|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
|
|
January 21, 2009 It's cold! So a picture of a soldier cut down in the snow seems so appropriate for this time of year! :-) Actually this image started one year ago...following last year's Christmas. I put it aside (although I can't remember why) and then lost the file! A little over a month ago I found a backup of it on an unmarked cd and started working on it again. That's probably not a bad thing, since I'm able to do more than I was a year ago. I modeled the hat and the winter coat, and I like the way they came out. The snow, uniform and boots all have custom shaders that I created for the image. They can all be found in on the resources section if anyone is interested in using them. November 22, 2008 I was watching a great History Channel show on Napoleon a few weeks ago. There is a great, quick scene of a French soldier peering over a rock and taking a bullet to his chest. It had a fantastic squib effect, and I loved the actor's pained, surprised reaction. It inspired me to make this image. While I was working on a shader for the rocks in this image, I found some neat pictures of the stones in Devil's Den at Gettysburg. That's where the title for this came. Unfortunately, I didn't know that Devil's Den had such a strong connotation with a lot of people, who pointed out that they thought it should have been a Civil War image! In any case, I think the rocks came out alright, especially since they are just distorted spheres with the shader I made applied. This picture also marks my first real attempt at using dynamic clothing. I found a great tutorial on making your own clothing here. I made a simple T-shirt and used Poser's cloth room to shape it to the two models. I exported the file and tried to model the collars onto the shirts. I like the one, while the other leaves a little to be desired. But dynamic clothing is really pretty cool. I hope to use it more! October 17, 2008 This picture went through quite a progression from beginning to end. My original idea was to pose the victim in a pretty passive way. She had already been defeated by the bullet she has taken to the chest. Plus her "buddies" apparently have left her for dead! Something didn't seem right though. The more I played with it, the more it seemed like she should be trying to fight back. Usually I find posing two characters in unison pretty hard. But these two cooperated! :-) The next hurdle was the context. I like close ups, but this picture seemed to need the forest around it. Actually there isn't as much grass there as it seems. Since I had settled on where I wanted the virtual camera, I was able to only place the grass models where there was a space. That saved a lot of time! I also rendered the grass without ambient occlusion, which would have taken forever to render! September 17, 2008 I can spend weeks trying to force a "good" idea to come out the way I want it, and then I can just play around and have a picture fall together. That's what happened with this image. I came up with a pose I liked and started building a primitive office setting around it. I don't know where the idea for the scattered papers came from, but it seemed to add some atmosphere. At first I thought of putting stories from the DeadSkirts members on the papers, but I opted to use dummy text instead. I remembered the publishing industry uses some standard text for mock ups called Lorem Ipsum for the first two Latin words that are typically used. I searched the web for some and ran across a neat history of the text. It turns out that it comes from an ancient Roman book by Cicero called On the Ends of Goods and Evils. Too cool! It just seemed like a good title! August 31, 2008 I had been reading a book on lighting 3D night scenes and thought I would try my hand at one. I tried to use more contrast in the image for Riverbed than the pictures I had done in the past. It certainly came out better, but that's not why this picture is important to me. This is the image that, for some reason, caught Templar's eye. He invited me to post it on his Sexy Amazons web site for fantasy death fetish art. I'm glad I did, because having a presence over there has introduced me to a ton of great artists with similar interests. Check it out if you haven't! April 10, 2008 Ric delCampo is a member of our community who uses a program called The Movies to make neat battle scene animations. He no longer has a web site, but he and his work can be found over at DeadSkirts. Recently he had a great western that inspired me to make Behind the Barn. Instead of the standard gun fight out in the streets of the Old West, I thought it would be cool to have one in a little more secluded location. When will this poor cowgirl be found? Who will find her? March 9, 2008 When I was a little kid I used to love watching the animated Flash Gordon series on tv, in particular there was a recurring clip of the Hawkmen in battle. They would fly into the picture and one or two would disappear after being picked off by a laser gun. Of course the Hawkmen became Hawkwomen and the lasers became arrows here! I had downloaded a free version of Bryce from Daz 3D and used it for the landscape and sky in this image. (I don't really know how to use Bryce, but it is on my todo list!) January 12, 2008 Every now and then I just have to watch The Longest Day. That movie defines the old black and white World War II movies I loved watching as a kid. This image isn't very historically accurate ;-) but I wanted to convey an image of the aftermath of D-Day. This is the first picture I did where I realized that I could actually create shader materials with a purpose. Both the waves and the sand in this image are simple plains with materials applied to them. I really like the way the sand appears to have tracks and footprints in it. Poser's material room can really be a lot of fun to play around in. [Next] |
|
Copyright 2009 www.blackjacket-art.com. All rights reserved. |