One image today: The Barbarian, inspired by both Boris and Frank Frazetta, and with Conan on my mind, because I've been looking at the new movie posters today. Just the one image, because this one is equal parts digital painting and 3D.
Even the skintones had to be painted, because DAZ has this thing that it does, and as soon as you turn on the shadows, skin tones turn into a mottled, gray-freckled semi-disaster. I spent over an hour looking for solutions ... wound up with 10 lights on the figure, tried everything in the surfaces tab ... no joy. So in the end I, uh, painted it!Then the ground was also painted with all the little plants and grasses; then the birds were painted in -- and before I even set about posing the models, the backdrop was digitally painted as a custom underlay. The backdrop was painted in Micrografx, and the skintones were also painted in Micrografx, while all the plants and birds were painted in GIMP, using brushes by DesignFera (vegetation) and Ron (birds). You can get the birds .abr brushes at DAZ, and the vegetaton is available at Renderosity.
(The new Daz Studio 4, which is in its beta phase right now, might have this problem cured. I wonder. I also wonder if a 32 bit system will run in. There's no way to know this till the full version comes out. At that time I'll take it for a test-drive and write a field report!)
So this one is the absolute antithesis of the renders yesterday, which had absolutely no post work at all. This one is almost nothing but pre- and post work! Same amount of time, but just one image.
Mind you, it's a nice one. The other reason there's only one image is that I've had the headache from hell, so I've just been slow. And I do believe this is Post #499, and since the next one is #500, I'm supposed to be outrageously brilliant...
Help! I'm honestly, genuinely, seriously blank. Ack.
Jade, 2 April
