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That's awesome! Its interesting, because I rarely go into a scene with a really good idea of what I am going to do. I usually have a vague idea and once I start working on it, it kind of evolves as I go.
Sooooo.... Looks like it has been two years by now, almost 2.5. A lot has happened since then, for starters I just finished my PhD thesis. And sold like a hundred book covers, main reason why I stopped doing art for myself - payed art. I can show some of it, if anyone is interested. I learned how to fix a lot of stuff in PS as well.
The main reason I'm checkin in - I got a notification my shop at DAZ might close due to inactivity. No products in 3 years. I've sent them a message asking for extension, and one can always re-apply as PA with a new product, but not sure how that will go. So if you always wanted the elevator - here's your chance to get it, and a heads up it might go dark for some time.
I do have a metro station laying around that was "almost finished" for the same two years now. Anyone interested to beta-test it if I come around to it? It won't have 3DL materials (Kettu is busy at the moment, with corona and all), but should be set for a similar set of glowy-and-white textures as my Elevator.
Welcome back! I'd love to see some of your art and process. I love messing around in photoshop using Daz renders.
I wanna see the book covers! Don't be humble about it!
Ok then. Book covers. Part 1.
So here the story was about a dragon finding his soulmate through a complicated ritual. In the story there was dragon-son looking to marry, dragon-father-king organizing the process and the dragon-priest regulating the ritual. The ritual would create a guiding spot on a magical map and lead the dragons to an abandoned village.
I started out just with the dragons, two crystal ones and one blue one. I also played a bit with the morphs, to make the king look older and musclier, compared to the younger prince. The priest was supposed to be sneaky and thin.
Played a bit with the camera angle, added some grass and the village in the back.
Realized it's way too dark and gloomy and changed the textures to the classical red from the Pro Pack.
I had to keep in mind, that one should see clearly all three of the dragons, but I need to induce atmospheric perspective in PS later. For those of you not familiar with the term: it's a way to create depth in a picture by coloring everything in the front in darker and reddish colors, and make everything in the back blue-ish and light. Already masters before Leanardo da Vinci used it.
So in the end I settled for the white color for the faraway priest-dragon, to make sure it's easy to recolor and looks like faraway compared to the other two.
Now, after settling the colors, I rendered three parts separately: the front, the middle and the back. Additionally I rendered out an old scroll and some glowing pentagrams all over it, to create the "magical map".
Step 1 in PS: Combine all the layers as needed and add the sky (I took a photograph of my own) and add the grass (again a photograph I added at the bottom to make it look more realistic). You can blend the grass by making a fuzzy selection. Select the needed region, right click, select Feather and something lik 50-100 px would give you smooth transition from photo to render. If the color is too different, you can use Hue/Saturation to tune the color of the grass in the photo to match.
Step 2: Create blue layers, light blue hue, and set it to about 20-60% (depends on your picture). The idea is to use different amounts of blue for the background, middle and foreground. To make sure you only get the needed region you can use layer masks and gradients. A gradient allows you to let the blue creep over the distance, for example here it's going from top to bottom, with a lot of blue at the top (faraway) and less blue at the bottom (closer region). A layer mask allows you to only exercise a layer effect (like the blue color) to the needed region. So say, I want to make just the dragon blue, I can select the dragon only (click and then invert selection) and then in the mask delete everything else. Now my layer will only be in the dragon region. And if needed one can erase and correct with the white brush on the mask, to make sure the edges are proper. Advantage? You're not actually erasing the layer and you can always turn the mask on and off.
Step 3: Draw some light and shadows on the dragons and on the map. I cutout the rendered pentagrams, added some light to it and some fancy magic using Ron's Angel Magic. Now in this step it's important to imagine where the light source is and start to enlighten and darken area's accordingly. I use Soft Light with some light yellow tone to illuminate on a separate layer and some dark tone from the picture (here it's dark green) in Overlay mode. I've also darkened the bottom of the picture with an overlay black gradient layer, since it would enhance the atmospheric perspective. Stuff in front should be darker.
Step 4: Since we have a blue sky, blue reflections should happen on the dragons from the sky. To add them I used very light blue in soft mode on the top wing of father-dragon. There should also be some shine-through in the other wing. Added that with an overlay reddish layer.
It's still in my wishlist, but the product link is no longer active.
Well, looks like it finally happened. The original answer was that they cannot extend my PA status, and I should just finish the product once I have it, by re-applying for PA status. But when the shop still wasn't closed a month later (when a lot has changed in my available time mostly due to a new job, corona and home situation), I asked them again, and the answer was a bit unclear. Either they were waiting on my promised new product after all, or not...
Anyhow, despite my best efforts, I still haven't packed my Metro for beta-testing. Bugs, more bugs, then stuck with trying rigging a door for a train. And my job also eating a big chunk of my time. Due to corona I took a job with about 4h traveling per day, nobody closer to home hired. So there's that. I guess it's just plain fair they closed it after half a year of waiting for me, I wasn't even near close to deliviring on my promise to have it ready and beta-tested.
My forum status now reads just Member and Publishing member. No idea what the last one means. Lost access to PA forums and PC+ forums, but the discount is still there somehow. Maybe just for a couple of days.