Monday, June 6, 2011

Tomb raiding for fun and profit



Working hard today ... hardly enough time to run out for tea! But I did have a couple of things rendering in the background, and here they are. I was thinking "tomb raiders" today ... not so much Indiana Jones, though. I just saw one of my favorite movies -- Jackie Chan, The Myth -- and it always leaves me with a taste for immense plots involving tombs in which are buried science fiction elements. If you haven't seen the movie, give it a shot.

I've been finishing up the prep work on the new/old Mel Keegan novel, for which you saw the new cover a few days ago. An East Wind Blowing. MK is very pleased with the new art, which is a dimension better than the original cover. If you never saw it, you didn't really miss anything -- I could never understand why they put a really, really juvenile (almost childish) cover on a book which is incredibly blood thirsty! East Wind is Mel's most graphically violent work, with blood and guts going in every direction, and the old cover made it look like a young adult work. Weird.

Today's pieces are very complex -- there's about 12 lights on this scene, and reflections on the columns, and textures on everything, and then post work in GIMP. They might look like simple shots, but looks are deceiving. That's Michael 4 wearing the Matthias skinmap, the Casual-slick hair by Neftis, a mix and match costume in which I changed out all the textures and added displacement maps. The Egyptian columns are from the Treasures of Egypt pack. The back wall is from the Castle Creator set, and the handlamp is one of DM's props from, I think, Fantasy Visions. The collar he's wearing is actually a V4 accoutrement, goes along with the leather lingerie, the kind of thing someone wears when they start brandishing whips and strutting up and down in high heels. Looks better on him, I think!

I'd like to come back to the treasure hunters you saw yesterday, and I also have a couple of gorgeous male nudes to upload. With any luck, I'll get the chance to upload them to the other blog tomorrow...

Must go now. Dinner!

Jade, June 6 (D-Day ... remember your World War II history? Or your John Wayne movies...)