Moonwolf’s Graphics Lair

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.

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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…

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A little something to stimulate the mind …

Edumacashun

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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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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

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I decided it was time for a new avatar for my social media presences – Facebook and Twitter at least.

I still wanted to keep to my favourite themes, primarily tattoos and redheads.  Normally I render images of me with braided or dreadlocked hair, but I wanted to continue the theme I explored with “A New Look“.

The extreme short redhaired bob has its own stark yet sharp appearance, as the Red Witch series proved, and it’s kind of interesting to change my “look” so radically.

Avatar alpha

I liked this first version, but after uploading it into Twitter, I decided that it was too dark to be able to display properly in the Twitter thumbnails.  So I went back to it and zoomed in on the head alone.  The end result looks much nicer at the small resolution Twitter (and others such as Microsoft Live! and Yahoo) use.

Avatar bravo

Rendered in Poser, postwork done in Photoshop.

Popularity: 3% [?]

(Originally posted on my personal blog)

Another render of some of the characters from Yasmine Galenorn’s Otherworld series of novels.  This time it’s of Delilah, another of the D’Artigo sisters.

Delilah’s kind of complicated. Like her sisters, she’s half-fae/half-human – but she’s also a were-cat.

Now most people hear “were-cat” and they immediately think “Oh, were-lion” or similar, but no – Delilah’s shape-shifted form is … a tabby cat.

*Waits for the snickers to die down*

That all changed in the past though, when Delilah was volunteered to be one of the Autumn Lord’s Death Maidens (and, the only living one at that!). Delilah acquired a second form in the process – A were-puma.

All those who snickered, please wait, I’m sure you’ll get harvested soon enough

However to add a new twist, Delilah’s discovered that she’s not exactly alone – she had a twin sister, Ariel, who died at birth, but has been watching over her “all her life” and now appears to her in the form of a leopard.

Yeesh, just when you thought your life was getting complicated, you get snagged by an Elemental Lord and discover you have a twin you never knew!

So, it only stood to reason that they should have a picture together.

Delilah and Ariel

Rendered in Poser, postwork done in Photoshop.

Menolly, Delilah, Ariel, Camille, Otherworld, OIA, and everything to do with the series are copyright Yasmine Galenorn. The image copyright is mine. Stealing her words, or my art, is theft whichever way you look at it – just remember karma is a cast iron bitch.

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The next image in the Gleaming Graphite series – Graphite Angel.

This one has much more postwork added than usual, mostly to clean up the wings.

Staged and rendered in Poser, postwork in Photoshop

Graphite Angel

Again, do people think the Gleaming Graphite series qualifies as “naked”?  Let me know what you think!

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