Cold Steel by theSea
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Description
Hi!
"Cold Steel" is a simple genre piece that got started with me playing around with Phoenix1966's clothing fits for GND2 and went on to become a fun piece with a lot of painted postwork. This all comes of taking DayQuil and sitting in front of the computer with a head cold, really.
Production Notes:
DAZ Studio render - about two hours for the main pass, another .5 hour for the 'no hair' pass and a final 1.5 hours for the Mood Master pass. Postwork in Adobe Photoshop.
Lighting is 2 uberSpotlights; one key, one rim and 2 omArea Lights; one bounce and one fill. The OM arealights are no shadows with falloff at '1.'
Setting is a quick studio prop I made in Hexagon, a back wall that curves into a floor. It has a cloud texture I made in Photoshop a while back. You can see the blue area light hitting the back wall. I took a white spotlight and pointed it at the back to create the 'moon' effect.
The ground plane is from DM's Mixed Fantasy. I set the camera up with a strong depth of field using Dreamlight's camera pointer.
Both the backdrop and the floor have 'cast shadows' set to 'off' to speed up the shadow calculation on the spotlights.
Character is DAZ Victoria 3 (the old girl has some life left in her) with Blackhearted GND2 morphs. Texture is DM's Alina. Skin setup is my usual arrangement with pwSurface and a specular map I made from the texture in Photoshop.
Outfit is the free 'Elven Strapped' set from Aery Soul with the aforementioned Phoenix1966 GND2 fit. I had to set the fit up in Poser6 and save it because it uses a python script to add the morph channels to the clothes, but it was more than worth the effort. Surfaces setup again with pwSurface to look like supple leather.
Sword is the 'Sword of the Ancients' that comes with the Alina texture set. Hair is Sapphire Fox by Quarker from DAZ with Pendragon's hair shader.
Pose is one of the 'battle bonanza' poses from Snowsultan with some adjustments by me. I'm still not 100% satisfied with the grip on the sword, but it is at least mildly credible.
Both character and hair were rendered using SubD subdivisions at level 1 to ensure smooth lines with no polygons showing.
I rendered two passes on this image - one with hair and one without. I set these up in Photoshop with the 'hair' layer above the 'no hair' layer and the added a mask to the 'hair' layer. Used a fine brush, painting on the mask, to thin out some of the blockier hair sections.
Then I created a layer and used the clone tool to paint over and fix some geometry problems, particularly a nasty tangle at the left knee joint.
The hair was extensively overpainted with some hair brushes I got in an issue of Imagine FX and a 1 pixel soft brush. I grabbed colors off of the image and just extended and highlighted things in a way that seemed appropriate. This was my most extensive hair paintover to date and it was a lot of fun. If you have photoshop and a tablet you really should play around with it - it's fun and if you mess up you just clear the layer and start over. Many thanks to Cobalt Dream for inspiring the hair paint-fest.
Finally I felt the image needed some fog, so I grabbed Ron's fog brushes and added a layer that I masked off with the Mood Master depth pass and painted in some more fog. I added another layer and painted some fog into the foreground. For colors I just grabbed a few from the 'Moon' area and painted with those. Then I turned down the opacity a bit on the foreground fog.
A quick levels adjustment and the title and copyright text completed the image.
So, nothing too serious or meaningful here, just a lot of fun to put together and I had a blast painting the postwork. It was definitely just the thing for a fall day with a headcold :)
If you've read this far, thanks - I enjoy writing these captions to try and give a little back to you all! As always I appreciate everyone's comments and feedback. Please keep the critique coming - I'm always a better artist for your advice.
Comments (35)
LemyD
Wonderful picture as always. And thx for your "making off". It's always interesting to read and to learn! And I hope your cold is getting better! ;) Greetings Lemy
efron_241
winter is clearly around the corner
Antonio57
Superbe pose et décor!!!!!!!!!!!!
geirla
Wow, that is really excellent. All the postwork definitely makes it look great. Thanks for all the explanation of your technique. Fantastic job on the hair! Good thing you took DayQuil and not NyQuil, or the hair might have gotten a bit wonky.
dreamlord08
Thank´s for the making off !! Something to learn is definitiv great. Like it !!5++
scooby37
Fantastic render and a very detailed description of your workflow, Thanks, I hope you feel much better now.
lyron
Fantastic work!
dragonmuse
Awesome.. and some very creative technical work. Especially love her skin and the lighting.
Homus_Artistic
This is a great image. the posing and the postwork are very detailed. Thanx for all the details in your comments. They will help me develop my skills
anitalee
Excellent
MrZiegler
Love it!
Shiroyama
just goes to show how much work gets put into a deceptively simple scene. a very cool image, the pose has great tension to it, and the hair looks awesome. thanks for sharing your workflow, it's very inspiring.
Timesurfer
awsome!
ontar1
Beautiful character and cool sword, love the pose, excellent work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
felinx
Bonne ambiance, pose et lumière !!
bakapo
wow, the hard work paid off... she's beautiful and powerful!
PapaSkip
Awesome work on this .. the image really looks fantastic. Very well done!
El_Lee
Outstanding fantasy piece. Really top notch work.
Khory_D
Absolutely stunning work!
mauk Online Now!
Great work!!!!!!
jakiblue
i always love reading your mini-tuts on how you do your images - so much information! Love the image - very atmospheric with all the fog.
lorddarkwolf
nice
MadameX
Excellent! And it's great that you tell how you did the image. V3 never looked so good. Actually, I was surprised when I read it was her! (She wasn't a favorite of mine). Going into my faves right now. ;)
moonbunnie
Fantastic pose and whole composition , excellent work!
arcas
Striking image. I think the lighting, combined with the slight touch of Mood Master, is what makes this stand out so. The skin tones and the way the shadow plays on them is rich and deep. You really handled this one with just the right deft touch.
Cimaira
This is amazing, as always!
kobaltkween
i'm not sure i love it quite as much as everyone else due to the awkward (but admittedly dynamic) pose, but i do think it's absolutely brilliant how you created such a realistic yet stylized appearance. her skin especially makes me think of a fantasy illustration. i'm impressed by the extremity of the pose, especially considering the lack of typical problems in her feet in ankles. the other consistent weak points of all the Vickies, the hands, also look good. the camera angle is perfect. i think the background could have some more colors and variation. all in all, a highly excellent piece.
Seaview123
This looks great, and your explaination is worth the read. Nice job on this one.
maraich
LoL - you say this was simple, but everything you wrote makes it seem like a whole lot actualy went into it. Painting hair isn't the simplest thing to do, certainly not well, and you did a very convincing job of it. The prop that you created for the backdrop is ingenious - really does look like a moon. I'm really impressed with how dynamic the scene is. You don't get that feel in most images that contain only one figure. The combination of the great pose, her expression/eyes, and the tilted angle of the scene come together to make a very energetic image.
DarkStormCrow
Excellent!