Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Another Michael 4 ... call him Sebastian

Was in the mood to create a character today. You never know what's going to happen when you set out to create a face. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't -- usually they do, and even when they don't, you always get a face of sorts. When they don't work, though, it usually means that the face only looks good from one angle, because you just didn't get it all to balance out and turn into a real "live" face.

When it works, though, boy, does it work! Here's the new face from different angles:





EDIT: several images are missing ... these turned up. They're only deep shadow maps with some Photoshop overpainting to fix a number of issue with the oooool renders, but ... here you go.

And he is a beauty! This one, I'll be saving and trotting out in various roles. The skinmap is HZ Victor (which you can get from Renderosity); the hair is Neftis's Rock Star. The costume is Journeyer Scout ... but you'd never recognize it. I made the shoulder pads go away and put on a displacement map and opacity map to make the shirt kind of sculpted leather, and then put a gorgeous, exotic pattern into the leggings.

Setting out to create the character I knew I wanted a handsome guy, but not a kid. He had to look like he was a little sad, like he's been around the block a few times. He had to look kind and sensitive, but also have the bearing and the muscles to look like he could whang a bad guy's lights out.

It worked like a charm! The background set is the draw bridge model from the Castle Creator kit, which I actually bought to do Abraxas, when there was any such project. Must think of something else to use this for -- it would go well with the fantasy armor you saw a few days ago. Now, there's a thought...

Seriously, isn't that a gorgeous face? I love those lines, the cheek and jaw combination. This one, I'll be saving as a character pre-set. Incidentally, it's easy to do that. If you've created a face you really love, in your save routine, look for the fly-out, and "save as." DAZ saves it as a .dsb file, and to get this back, you load up the basic Michael 4 doll and MERGE the .dsb file onto it. Dead easy.

Jade, 22 December