Is it a Yaoi image, Yaoi character? It easily could be ... but I've been reading The Swordsman, which is another of my all-time favorite Mel Keegan books, and I had this flash of imagination or inspiration, or maybe both. Janos, the gypsy shaman who turns out to be Sebastian's half-brother, and the love of Luc Redmayne's life. This one, I couldn't resist! I used a chunk out of an image from the Internet for the background: cropped it out, flipped it horizontally, recolored it a little, and blurred it out to make a good background ... then the fun with lens flare began, because I wanted to add something to the pictures that made it look like Janos was working that gypsy magic of his.
All the 3D work was done in DAZ. This project game me a great opportunity to work with the Midnight Price hair again -- the same style I used yesterday on one of the Renaissance vampires, but that was set to white-blond, and this is set to ebony.Also, his hairstyle is great because it gives you the ability to swing the loose front strands way forward -- which means the character can duck his head and the hair appears to obey the laws of gravity. This is such a cool hairstyle -- it looks just as good on Victoria, believe it or not. I popped it on the female model to see how it would look. It fits perfectly, first-time out, and looks great.
Then the images were opened in Serif X3 to have the borders and signature added, and I was happy to call it good at that point.
The other interesting thing about this series of renders is that I showed the light source -- the torch, on the left side of the shot. This is a nice prop from the Dungeon Lighting kit ... but you have to be careful what you do with such props, and every time you show the light source in the picture, because the light on the model has to match! People won't be fooled if you get this wrong. So, notice how there's a yellow-gold light set up to shine on Janos's right arm, or elbow, and there's a blue light set up on the other side, to suggest dim, cold ambient light, which looks right, when you see from the background, they're in the catacombs under the Citadel.
The Swordsman is one of my all-time favorite books. I'd love to design the other characters too ... Seb and Jack and Luc. (If you're interested, it's a Mel Keegan novel, which means it has glbt content, but it's not hot --
Yes, you could give this one to a coming-out mid-teen ... it's a great fantasy story where the love interest just isn't hetero, that's all. I painted the cover for the paperback a few years ago. The story was captivating then, and it's still a blast.)
Jade, 17 January
