Drat.

But I'll tell you what ... some of those book covert concepts are just screaming to have a book added to them, aren't they?!

That's Michael 4 wearing the Samson skinmap, but the face and body morphs are my own. The hair is Midnight Prince set to auburn. The sunnies are from the M4 Real Jeans set, by Billy-T, and those are the Real Jeans themselves. I have about five lights on the male model, with two shadows set -- these shots are not raytraced, because, well, they're just concept work, like sketches, and also I didn't have a lot of time. But the street scenes are indeed raytraced -- they take no time at all, because there's no human hair, no trees or bushes. Everything else rayraces like lightning.

The best thing about 3D work? Being able to have the worlds hunkiest models come into the studio and happily stand (sit, lie...) there while you fuss with your lights. Hee! Did any of you ever try working with real, human models? Or worse, cats?!

Jade, 8 June

***Posted by MK because the internet is AWOL. Intermittent crap.

Tomb raiding for fun and profit

Working hard today ... hardly enough time to run out for tea! But I did have a couple of things rendering in the background, and here they are. I was thinking "tomb raiders" today ... not so much Indiana Jones, though. I just saw one of my favorite movies -- Jackie Chan, The Myth -- and it always leaves me with a taste for immense plots involving tombs in which are buried science fiction elements. If you haven't seen the movie, give it a shot.

I've been finishing up the prep work on the new/old Mel Keegan novel, for which you saw the new cover a few days ago. An East Wind Blowing. MK is very pleased with the new art, which is a dimension better than the original cover. If you never saw it, you didn't really miss anything -- I could never understand why they put a really, really juvenile (almost childish) cover on a book which is incredibly blood thirsty! East Wind is Mel's most graphically violent work, with blood and guts going in every direction, and the old cover made it look like a young adult work. Weird.

Today's pieces are very complex -- there's about 12 lights on this scene, and reflections on the columns, and textures on everything, and then post work in GIMP. They might look like simple shots, but looks are deceiving. That's Michael 4 wearing the Matthias skinmap, the Casual-slick hair by Neftis, a mix and match costume in which I changed out all the textures and added displacement maps. The Egyptian columns are from the Treasures of Egypt pack. The back wall is from the Castle Creator set, and the handlamp is one of DM's props from, I think, Fantasy Visions. The collar he's wearing is actually a V4 accoutrement, goes along with the leather lingerie, the kind of thing someone wears when they start brandishing whips and strutting up and down in high heels. Looks better on him, I think!

I'd like to come back to the treasure hunters you saw yesterday, and I also have a couple of gorgeous male nudes to upload. With any luck, I'll get the chance to upload them to the other blog tomorrow...

Must go now. Dinner!

Jade, June 6 (D-Day ... remember your World War II history? Or your John Wayne movies...)