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.
Eudemonia and Banes are copyright © 2007/2008 Evil Dolly, the original story can be read here (Warning: Story contains adult situations)
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