I decided it was time to come up with a new render to use as my avatar on sites.
miika's new avatar - June 2010
Rendered in Poser, postwork in Photoshop.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Sometimes my writing and my artwork will combine, one will drive the other. The render below is one of those cases, it’s a “snapshot” from a story that was going through my head at the time.
Writing the words to the story proved to be much harder than rendering this portion of the story, so I’ve posted the image for now while I refine the writing, which I’ll add once it’s done.
Warning: This image is absolutely NOT safe for work. You’ve been warned. » Continue Reading…
Popularity: 3% [?]
The Red Witch hasn’t had nearly enough attention paid to her, so I was glad to oblige her with a new render.
I’m not so sure she appreciates her “helper” though.
Inspired by 5 cats all deciding to hide under my desk during the recent thunderstorms.
They were about as helpful too 
You are NOT helping!
Rendered in Poser then heavily postworked in Photoshop.
Popularity: 3% [?]
I was between tasks and wandering YouTube when I came across Lita Ford’s song and music video “Close My Eyes Forever”, which gave me the idea to kick out a new vampire-themed render that continues a similar theme as the “Promise” series.
Vampires are one of those concepts that sit on the edge between darkness and light so perfectly – they’re dangerous, killers, but their eroticism and attraction is undeniable. As such, they’re fun to depict in artwork in the same way that I take Giger-esque aliens and put them in ambiguous scenes.
Like the “Promise” series images, I’ll write a short accompanying story fragment to go with the pic and put it up on my main web site.
Take a look and decide for yourself – is the victim willing, resigned, or … ?
This might sting a little ...
Created in Poser, postwork using Photoshop and Picasa.
Popularity: 4% [?]
… all it takes is a good scritch behind one ear and he’s putty in your hands!
I’m just amazed no-one’s ever thought of this way to deal with werewolves (or other lycanthropes for that matter).
Of course, there’s a few technical details to work out with the technique – such as how to get within range to scritch to begin with. I’m thinking a good chunk of steak, myself.
To soothe the savage beast
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Popularity: 3% [?]
Ken St Andre asked for another image for one of his Tunnels and Trolls adventures, I was glad to oblige.
I Bet You Wish ...
Entire image rendered in-camera using Vue, text added in postwork.
Popularity: 3% [?]
DC ParaTransit Info is a site that monitors and reports on transportation facilities for people with disabilities in the Metro DC area.
After a recent site design, a new avatar was needed for their Twitter account, as well as for use with Gravatars and other media.
Given the subject matter, I decided to create a Steampunk-based image to use as the base for the avatar(s), with a combination of railroad and road imagery. For larger image use, I included a city skyline, with mist atmosphere so the distant objects would degrade softly into obscurity at lower image sizes.
DC ParaTransit Info Avatar
Steampunk engine is the SGM Explorer, originally setup in Poser then imported into Vue. Atmosphere, mist, roadbed, and city skyline all done within Vue.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Eudemonia has a novel punishment for non-violent criminals – Banishment.
Those who choose this way of shortening their sentences are shunned from society, encased in a second skin of flexible black rubber, sealed for the duration behind a steel helmet, all of it controlled by their Custodian – a neural AI connected directly into their very brains that monitors their every thought and punishes for the slightest infraction.
The citizens call these outcasts Banes, their banesuit becomes their prison, their Custodian the Warden. Unable to communicate with the outside world, all senses muted, incapable of even feeling their surroundings, banes are a common sight on the streets as they watch a world go by that they can no longer participate in – ignored by most, cruelly persecuted by a sadistic few “bane-bashers”.
Katrina Nichols is a young reporter determined to expose the cruelty of the Banishment Project, and embarks on a journey into banishment to discover the truth about the Banes – but they have a secret of their own they want to keep hidden from the society that cast them out.
Katrina’s path takes her closer to discovering the truth the banes are hiding, a mystery that could lead to her liberation – or her destruction.
Katrina/WInter's Isle
One of my more technically challenging renders. I don’t really classify this as a combination render of Poser and Vue – it does use the base Victoria 4 figure from Poser, but the only time it saw the inside of poser was for … well, posing.
Once it was imported into Vue, I went to work on texturizing it with a black latex material. A lot of node editing later, and I finally found the right balance to give it the shiny and ultra-reflective black latex feel I wanted to bring across from the story.
I wanted to recreate the island Katrina calls home in the story, the snowy ground (and the title) being a play on a major arc within the story. Trying to get it to look right on the screen wasn’t as easy, but I had perfect reference material for snowy ground and trees just by looking outside my window at the remains of the snowstorms at the start of the month!
To wrap it all up, I added a second plane of procedurally-generated city blocks behind the camera so they’d show in the reflections on the banesuit, and threw in some basic global radiosity atmosphere for the lighting, dark clouds to go with the feel of it snowing can just be seen above the city skyline in the distance, and reflected on the helmet.
Postwork needed was minimal, and was done using Photoshop.
Popularity: 5% [?]
When this render came into mind, I’d been doing various doodles for a few days but none of them was really grabbing my attention. I knew I wanted to get back to the more fantasy-oriented themes and start building more tagging packs, but the question was, with what?
So instead of starting yet another doodle, it was off to Picasa to see what other doodles I’ve started but never quite clicked in the past, and this one sprang out at me. It was originally for the Red Witch series, but it never really looked quite right – her established armor/clothing and tattoos never fit the concept I had in mind for the image.
I recently added new skin textures to my collection though, and one in particular seemed to go perfectly with it. The combination of such thick tattoos plus sparkling body jewels brought the image more into life.
I changed the original’s contents of the goblet from liquid to a sparkling powder-like substance, generating the initial flow in-camera. As much as I tried to change the camera angles, I wasn’t able to completely cover all the genitalia, and so had to break the idea a little by adding a thong, but the upper body coverage worked perfectly. A different hairstyle rounded off the image.
This took a lot more passes than I usually make for a render to take into Photoshop for postwork. In addition to the color, ambient occlusion, shadow, and displacement passes of the past, I needed to break the image down into several alpha mats. These were needed for the additional effects I knew would be needed to add kick to the result.
The hair was made less “artificial looking”, and the sparkles in the air separate from the golden ones falling from the goblet were added using brushes. Some tidying up was needed for the overlaps between various layers as well.
The title and signature feather were added inside Photoshop as well, then the whole thing was saved and taken into Picasa for the watermark. All told, this image took the whole day to produce, but the results seem worth it!
That Hit The Spot
Popularity: 3% [?]
