Kinda makes you homesick for the fantastic worlds of Mel Keegan, doesn't it? So -- a lot of fiddly work later (you don't want to know), and the boys are back in town. Jarrat and Stone, Raven 9.4 and Raven 7.1 themselves. And don't they look fantastic? This time around, I've been able to give them brilliant eyes with The Eyes Have It add-on.
The only thing that's not 100% right now is that Jarrat's hair is not that dark. It's supposed to be sun-blond, or streaky blond, and I don't have a texture for that. I'm going to have to do my own textures for this, because it turns out the designer, Neftis, hasn't issued any extra textures. You can either have blond or brown, and the blond is too blond for Jarrat, and the brown is too brown. So the next thing I need to do is actually paint a texture set specifically for Jarrat's hair. Cool.
And the next characters to bring back are Gil Cronin and Joe Ramos, and then Curt Gable and Mischa Petrov. Then there's a few more to design and the NARC cast of characters will be complete. I was getting there nicely, back in February; then there was computer trouble, and after the reformat, wham! None of the old project files would open.
But we're about halfway home, and this time around there's a whole universe of sets to play in, and also the Bryce 7 Pro is working out beautifully, so world-building is on the agenda. I also have several spacecraft which I am dying to animate...
Check the blog every couple of days, guys, because it's about to get exciting -- at least for SF fans. For fantasy aficionados, there's also plenty on the way. Have recently acquired some great new props which you haven't even seen, and also (just found this out!) Bryce 7 Pro and the new version of DAZ Studio "shake hands" beautifully. So characters and world building in both programs will go virtually hand in hand. I still look longingly at Vue, and promise myself I'll get there eventually, but I have to say two things: DAZ has put Bryce into the affordability range, and this latest version is sooooo cool!
A quick post-script on this --!! Dave just said he believes Jarrat looked better with the other hairstyle, so tomorrow I'll be trying some more experiments. Join me then, and we'll see how he looks with a variety of hair options...! For now, check this out:
Dave might be right. This does actually look very Jarrat. The final decision will lie with Mel Keegan, of course, so come back tomorrow and see how this episode turns out!
Jade 13 September
