Working with textures, surfaces, lights and shadow, around a wild variety of props that go together to suggest a story ... and of the whole lot (I call the picture "Dark Magic"), the element that pleases me the most is this:
Every texture you see on the mask is me, replacing the original materials shipped with the model with my own metal textures, and bump maps. That is so realistic, I'm thrilled to bits with the result! Ancient Greek, or a relic from Mycenae, or perhaps even Atlantic (whoo!) ... and then I thought, "Hang on, that's a vignette, fading out to black. We can do this:
The font looks like the letters were hammered out of gold. It's done with 2D bump mapping and 3D lights applied to the lettering (in Serif Page Plus X3). That's cool too!
Then I wanted a change. What I wanted was an ink sketch, but specifically a vignette, So...
Your eye actually convinces you it can see how the inks were laid down over a pen and ink sketch. It works! I knew it would, but there's nothing like running the experiment.
Lastly for today, an exercise in black and white "photography" --
What this needs is more surface detail in the walls (but no bump maps were supplied with the set, and by this time late in the afternoon I was waaay too tired to get stuck in and make them. Might do that tomorrow, if I can be bothered), and a bit of surface detail on the car -- like, road muck, perhaps. Again, I was too tired to do it today. Maybe tomorrow.
If you're interested to see it in color:
