Ive been fighting with the hair all day, the light set im using is making any attempts to give her black hair to match her tail come out pale blue.

Wanted to address any glaring probs and add this to my gallery. Can anyone see anything that needs to be fixed?

Thanks,

Logan

It's looking good so far. I would stand back from the monitor and look at her eyes. I can't quite decide which bird she's aiming at.

Hello nickedshield, Excellent suggestion!!! I had gone to the Top Camera view and made sure she was leading her aim on the leading crow, but I never did address her eyes. Thanks for catching that :) Logan

I think there should be a slight twist to her upper body. It looks a bit unnatural for her chest to be pointing completely left. I mean yes its possible to be in this position (I just did it in fact!) but its not really natural if you know what I mean. I probably couldn't aim at a bird with a bow and arrow comfortably. BUT don't get me wrong it looks awesome! The scenery is amazing and I love the lighting. I'm so jealous! Kelly PS. Yeah I'm new at digital art but I'm not new to art! :)

Looking good. An idea for the hair...rather than change the colors within Poser...you may want to consider taking the existing textures into Photoshop or PSP and making hue/saturation adjustments there. I do that frequently when I want a certain look and things just don't want to cooperate in Poser.

I've only one criticism - and it's nothing to do with the artistic side. Someone THAT buxom should NEVER draw a bow without some form of breast covering..bowstring whip is a REAL pain !! :) Artisticly, I'd just consider shifting the figure backwards a lil..get that right foreleg away from the tree trunk ?

OK I think ive addressed the suggestions as best I can under the circumstances:

• nickedshield, the eyes have both been moved 10 degrees to her left

• duckee, thank you for the compliment :) as to the pose, actually this is correct stance according to archery: her shoulders are in line with the path of her intended aim - as are her forelegs but I dont think theres been a precedent for proper foreleg alignment for centaurs in any of the archery manuals you may come across ;) Almost more importantly, I spent I dunno how long getting that belt dialed just right and no one here wants to see a grown man cry if I adjust her abdomen and that positioning gets blown....

• Realmling, thanks for that suggestion. I havent done this yet, but ill give it a shot. The current blonde doesnt look too bad to my eyes, but not perfect :/

• freyfaxi, I bounced around that idea quite a bit, but I ended up going with the tradional representation of the female centaur - bare breasted. I may end up giving her a bracer for her left arm. Id really like to get some kind of straps with packs. Sorta like saddlebags but without any saddle. Kind of stuff an adventuring/travelling centaur might be wearing. Ive done repositioning of the camera and characters. Im afraid I may lose the particular perspective Ive got if move the centaur too drastically, but I have gotten her right hoof out of the darkest part of the trunk.

Hows this draft look? EDIT oh yeah, and are the shadows strong enough? how is the foreground/background blending, have I avoided the painted backdrop look? Thanks again :)

Message edited on: 10/18/2004 00:41

Looks great! Did you have any problems setting up the CentaurVic file?

Greatly improved!! It should make a nice gallery post :)

Hey Hey Mr. Bomb Dropper!! The zip downloaded like lightning from bonni's link, zip is healthy and extracts fine. The readme directions were perfectly clear, and the figure set up great! The only error to note is that the Centaur Body Vic.cr2 calls on a misnamed file "drkgreyhirez tail.jpg" instead of "drkgreyhirez.jpg" which includes tail and body. Might want to edit the .cr2 thats being distributed, that search for a non-existant file can cause some P4 or PPP's to lock and crash if I understand it correctly? I have avoided crash on my PPP by selecting "drkgreyhirez.jpg" when it prompts that it cant find the tail texture file, so the current .cr2 is fully functional for me (when I close Poser ill edit the tail texture line in my .cr2).

The only other thing I noted was that I had to play with vicki 2's scaling, she was slimmer than the "socket" in the lower neck she is to blend into. Notice the slight gaps? I fixed that by a combination of scaling vicki 2 and using the wide belt you included with your character. As long as I didnt conform it, and just positioned, scaled and parented it, it worked perfectly and rendered beautifully! Thanks for a wonderful character! Logan

Anyone see any last tweaks this needs?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Yes&Artist=logansfury

I probably got here a bit late for this thread but I was curious why both hind legs aren't firmly planted on the ground? The horse body seems awkward and unstable and would definately not be rearing up like that especially if the Centauress head needed to set up a difficult shot like Bird kill with a bow. I would have liked to see an alternate image with both legs firmly planted and the body slightly twisted toward the birds giving the image the feel of a sudden turn and shoot action. Would also help that awkward twisting of the human body parts. The image is nice but it was just a thought!

Wow my ebot for this got buried unopened in a slew of opened mails :( Hello shante, What I had in mind while I was doing this was that the crows were flying a weaving path while being pursued by the centauress, and were suddenly winging up towards a break in the forest canopy to try to escape to the open sky. The centauress, in mid gallop, has done a rear as a startled check of speed and as kind of an involuntary tracking motion reaction to the birds action of beginning to ascend. Now that I look at it again, I wonder if the attempt to hint at the previous full gallop has created what looks like a funky unbalanced pose? Perhaps the body pose could be salvaged with a more dynamic tail pose? I could also try the second hoof down, but im afraid that may make her look to static. Thanks for the extra set of eyes :) Logan

It would mean doing a bit of repositioning and believe me I know what a hassle that is...been working with a similar image using Lisha PT and a modified P4 horse/Unicorn character which has a smaller neck area for better fitting to the female hip. In your image, the body of the centauress has to move as if it were one. So if it is coming out of a gallop and stopping abruptly to turn and shoot it would turn as a horse would turn...at the horse waist and neck as well as at the waist and shoulders of the human body parts. I think it would be hugely more dynamic and realistic if both bodies are into that stop/slide/turn and set up for the shoot instead of the way it is. The two bodies seem to be working aganist each other instead of together.The horse body seems off center and unballanced and she seems too stiff for a creature used to the bow and setting up "off the hip" shots. Don't know if you have ever shot a bow but it is a bit more difficult than it appears in the movies and this kind of "off balance" would not get her the bird! I would have to agree with the concern for a breast guard especially with the position of the release hand. Should be up at the jaw line for proper alignment. Also your idea of adding a forearm guard is a dire one. Bow string and fletching when released are a mean pain when whipped agains the forearm. I like either the blonde hair or the black but one little thing you may consider...the horse has a black tail and black socks so I would have given her black hair to match and contrast the skin tones of horse and woman parts. I repeat it is a nice image but just my two and a half cents worth! :)

Hello there,

Yep id shot standard (non-compound) bows for years as a kid, and still own several working crossbows :)

Actually proper bowmanship was a big concern in this render. I went into it with the following assumptions for the character:

As a centaur, she would have little to no ability to rotate her human hips/waist. probably much less than 45 degrees

As most fantasy renders involve healthy chested female creatures, She would have no choice as a warrior but to adapt the weapons of the time to her build. I was always taught as a right handed male individual (from school P.E. teachers, and bow enthusiasts, but never liscensed professional instruction) to stand exactly 90 degrees to my target, left side forward, feet in line pointed directly at target, string drawn to right ear, and to sight along the length of the arrow shaft. Obviously a full breated woman couldnt do this without shearing off a breast! In a top view of this render, she has her left arm a few degrees off instead of in a straight angle off her shoulder, and her right hand holds the string a bit away from the chest, with the bow angled. Obviously this is an unaimed shot, Ive assumed shes spent her life developing a "point shooting" technique for targets to her flank where she learned which pre determined distance that her arrow would intersect with at center from her custom bowgrip, and learning how to adjust it for shorter or longer shots.

Assuming her lack of twist at the waist, I had the idea that as she was pursuing them from behind, her bow was directly to her 12:00, and when the birds abruptly winged up and to the left, she followed her target by turning her neck and shoulders, moving the bow about 90 degrees to her left, to her 9:00, and also going from a horizontal to a verticle bow position, which would have been an emulation of the "human stance" as far as her shoulders and forlegs aligned to the shot. My idea is that when she is galloping and targetting anything right in front of her, her shoulders are squared to her target, not in line with them, and the bow is possibly held horizontally rather than vertically and nock drawn to just below her eye.

A lot of the ideas for her bow handling came from an old marvel Conan story where he met an amazon that was such a dedicated warrior, that she hacked off her own left breast to be able to shot "properly". I really didnt want to edit the uh....superstructure of this model that drastically, so I used top view to set an angle where the arrow was going to intersect that bird (gave a few feet of lead as the target was in motion).

As far as the hair, I really wanted to give her black hair for exactly the reasons you mentioned, but it tended to get lost in the branches behind her and the beautiful roar hair pose became impossible to appreciate. I went for a blond that seemed to be similar to the golden/tan of her main coat.

Does any of this sound logical or am I totally graspin at straws here?

Logan

No actually I am impressed. You definately seem to have done some serious research in setting this up. Kudos. As I said several times above it looks good. I always seem to try and play Devils Advocate when I see work by artists who ask for imput as to how other artists/Viewers would try and make this better. I just saw it as a bit rigid still and threw some ideas as to what I may have done to "loosen her up a bit". That's all. No straws here friend...just nice images and a reason for being! Thanks for shareing it! More Please! LOL :)

I'm no archer. but that right=hand location just looks wrong. It's not anchored to anything, wafting around in mid-air. Probably she'd draw to her lips, rather than the ear/jaw reference associated with the English. Which also eases the bow-string problem a little. That looks a shorter bow too. The centaur myth is from the Greeks, and probably reflects some partial knowledge of the horsemen of the asian steppe, so a shorter bow of composite construction would be correct. And not the English lock -- they used a thumb ring. And, yes, I had problems posing Vicky 3 with Diviner's longbow. But the ancients didn't have to struggle with the silicone factor.

Good Morning, Im still willing to play with this render a bit, I never discard .pz3's :) Ive dont think ive ever been completely happy with the tail as I left it, so I think I may make the tail invisible and try a first use experiment of the horsefeathers 7 posable tail to make her look a little less like a heraldic device ;) Antonia, very interesting archery facts!! I think youve just encouraged me to google around a bit for some history of archery pages and check out different cultures uses and adaptions of bows....... Thanks for the extra eyes :) Logan

The bow used I think is fine. It may be a bit longer than the recurved bone bows of the Steppe Horsemen but it is not a long bow either. It is recurved and therefore appropriate for something out of Greek myth. The use of the bow from a horse is another matter. The stance of 90 degrees to the tareget is fine for archery practice or using a long bow for distance shooting but using a recurve off a moving horse...even if in a way you are the horse!....takes another kind of consideration.. That is why the character seems stiff. Wrong stance for the situation. I still think the horse's rear legs need to be firmly planted on the ground to justify the rearing action. In addition it would be better for the dynamics of the body of the horse were more twisted toward the prey bringing into a better position the human body for the shot. The human body can also be slightly twisted at abdomen/chest and shoulders to add a continuum to the horses left body twist and perhaps a slight forward bend as well. I have seen renders of riders of the steppe shooting their bows from horseback and there was much bending and twisting of the body into less stiff and awkward seeming poses. Motion and position change of the prey demands quick response w/follow through of the body positioning on the fly...or in this case....on the hoof. I think that is the dynamic missing from this image. I don't think you need to research more archery and bow use poses as much as you may consider researching horseback battle stances.

The hand-axe may be too short a weapon. Historically, horsemen tended to use longer single-handed weapons than infantry. And, if you're close enough to an enemy that the rearing isn't a display move, I think you need to consider where the enemy is and what he's doing to get that reaction. Unless he's getting a faceful of forehoof, that doesn't look like a fighting pose. (Speaking of horsemen, have you noticed that trick Karl Urban pulls off during the first charge of the Rohirrim?)

You are right in some cases about the short ax. However the weapon choice was always dependant on the warrior, cultural input, size and the period of enactment. What period of enactment is the centauress from? She is female and a fairly petite one. How realistic would she look weilding an enormous great sword or a overlarge battle ax? Actuall the ax she has in hand is a horseman belt ax and was used in periods for horse mount calvary to calvary close battle formation. Spears were used to attack infantry defenses/offensives therefore had to be long. Arab and Steppe Horsemen used shorter weapons than say Medieval knights. They were smaller in stature and actually rode "Steppe Ponies or Arabians into battle (which were MUCH smaller than European War Horses) so by the same token , their swords and spears and bows and mauls and axes were shorter and their sheilds smaller as well. However wrong about the horse pose. War horses historically did in fact bite and kick in open battle (especially the Medieval Destriers). Some were so fierce and well trained and disciplined they would attack the foot and infantry on their own when the rider was unsaddled and all would not let another rider mount other then their known knights. Horses rear when excited or frightened or in a case like this, attacked. They also rear to defend and attack. If you notice the fore legs and fetlocks of my character there are shin guards and spike rings in place for just such use. Though a character study and a WIP, In the final render the character is going to be placed in a situation whereby she will be battling one giant character and/or horse mounted enemy amongst some ruins. The creature is supposed to be fierce and therefore defends herself with all she has at her disposal including hooves.