I consider myself more of an artisan than an artist. When I make something, function and ease of use are as important as appearance. I see my skills as laying closer to the decorative arts than the fine arts.
My product range focuses on EasyPose, an ERC based posing system I invented to make it easy to pose long, thin, flexible figures such as tentacles and chains.BIOMy Background:
I'm an Australian mathematician with some amateur skills in programming. I love working with my hands and I've been making things since I was old enough to pick up a pair of scissors and some cardboard. I've worked a lot with silver, leather and wood among other materials. I've even done some sewing and embroidery.
How EasyPose was invented:
I bought Poser because it looked like a good way to make 2D animated sprites for a little computer game I wanted to write, but once I started to see what Poser could do, I lost interest in the game and started making pictures.
As a newbie I spent a lot of time downloading free stuff. I have a very slow dialup connection so while the free stuff was downloading, I passed the time reading tutorials. One day I read Nerd's ERC tutorial and if I'd been in a comic, you would have seen a light bulb flash on above my head. The idea behind EasyPose is really pretty simple and it came into my head complete and ready to go. I "just" had to check whether ERC would really do what I needed it to. The devil was in the detail.
At exactly the same time Beyond Bent had a competition running where you could win one of Davo's CDs, which I desperately wanted to do. The theme was "tentacle attack" and a tentacle seemed like a great figure to try out my posing system, so I had the idea and the motivation both at the same time. I spent two weeks of very, very late nights getting the first, short, clunky EasyPose figure to work and used it to make a picture which took first place in the competition. That was the start of EasyPose and also the start of a very productive friendship with Davo.
That was March 2001. There were a lot of problems with the EasyPose prototype and it took about four months before the first EasyPose figure was ready to be released. I estimate something like 600 hours went into bringing EasyPose to the stage where I could make the tentacle I sell today.
It has been a lot of work, but it has been well worth it to see the reactions from people the first time they use one of my figures. I get a real buzz out of that and I still sometimes get that same feeling of wonder when I use the figures myself.
Comments (13)
Sybil
Very inventive!
draculaz
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! Your Gurney Halleck looks nothing like Patrick Stewart! :P Great job though :)
fredoman
Nice work, Ajax. Doesn't look like Paul has much of a chance now. But I guess his turn will someday come...
terencecooper
Patrick Stewart?!! YUK! the damn movie SUCKS!!! I don't think it ever came close to Frank Herbert's original vision, how unfortunate....
Anyways, the scene is ok. Better lighting could be used in the background though. The renderer and lighting system in Poser is really poor compared to what the market currently offers but if you turned out the infinite lights and introduced spotlights to render the entire scene probably David Lynch would be envious. Anyways, if I recall, the duel scene above is from Paul's study (according to the book). Maybe a smaller set would tighten things up. Nice effort though, okay then I'm off to feed my pet Shai-Hulud :P
Ya Hya Chouhada!!
Buddha32
Well I like it... and I thought of the book, not the film when looking at your picture. Awesome work on the shields! And tell terrencecooper that, bad as the movie was (compared to the novel) - the screenplay was written by Frank Herbert. He knew what he was doing, read the introduction to his short story collection "Eye."
neoken1
Good work! Very nice interpetation of the training scene.
Stapler
Great scene here. Paul's dagger seems like it needs a bit of post work, however... Am I the only Lynch nut here or what? Off to find an ear in a field now...
SergeantJack
I have to disagree with certain earlier comments: although the movie wasn't true to the book, it was still a masterpiece in itself, and your picture does it great justice. Excellent work!
scifiguy
Very clever! A great scene regardless of which version inspired it (book/movie/mini-series...all good for me!), and not something I would have thought could be done in Poser without heavy post work. Better contrast to give the background more depth would be good.
DemonMage
Dam good job. Looks like a hybrid between book and movie. Shield from movie, scene from book. Remember people Paul was only fifteen in the book. That means he was a KID, Child, young person, TINY, take your pick. So in other words, the scene is perfect, I know I just reread it two days ago.
ms-3Dstudio
Interesting work! Good composition!
KingNot
Awesome work! I didn't like Dune much as a kid, though my Dad did. Now I am reading the novels and like it a lot.
technogeek
This image was meant to be based on the 1984 movie with Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides and Patrick Stewart as Gurney Halleck. The movie also had the weirding modules that allowed a person to amplified their voices for combat. Though they were not mentioned in the book.