"Development of an idea"
Welcome to my homepage,
I suppose I'd better explain a little about the title and myself. Well I've been a Poser artist for a number of years, since Poser 4 came out (although I'm using Daz studio now), as well as dabbling 3Ds max, Cinema 4D, and originally truespace and Amapi 3D. A few years ago I began to realise that I kept making 3D renders on random subjects and ideas but no overall theme.
Therefore I chosea theme and as I am an avid Comic Book fan I chose to create X-men in poser, the intention being to produce a poser fan fiction comic. However as soon as I created the X-men heroes I soon deicovred I was not all that keen on creating villains, which kind of thorws a big spanner into the works to begin with as far as a comic goes. Then I discovred a slightly more irritating thing on the internet relating to fan fiction and that was people can get so darned picky!
Back to the drawing board I went! This time I came up with a more orignal concept, I use the term orignal loosely as pretty much most Sci-Fi/Fantasy ideas is drawn on older ideas! Well in Sci-fi I always liked character that could turn themselves into animals and back again (Mia from space 1999 or the short run TV show Manimal), so that was one idea I wanted to include. The toher idea I always like was wizards and warlocks etc, whther it be the ladies form Charmed or even Harry Potter! And from those two ideas I created what was going to be a comic called "Destinies Linked" a bit of a tale of two planets, one would have animal changing being and people with magic like powers and the other planet would have oridinary humans with avanced technology.
Sufficed to say the use of space sci-fi and fantasy elements started to look a little like too much of a good thing is a bad thing, so the second planet was dropped! Now I was left with just one fantasy world called Felmor (a name I coined up out of the top of my head wne I was bored!) I took the chracters I'd created so far and added history and reduced the range so that the animal changers could only change into one animal type and the witches/wizards had only one "power" (a bit similar to Marvel mutants only having one ability) . The former became the Nomax and the latter the Mekkats and the Ranger Chronicles were born.
Because I use a lot of Daz 3D stuff I had to modify each race of Nomax so that they could be done using off the shelf products, that's why some keep a humanoid shape and others are full form and others are distincly half human half animal making use of mythology products available. People with find it no suprise that my horse Nomax look suprisingly like Centaurs, and my aquatic Nomax look like Mermaind and Mermen! The mekkats were somewhat easier as they are simply "human" but I tried to give them a standard sort of dress code.
With the races in place, the next step was trying to work out how everyone got along. I liked the idea of the Nomax living in tribes but it seemd a little primitive so I came up with the High Council where tribes would have representatives. My attention then turned to the Mekkats. I already decided I did not want them like Marvel's mutants who are hated but rather the average person vlaued them because of thier incredible gifts so Mekkats became more like nomadic travellers going from place to place helping Nomax tribes. Of course there would be good and bad Nomax and Mekkats so I introduced the Aramel Gaurd as the world police/army and I had nearly finished my world!
The final stage was trying to find a way of getting an ensemble group of heroes together. I took the idea I had for Mekkats and came up with a group of people that travelled around helping others but it did not seem very exciting so I gave them some law enforcement powers making them sort of amateur police and the Rangers were born. Though a fan of JMS and Babylon 5 my usage of the Rangers came from those that patrol forest and national parks etc.
Strange to say with everything done I scrapped the comic! Do you guys realise how long it takes to render a frame and then there's 8 or 9 on a page! Instead I started writing it as a story which I got bored with 120 (word doc) pages later. Taking a break I restarted and finally in 2006 I got it done. I was considering self publishing but that is a helluva gamble especially if you've rote a load of s***e so I put it up for free at Booksie.com.
Having still got ally my characters in poser I therefore create scenes from that novel as well as other ideas from my unique universe for all to see here, and that is how the Ranger Chronicles came about.
Hope you like the Gallery
Thanks for looking
Steve C
Comments (5)
snowballer
love the composition but should the street lights have a yellow or red tinge to them?
Scoopey
Probably but it's one of my older pieces that I've put here for the first time and by old I'm talking about 3 years old!
J5ive
cool night Image!! Nice Work!!
JohnnyM
Excellent work! For being one of your oldest pieces of work, the render still looks very fresh and up to date. Night scenes are often difficult to do right... but you did very well, lighting this city scene! Great attention to details is clearly visible! Very well done!
Scoopey
I do confess that the light cones are photoshop postwork. There were Poser spotlights above on the streetlights to give the correct lighting but at the time I felt having the cones added an extra sense of atmosphere. I was able to use the lessons learned here in a later piece (The Verminator)whcih also had a night time scene.