Two Sides Imaging

I don't know if she rolled a 1 on Surprise roll, but she clearly lost the initiative check. Anyway, I've got a more complex image in mind that will use that armor, so I wanted to give it a test drive here.

I liked the look of that armor suit in my last image so much that I thought I'd use it again for a little fantasy portrait. Truthfully, it reminds me of a photograph I took a long time ago.

It's been a couple of months since I did a nude study, so here's one I started over the weekend. It then spent over a day churning away on a hair simulation that ended up not looking right. Ultimately, I settled on a hair prop. If there ever is a Poser 8, I sure hope they do something to boost the performance of hair collision calculations.

The floor is a custom prop I did. Well, really just a custom texture with some displacement work. The runes are from Obsidian, and the glowy effect is a combination of the ambient channel and some postwork blur.

This also has my usual postwork. I think many of you know this, but I stopped trying to achieve photorealism a while back. I got pretty close to it, especially on a few, but when I started taking my fantasy pieces to art shows, it really screamed "done in Poser". Because of that, I've switched to trying to get a non-photorealistic (NPR) look, hoping it looks a bit more painted. It's not quite painted, but I personally like this hybrid look, and at least to me, it no longer screams "Poser".

Just A Little Portrait...

Enjoy!

This is an unusual piece for me, mostly because of its origin. I recently attended a figure study sketching party with several other artists. The catch was that I can't sketch. I get pencil and paper, and I'm doing well to write down a phone number.

However, I have gotten pretty good with doing postwork touch-ups, so I thought I would try dragging along my laptop, my Wacom tablet, and Photoshop. I did four sketches in total, though only one of them came out decently.

Interestingly, the biggest help came from the Liquify filter. It allowed me to do a rough sketch with the lines badly out of proportion and then nudge them back into place in Liquify. Then I could do a new layer and do the finer details on top of it.

For fun, I thought I would convert the one sketch that came out well into a Poser project, and that's what this is. The setting and lighting aren't my usual style, but I was trying to keep reasonably close to the original setting of the sketch.

It was a fun experience, but I don't think I'll be setting down my Poser dials any time soon.

Note: I did not properly record the Kanji symbols on her back, so if the model comes across this, I offer my sincere apologies for butchering the meaning of your tattoo.

Ever remember getting into trouble and being told that you were going to get "a stern lecture"? I'm just glad I wasn't in the hands of these ladies when that happened.

(No misogyny intended here, just that Vicky looked a lot sexier in that pose than Michael -- well, at least to me.)

I'm pretty happy with this piece. It started off as just a little portrait of a woman with a hooded cloak, but as I added each additional element it became something more. The final touch was the recoloring you see here, which I did purely on a lark. I'll be posting the original full-color version in just a bit.

Here is the original full-color version of Night Storm, Blue.

A close encounter with something unexpected...

Mostly I just wanted to play with that outfit again and try some unusual lighting while I was at it. The "spirit" is a variant of an eastern-style dragon that I added some wings to, plus lots of postwork to give it a look that is hopefully somewhere between watery and ethereal.

Just a little portrait...