This is one of a lengthy series of composition tests for the cover jacket of the forthcoming book, "Curse of the Rhinegold", which is to be the first of a four volume illustrated novel series called "The Ring Saga". If you've been following along you'll notice right away that the characters are quite different from those you've been seeing. These are very early test models which were not yet complete. The Rhinemaidens, for example, had yet to get their finished skin maps or their final wardrobe, while Alberich had yet to grow a beard (pre-pubescent dwarf I guess), although his clothing was near complete. As for the set, it's a little busy for my liking, and has since been toned down quite a bit, with most of the alien "Swizzler" props removed (most, but not all! I like the fire-red ones behind the dwarf, and find them apropos for surrounding a smith). The background is a simple gradiated plane to keep it from distracting from the titles that will be laid on (you can see a version of those as well on my website). The entire set was composed in Poser and rendered in two sections (left and right to allow for altering the horizontal size, since I don't know yet exactly how long the book will be, and consequently how wide the spine art needs to be). Both sections are a basic one pass render with no postwork at all, aside from the light rays which is just a bit of quick eraser work in Photoshop. The Viking ship has a lot of moss and barnacles painted on to the hull textures, from which I made custom displacement maps, and there's a lot of other grunging up done to the textures here and there - all the rust on the half-buried shields and viking helms, for example, are painted right on the texture maps. I think there's an axe back there as well. The Rhinegold itself (the semi-glowing orb in the midst of the Rhinemaidens) is a simple sphere textured with beaten gold from ParrotDolphin's awesome Metals Poser Materials set (which I use a lot - in fact, this version of the Rhinemaids' "fishscale" skin is actually the "Scales" Basic Metal from that set painted onto a flesh map!). I put a point light inside the orb and made it slightly transparent to give it an inner glow and an outer radiance that illuminates the characters. The lighting still needs some work, and will ultimately receive some postwork tweaking at any rate, but it's a start. I'll probably add a bit of ambient light to the gold as well to give it some surface glow. I won't even begin to list the models used, but most of them are credited on the relevant webpage if you want to know. I'll post the final version once it's done, but it probably won't be for a while, as I'm fairly swamped at present with the inner page art for the book, and, oh yeah, writing it as well.