Inspired by this book I'm reading: _The Night Circus_ by Erin Morgenstern. It's a romance set in "Les Cirque des Rêves" or, "The Circus of Dreams." Everything in the circus is black and white, to the striped tents down to the grass beneath. It's the battleground of two magicians, and the performances are unlike any you could ever imagine. It's quite the page-turner, and since I've always been a fan of that aesthetic... So, this is an interesting piece, in terms of construction. I wanted to go with something a little more unusual. I turned to my (growing) library of Genesis 2 characters.This one is Amalthea for Ninive 6. Ninive has kind of an otherworldly shape, though I chose a FWSA model based on her for this purpose. Next, I converted her to Gen8 using SY's character converter. This took quite a while this time. I don't thinks it's 100% perfect, but was dang close. Of course, then you need a skin. However, I already had something in mind. Heck, that's actually why I converted the character in the first place, was to use VYK's Symbiote set. I initially thought to avoid this particular costume, because I've used it before on a gothic-style fairy and I have this weird mental issue where I'll use an awesome set once and then avoid it entirely because it "belongs to that character!" I actually started with the Mystique 2 outfit, which I have yet to render even though I waited patiently for it to go on a really good sale. Something I'll have to correct. It did, however, come in handy that I loaded it when I decided I wanted the garters. The panties from Mystique fit together with the X-Fashion clown costume perfectly. Only complaint was how floppy the lace was. So I decided to go into the settings to see if I can get it to behave more like lace. I changed the bend stiffness, and it did better, but was still collapsing. So then I adjusted the buckling stiffness. Better, but I noticed that where it collapsed was during stabilization. So, I set stablization time to 0.010. HA! Lace behaving like lace! So far, the black and white motif was working out. Symbiotes even came with a white iris mat. Except... I decided to deviate. A single pop of color. I dipped into TwiztedMetal's eye mats once again. There's a deeper blue, but this one "felt" right. On to posing. This started as part of the recent "Selfie" pose set, modified a bit. I turned the head, and adjusted the fingers away from "Holding a phone" position. Really, kind of an accident. Literally the first pose I clicked on out of curiosity and was then inspired to turn it into this, framing that single pop of color. I also used the thirds guide, finally actually reading on what the "Rule of Thirds" is. I guess it's something I'd done subconsciously before because I kept getting comments on it. I also chose a narrower frame than my usual. I like 2:3 for portrait-type work. In this case, I felt the narrower field enhances the overall focus of the piece. But, I'll let you be the judge. Now, to be honest, her left arm is clipping her skirt just a bit. BUT. Transparent lace makes it nearly impossible to tell, so I felt safe getting away with it. I tried to put dforce on the skirt, but it just collapsed or exploded. It wasn't built with that in mind, which is odd because the sleeves were. Oh well, I think it looks fine. Next, hair. I had a pigtail hair style loaded the entire time, but it just wasn't grand enough. I clicked it off to run the dforce simulation, and her bald head made me think that I needed something shorter. And, well, I've been looking for an excuse to render up the "tapered" hair set. It comes in black, so that was that. After that, there was makeup. I clicked through a few eyeshadow options before setting on this one, and was there any question what to do with the lips? Though that made me realize I hadn't given her an expression yet. And with one eye framed like that? It's got to be a wink! This one came from that same "Selfie" pose set, though it needed slight adjusting to fully close the one eye. And, of course, needed to use the "side-to-side" slider to have it stare through her fingers. Finally, I gave her some piercings to break up the symmetry just a bit. I think it also helps the viewer notice that she _does_ have eyebrows, they're just very faint. I debated giving her more visible eyebrows. I'm still debating. For the backdrop, I used part of the "West Park Ablutions: Vintage" set. Then I placed four spheres, I initially thought to light the scene with. But they ended up being too bright in the scene when they hit a point of providing enough light, so I turned their glow down and added in a spotlight. I also messed with the tone mapping settings, leaving it at a fairly low-light and using ISO and Shutter Speed to increase the light. This created a more "soft" look that I liked.