Robyn Paterson's Blog, page 53
March 7, 2012
The Fox Cycle, Story Five- The Beating
This week's Fox Cycle story is accompanied by my most ambitious digital art image yet. Not only was this the most complex image I've put together in Daz Studio yet, with five characters and props to co-ordinate, but it was also my first attempt at doing postwork on a rendered image. I used GiMP to blur the forground characters to give it more of a sense of depth of field (which is possible but difficult for me in Daz Studio) and to add the muck to Marlon's face and neck. I'm really quite...
GIMP – The FREE Open Source Photoshop
For those who might not be familiar with it, there is a free alternative to Photoshop called GIMP – The GNU Image Manipulation Program which is surprisingly powerful and useful, and has a tonne of plugins and tutorials out there. I've been using it in lieu of Photoshop recently (since I can't afford the $600 for Photoshop at the moment just to do some minor photo editing) and so far I've found it quite easy to use and well documented.
February 27, 2012
Pretentious Title: Editing for People Who Hate Editing
Author Rachel Aaron has recently posted a great piece about how she came to love the editing process over on her blog. It comes at just the right time for me, as I'm finally about to start editing book one of Twin Stars. Good advice any writer should check out, especially a novelist.
When you write a first draft, you are writing a story. You're telling your character's tale, spinning your adventure, whatever. When you start to edit a novel, you're no longer just telling a story, you're...
February 26, 2012
February 20, 2012
CG Art- The Fox Cycle
My journey with DAZ Studio Continues. I spent the week working on images to go along with my currently running Flash Fiction series- The Fox Cycle over on my KFAT page. The stories themselves cover a large span of time, but focus on the former King's Musketeer Gerard la Russo and his Indian adopted daughter Renard. Using my meagre talent with DAZ Studio, I decided to render a few images to go along with some of the stories.
Gerard la Russo at Callais in 1698.
Renard la Russo and Claudette...
February 12, 2012
Nerd Rage Scale
My friend Don C. recently posted this, and I thought I'd share it for consideration:
Given how often I've seen debate and discussion of redos in established comics and how little cohesion said debates often have, I think it's time for some sort of standardized scale. This one refers SPECIFICALLY to the indignation that arises from changes to a book and seeks to rate them in terms of overall impact.
To that end, there's gonna be some debate as to where a specific event registers on the scale...
Fun with CG II- The Twin Stars
So, I spent a week (and a few dollars) working away on Daz Studio to see if I could put together some decent looking characters for the covers of my upcoming Twin Stars novels. So far, I'm pretty impressed by how well it's gone. Yes, there was a bit of a learning curve, but once I overcame that and learned a few tricks, it all came together pretty quickly. At it turned out, doing Tysen and Ping An was pretty easy, Esther has turned out to be the hardest one so far. (Which is why there's...
February 11, 2012
Clive Owen – Arthur and The Anglo Saxon Wars
Clive Owen – Arthur and The Anglo Saxon Wars is an interesting page on "Authurian" England with some nice pictures of soldiers from that period.
February 5, 2012
Fun with CG
Once upon a time, I was an enthusiast of a program called Bryce 3D, which was a computer graphics program for generating landscapes. I actually used it for a number of other things, since it was primitive (shape) based instead of spline (wire frame) based and much easier to use than the other CG programs on the market at the time. I spent countless hours pushing the program to its limits and making things like buildings, cities, starships and even characters in Bryce.
As you can see by the...
