Attached Link: http://apocx.hypermart.net/art/

Heya well I was (for some god-unknown reason) thinking about how a vampire would act in modern society, how it would act, conceal itself, hunt etc. which caused me to make a rendering of what I thought a modern day vampire would look like. In that picture, he was crouched near a wall with a spotlight on him (so I could throw a shadow on the wall) as if he is being hunted so I made this as a sister-image, the vampire hunter himself I don't know if it's a "good" rendering or not, the posing is clumsy and I haven't done much to it, almost everything comes in the post work But there is something that appeals to me about a simple picture, no fancy backgrounds or anything Anyway, I'd love to hear your opinions if you would be so kind =) credits: Trenchcoat was made posable by gsalas, from the posable trenchcoatman which was made by.....can't remember....someone great and famous, please tell me if you remember and the gun came from one of ghosts models (I think) OKOK! so I'm not that great at remembering credits! sheeesh.... SewerRat

oh yeah, and I'd also like to know what people think about the stylised explosion instead of a more "realistic" firing of the gun =) SewerRat

I think the pic has merit. The body looks as if the gun has some serious recoil and the slight blur of the weapon arm adds to the illusion of movement. The only thing I am not fond of is the hair, it looks a little pale and washed out in the highlight. I am very interested in learning how you did the explosion (very nice!). Elfsong

I like the stylized muzzel-flash. Where's the vampire image? JKeller made Trenchcoat man. -JH.

heya; i think it looks good. i kinda think the front of the figure is too harshly-lit, though. unless he's in the spotlight beam, now. (and yeah, post the vampire, too. ;) )

JKELLER! How could I forget? JKeller man, you rock...he's helped me out with a few other problems over time, always friendly =) I made a point of harshly lighting the figure, both to get the shadows happening, and to make the explosion look larger and more explosive...but yes, it was more a trick than what would happen in a "real life" situation the hair could be fixed up I guess, I didn't really think of it as a problem, maybe my eye isn't drawn to it as much - how do you suggest fixing it? just adding more colour so it doesn't look washed-out, or properly drawing in new hair? as for the vampire image, I didn't bother posting it because I didn't think it's that exciting. Yes, the layout of this image is inspired by the movie "The Shadow" (hope this accepts HTML) SewerRat

ok...this is going to be more than a few images, so I might spread it between a few messages.... First off, I (obviously) started with making the figure and gun, putting a spotlight on him from where the explosion would be (I told the spotlight to point at his body, then moved it to the tip of the explosion, and turned up the ending angle and intensity) I had an "explosion" object parented to the end of the gun the particle blast by Akisiel at props guild - http://www.gwz.org/propsguild/files/fxprops/ actually, I had two, one smaller than the other, with the larger one having a red ambience and the smaller one a white ambience....this creates a glowing centre to the explosion so after the render and some touching up to the figure I had this

I then fired up paint shop pro (free trial - download from www.tucows.com) and used the soften tool, with a wide brush, to soften the whole explosion Which I kinda like, and could be an end in itself...alas no the smudge tool in psp, starting at the end of the explosion, then smudging horns in alternating directions, moving backwards, makes the gun "blast" this image was then copied, the new image had a motion blur added, then was pasted over the old one in a new layer. The parts that I didn't want blurred (i.e. the whole image barring the gun and arm) were then cut from the layer letting the original show through.

A new layer was then created over this, onto which I drew (with a white pen) a bullet shape, then selected grey as the foreground colour and hot wax coated it that causes the edges to become smoothed and 3d-looking while filling the rest with flat grey I drew a white line down that (for the glem) and hotwaxed it again then I smudged it a little for the motion effect. I then got the spraycan tool, chose a low density and drew a trail, made the brush smaller and drew a longer tail, made it smaller again, so I had a diminishing green tail. Sorry, I didn't keep any copies while I was making the bullet. Honesly, they didn't look very exciting. Then I smudged this green, so it would only be a subtle blur And I had the explosion, totally improvised on the spot, so please don't ask me how to make a "real" explosion, 'cause I'd be at a loss (thanks to JeffH for pointing out one of my posts wasn't working grin) SewerRat

heya; cool, sewer! but.... well, the flash from the muzzle isnt as bright as the light on the guy. you can play with this if you lasso select loosely around the muzzle burst (over a wide area around it, except tighter near the gun), feather that, then crank up the brightness. this is how i do pictures of flames. now from the way you described it, i thought the vampire one would be very bright, with a strong dark shadow, but it is more subtle. i like it. (oh, and is that a 'bullet' the guy is shooting, or a high-velocity small wooden spike? ;) )

Thanks Allerleirauh =) bloodsong: hmm, yeah, I guess I could lighten the explosion, although it would probably lose something if I tried that, methinks it'd be better if I made it brighter before I started drawing it in. Then again, I don't think this image is nearly exciting enough to waste the effort on fixing up that =) I'll just keep it in mind for my next picture grin as for a bullet or spike...shrug I guess thats up to your imagination. When I drew it I was picturing some sort of explosive ammo, so that even if the vampire doesn't get staked in his heart, he'll still be in multiple pieces but shrug I'm not an expert on destroying vampires, so a spike it can be =) hmmm... www.sluggy.com - an online comic, has a vampire hunting storyline, where the character builds a chaingun that fires hundreds of stakes a second....methinks I should equip him with one of those (oh, and check out the comic, it rocks) SewerRat

heya; cool, thanks sewer!

Hey Great Vampire but it would be cool if you didn't see his shadow "you'll never se my shade at noon but you'll only see me walking by the light of the moon." close shadow yes body no .. Buy the way I cant seam toget JKeller to give me permision to use the trenchcoat man and would really like to play w/ it can you help a guy out? zman11 borgz@gateway.net

whoa! digging for old posts are we? I don't think this is the trenchcoat man, it's the conformable trenchcoat from jkeller, but gsalas made is posable. So since it's still his model I guess his permission sticks, although the model itself was given free to distribute (if I remember right) it was in the funstuff under gsalas I believe, not sure if it's still there but I don't see why it wouldn't be SewerRat