Beautiful Day

After work today we hit the golf course to play 9 holes. I needed it. Needed the sun and the exercise. It finally seems as if summer is setting in. Just before the weekend it was actually cold for a few days. Now the fans are on and I'm turning on the air conditioning at work. The course was nice and quiet and since it's been a couple of weeks since I'd played, and me being a beginner we were able to go at a decent pace where I could hit twice if I wanted to, try my putt again if I wasn't happy with the first. I've been working on consistently making it over the ravine on this hole and today I did. It's a tough course though, especially for someone with arthritis as bad as mine. Lot's of hills and I tend to end up following my ball down the fairway which is all uphill it seems. I'd kill for a putting green in my own back yard.

Comic Style

I took the new laptop for a test drive last night. Poser 11 has a much better comic style than previous versions so after testing how long a decent sized render would take on my new Asus ROG I decided to play around with a comic book look. In the mood for scifi I slapped a few generic models into a scene and loaded my favorite scifi character and began playing with the settings. I was quite happy with the way I got the green lighting to bounce off her and the floor. I actually do have a story in my head that uses this character. I've yet to really outline it as I've never done that before. Writing isn't something that comes easy to me but I'm working on it. Currently I'm working on a piece of fan fiction. I'm a huge Stargate Atlantis fan and I read a lot of fan fics so I though, what the hell, I'll test my writing skills on something where I can work with established characters and settings. It's about halfway finished. Maybe I'll have the guts to post it here when it's finished.

Maybe.

Mother of Dragons

My latest render is Mother of Dragons. I've been really into Game of Thrones lately and we've been catching up on the entire season over the last month or so. I didn't have HBO when it first came out so I tried not to care that I was missing out but now... OMG! Best show next to Outlander! And that's saying something for someone who watches Stargate Atlantis damned near every day. I know everyone is carrying the banner for Jon Snow but I think Peter Dinklage's character, Tyrion, is my favorite.

As for the image, it's not exact, obviously. The dragon is slightly different as is the coloring but I just wanted to be creative and wasn't going for exact. I didn't feel like taking the time to re-do a whole new dragon texture or alter the existing one that came with this dragon model. I used to hate rending stuff right out of the box (so to speak). I felt that for it to even be considered "art" that I had to contribute more than just composing the image, textures, poses, lighting and render settings. I would create textures and model small elements to add credibility to what I saw was the right to call it "art". Even though I postwork all my images in Photoshop, adding shadows, etc. I felt that anyone with the same program could do the same. I don't believe that to be true anymore. While Poser is not Maya, Truespace or Max, and tends to be looked down on by serious 3D artists who do this for a living, I've seen people who can absolutely make the program sing with their final renders. It's like taking photos with a point and shoot vs a DSLR. Yes, a DSLR has more bells and whistles and possibilities but it won't turn anyone into a photographer if you don't have the eye.

Everyone enjoy Fathers Day! I'm off to lunch and shopping with my husband and dad. :)