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@Knittingmommy - Thank you so much!!! I hope you finished your word count. I'm glad you gained so much from your devotion to the month of writing. Your reflection makes me wish I'd not set my own writing aside for so long. Your kind words made my er.. night. Thank you.
Here's a work I did in character study just this evening. I hope you like it.
She's huge. You may need to click her with plus/magnifying glass to see the full image.
Before I go for a bit, while I've been looking for inspiration for the May New Users Challenge on Action and Props, I revisited some of the major influences from my youth, in particular Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta. I think they are both amazing artists, but now that I've been trying to be one myself, the differences between the two are more clear to me. Not so long ago I would've looked at any group of their works and known only that I liked many of them. Now, when I look, I see the differences in lines, colors, anatomy, and action--most especially action, because I feel that it's in the portrayal of action that Frazetta truly shines. Boris' art conveys action, but so many of his images seem to be in the moment of a pause or pose. Whereas I believe his work really shines in the depiction of flesh, Frazetta's work seems more solidly to convey the moment of action. A Frazetta quote from the back of one of my art trading cards from the early nineties says, "You try to get teh ultimate action during or after... I suspect my pictures are painted at the 'during' moment; what I call the peak of action." Now that's a cool quote. His concern for the depiction of action is clear. I hope that whatever I create for this month's challenge will embrace the spirit of Frazetta's work. Now, what to do?
So, I've been looking at various ideas for the May new user challenge on action and props and decided I wanted to try creating realistic paper. I know there are various ways to achieve this, but with my past success in using a primitive plane to create a loincloth (with some minor issues), I figured that was a no-brainer. Typically, I try to reinvent the wheel, but I stumbled upon some useful information accidentally in the process of trying to remember how I did the loincloth (I know, I've documented it in this thread, but not fully). Maybe everyone is like this, but I find there is so much info to remember on various aspects of making art with these tools that if I don't use something often enough, I just cannot seem to remember it. That was part of my reason for starting this thread after @Diomede suggested the idea of documenting one's process in here. Diomede, you've been a real help to me. Thank you.
Anyway, two bits I'll share for now in my progress/process. First, I made a y-positive plane, flipped it 90 degrees on the x-axis, and applied a material I made in PaintShopPro. For the material, I entered public domain text from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein into MS Word, used Alt-PrtScrn to capture the active window, pasted the image into Paint, cropped, and saved as JPG. In PaintShopPro, I then altered the image size to widen the dimension across and make the image perfectly square so it could be applied to the basic plane primitive. After inserting the image into the surface tab in the base color map, I scaled the width of the plane to approximate the proportions of a sheet of paper. There is probably a faster, better method, but this works okay.
Second, if you're interested in doing anything with dforce and haven't already read through it, you should really check out this thread by @RGcincy. There is a ton of information in there that has been sifted already and a handy menu with links appears at the start of the thread (a pdf series is also generously being made available), but If you check this page (number 21 in the aforementioned menu), about half-way down you may find the post on dforce simulation of paper helpful.
My next step will be to try various poses and wind nodes. I'll try to post results.
Yaaaaay another Vallejo fan! I have always loved his work but now you have introduced me to a name I haven't heard of - Frank Frazetta. I'll have to take a look. I love the girl with guns above.
@themidget - Yes, definitely a Vallejo fan. I hope you find Frazetta as pleasurable as I do. And thank you very much for the kind comment. I really enjoyed doing her.
Liking the look of the new character, and that is one large picture when clicking through to full size
@themidget - if you are fan of Vallejo, I think you will also really enjoy the work of Frank Frazetta. He inspired a generation of fantasy artists and comic book artists. If Wanderer doesn't mind, I will leave a link to a review of Frank Frazetta's work here. - Frank Frazetta Fantasy Painting by ComicBookGirl, https://youtu.be/MAppGWhig_E
@Wanderer - looking forward to more of your tests. Thanks for the DForce links. Your thread is a memory resource not just for you, but for all of us as well. Thanks.
@Noswen - sorry, have been out and about... but thank you! Yeah, she is huge.
@Diomede - I don't mind at all. You're always a source of important details and information. And thank you--I decided to get back to doing what I seem to do best, running my thick skull through walls of creativity while documenting the results for the sake of myself and those who come after. I'm glad you find them helpful. Makes it definitely worthwhile to hear that.
NIce character study!
Frank Frazetta definitely influenced my love of fantasy art. Iconic totally bad a** fnatasy art lol.
Frazetta has a new fan. Frazetta's work isn't as polished as Vallejo's but it has life and activity. Both are extremely good in my opinion.
@IceDragonArt - lol... totally! I really think he deserves a lot more love than he seems to get sometimes.
@themidget - I couldn't agree more. There is a rough edge to many of Frazetta's works, but they are both great artists. Boris reminds me of the best Conan covers from my youth, while Frazetta tends to remind me more of the actual illustrations inside Savage Sword of Conan. I'm so glad to have served as the gateway for him, but still love Boris as well.
Okay, I'm posting this information here because I thought someone would find it useful and I thought it was gone forever. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, a short little tutorial that I found helpful over at the Runtime DNA forums has been preserved for now. Although I think the pictures may be gone, it describes how one might convert an Iray texture for use in Reality. Hope someone finds this helpful.
I have reality. I gave up on it in frustration with the amount of work it took to convert materials. But it sure does render well when you get it right!
I really like your character study! Sorry I'm a little late to your thread.
Trish
@IceDragonArt - I get that. I went back to check on it and remembered why I totally converted to Iray. Just interesting to compare the two now that I've got some real knowledge--albeit still limited here and there. If the shaders/materials were simply plug and go like Iray, and if I had a really powerful CPU, I might go back. But Iray is just too seductive with its speed and ease of use (well, mostly). I do like some aspects of the lighting in Reality here and there, but Iray is very versatile and I can usually get what I'm after much faster with that.
Thank you so much, Trish. Better late than never! I'm glad you like her. I'm trying to do some images with her. I may change the outfit a bit.
Okay, this is most awesome news, and I feel so goofy. My Risk of Romance was granted 3rd place in the Freebie Contest for April 2018 way back on May 6th, but I just now saw it. Talk about feeling silly. I've been waiting to find out who won, and all this time I had just overlooked the thread with the announcement. Doh!
Anyway, it was so cool to be recognized for this work. I was proud of the way it turned out. Took a fair amount of work, and it feels good to have that recognition. I'm torn about participating in the new user challenge. I've learned so much in the past few months. Clearly there is much more I need to learn, and I don't want to miss those opportunities. But, like Tynkere mentioned, sometimes it might be good to step aside to allow others to shine.
Just to document and remind myself of my progress, I'm posting this again with the news about my 3rd place spot.
Congratz! It really is a very nice image :)
Woo hoo! As an aside, you can still paricipate in the newbie contest threads, just note that you aren't going to put your finished piece in for judging. That way you will still get the benefit of the learning and interaction.
Like the gunslinger lady. She has an intriguing expression. The texture on that denim is pretty fab! Yeah, I get the struggle to deal with all the information overload. I think the key is like learning a language to just immerse yourself in it. The more you use the knowledge, the more it becomes second nature.
Soometimes it is unavoidable to forget things, but if they come around again they may stick, or naturally, they were less crucial to what you atre doing and you forget. It has to happen so the good stuff can stick! All in good time!
^__^
-Rak
@IceDragonArt - I was considering doing that, but after seeing Tynkere post his work as an NAE and not getting very much feedback at all, makes me wonder if I'd really benefit from doing that. The culture of the challenge certainly seems very different from previous months. I'm glad we have fresh blood in the mix--and some very strong artists are among them, but I do miss the old crew. I fear that the change may have intimidated some into holding back on their involvement. Bruce posted an image on I think May 11th asking for feedback, and since then, only daybird and myself have really responded in any way--and it's just now the 16th. That's the better part of a week. I don't know if I stand a chance against these new artists, but I do worry if I dropped back to NAE's they'd see no reason at all to interact with me. So, again, I'm torn. I think I do much better with active feedback and interaction.
@mori_mann - Thank you! With your skill at posing, that means a lot. I appreciate your kind remarks.
@Rakuda - Rak, your work is really good stuff. It means a lot that you have time to stop by now and then and say kind things. Thank you. Every time I hit one of these bumps--especially one where I feel I already should know something and it hasn't quite stuck, I think of your signature:
This is wisdom. Thank you for sharing.
Looking at @Mollytabby 's charming dragon render for the freebie challenge inspired me to make this. I call it:
Doom Comes with a Cuteness
"In a world of cute little ponies and precious forest critters, dragons are still dragons."
Be afraid. Be very, very afraid, for thou art tasty when toasted crunchy and dipped in ketchup.
General question to whomever might answer--and I'll put another feeler or two out there to see if I can get a fix on this. Sometimes when I'm rendering, if the light glances across the skull of a figure just right, I can clearly see the ridges of the mesh. I've search and search on Google. Answers generally weren't that helpful. So, how does one fix this while keeping the lighting just where one wants it? In other words, what fix is there for this besides moving or changing the lighting? I don't have a very good example picture I want to share right now, but can anyone give me an idea on fixing this? Do I need to increase the mesh resolution or something?
Looooove this!
@themidget - Thank you so much! I'm glad you like it. I was considering doing something similar for the freebie challenge, but then another inspiration took over that I'm working on now. I may come back to it. We'll see.
@Mollytabby mentioned that the freebie challenge is really hard, and it is. It is far harder than anything I've attempted so far because you are restricted to 5 paid items and must use at least 5 freebies. Usually incorporating freebies isn't that difficult unless you are going for a specific vision that may not match up with what's out there. The really hard part, as I believe she was implying, is doing without all the little things you get used to just using. I caught myself a couple of times, thankfully, but I managed to make an entry for this month that I'm actually happy with (well, mostly). If you haven't checked out the Freebie challenge already, you really should. This month's topic/theme is dragons--of which there are precisely two in my image. I call it
The Referee's Error
"Well, what do you know, Grymfurax, Slayer of Worlds--You did get a natural 20 on that roll. Silly me. It was good of you to ur... er... nudge me to take a second look. So, now that you have surprised the entire band of intrepid adv-insolent intruders, what are you going to do next?"
The humor of this piece relies on some tropes familiar to players of RPG's: the natural 20, perhaps best explained here, the phrase "intrepid band of adventurers," first use of which--so far as I know, appears here in 1889 (often, but not always prefaced with "When last we left our... "), and the type of player who always has to be right, even when the die roll says otherwise. To all of you, I dedicate this work. Please note: In case it isn't obvious, the die roll in the image cannot possibly be a natural 20.