Two Sides Imaging

I've been a little busy this week, but I did manage to get this one out. I'm playing with a new set of armor, and I thought I'd go for a forced-perspective POV shot.

I decided it was time for a new desktop image, so why not make it myself? I'm still playing around with that new armor set from Angeluz, and I thought it would look good here. Just about everything in here was rendered separately, composited, or painted in by hand, so don't expect the overall lighting to make sense.

This was mostly an exercise in Photoshop. I did two separate renders (one of the girl and one of the circular bars/window) and then did everything else in postwork.

The interesting thing I've found is that I should only apply my "painted look" postwork style to the parts that were rendered, specifically doing it to the figures/people. If I do it to the things that really were painted (or at least, digitally painted) or to other background elements, it tends to muddle the other elements too much.

Traditionally, I would have done this image with a background prop/painting for the sky/moon, added a flat prop with some kind of water material, then added a variable atmosphere, and done the whole thing with ray tracing, reflections, and Firefly's atmospheric shading. However, I'm finding that I can get pretty good results with Photoshop and do it faster.

I'm not saying one way is better than another, just that I'm increasing the size of my toolbox.

This is in a similar vein to an older piece of mine "Submission" (NSFW), and I thought I would revisit that concept with what are hopefully more polished skills.

Just a touch of horror to start the weekend. In truth, I was merely browsing my clothing library, saw this outfit, and built this lovely dark scene around it.

Just my way of celebrating all the Mom's and Mom's-to-be. I saw a pregnant woman like this (albeit clothed) at dinner last night and was just struck by her radiant beauty.

We're used to seeing the hero charging boldly into battle, bravely defending the keep, fighting the desperate last stand. What we rarely see is the hero after the battle, victorious but shaken, needing a moment to shake off the visions of what she has just done. Here is a glimpse of such a moment.