Happy ArboSecreHalloMas!

TRDL thom wrote: Surprising precisely no one, this week's theme is the Holidays. Draw any character celebrating the holidays in any fashion. And if you aren't into the December holidays of any of the religious or cultural flavors, it's never too late to aim backwards and pull out a Halloween piece... or an Arbor Day special... or hell, a Secretary's Day pic wouldn't kill us!

Uhhh, okay.

Noir

"I kept a wary eye on my customer. Among my people, the cunning of the Humans is legendary. Especially their females."

This was done for the annual Noir Jam at R3, held in honor of Vlad Fiks.  Along with the Noir genre, another of his areas of expertise was retro sci-fi, so I blended a bit of both for this image.

That's Tracy again, one of my repertory company of actors.  I promise, the bobbed hair is temporary-- we only shortened it in CGI... 8^j*  Across the table is a Daz Sea Dragon, wearing a spacesuit made from a Daz Spuggles character-- perhaps an ominous sign.

The Line-Up [alternate]

Now that's what I call a Magic Mirror...

The Line-Up

Here's a line-up featuring three ladies from the Central Casting department at my studio: Magenta, Susan, and Tracy.  Although I've muddled the measurement function somewhat with the poses, hair, and camera angle, you can get a fair estimate by sighting between the top of each figure and her reflection. On the left, we have the standard Victoria 4 height of about five feet, ten-and-a-half inches. Our cheerful vehicle operator is around five foot seven, while the 1960s-esque blonde bombshell tops out at pretty much exactly five foot nuttin'.

Susan's basic proportions, although obviously dependent on some of the zaftig settings provided by the Morphs++ package, are otherwise remarkably straightforward V4 scaling tweaks.  Overall scale, 90%; hip, 102%; thighs, 87.5%; shins, 91.5%; abdomen, 90%; upper arms, 87%; forearms, 95%. Using Morphs++ again, her head was scaled up by 4 percent, while her feet and hands were scaled down by 2 percent and 4 percent, respectively. If you want to stick with freebies, Les Bentley's "Show Scale Dials V4" should provide what you need. (Just be sure to read his excellent notes.)

Wardrobe Credits:

• Magenta:
  • Evilinnocence's Bra for V4
  • The skirt from Terrymcg's Cosplay Costume 10 (I squished the waistband down a little.)
  • StudioArtVartanian's C-String (not visible from this angle, but a nifty item.)
• Susan:
  • Morphing Glasses (about halfway down that page) by Adam Thwaites
  • Marco's Tied Top for V4
  • Sunny Bikini (well, part of it, anyway) by bucketload3d
• Tracy:
  • SickleYield's Free Wrap Top
  • JoEtzold's S.H.A.D.O. Uniforms ("SD-Pant")

Hair and textures are as credited in their respective original appearances. Although I did expand the bun on Magenta's hair, given the Big Hair proclivities of her companions here...

Fab Gear

I've been rebuilding my rendering setup on a newer machine-- still obsolete, of course, but considerably faster than what I had been using.  As I gradually got the libraries transferred (and, I hope, better organized this time), the "Challenging 60's Fashion Challenge" was the first R3 jam I managed to contribute to.

I reused one of my old lighting sets and cranked it up to (ahem) period-appropriate saturation levels...

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"People, people-- listen up. We got an announcement. Stay away from the brown acid, man. It's a bad trip."

Credits, Hers:
She's an instance of DAZ3D's Victoria 4.2, customized for a 60s ingenue effect. (More on this in a follow-up post.) Her skin texture is "Isa," from a DAZ bundle (Aiko 4 Starter Pack, I believe) acquired who knows when. Definitely assists her plausibility. And their "Flip" hair, although designed for a previous generation of Vicki, matched the look well.  JoEtzold's S.H.A.D.O. uniforms and party clothes provided her outfit.

Credits, His:
He's a plain stock Michael 3, also from DAZ3D, wearing the 3 piece suit and "Flat Top" hair they designed for him. I suppose I could have customized him at least a little bit-- but he had just the right doofusy look straight out of the box.

Credits, Setting:
The Wavy Gravy floor pattern is by the brilliantly talented and staggeringly generous Nobiax, whom you can visit at his DeviantART gallery. This is but the slightest hint of the superb textures and models he's released as freebies. (!) That dome is one of my set pieces, wearing its original colors in its five material zones. Dunno if the fact that those were already period-appropriate is disturbing, or merely inevitable... 8^j*

Kahhma

If you're wondering why that CGI Ahhnold is being mean to my avatar, the context is available (as it so often is) at the R3 forum.

Credits:
scott8539 - T2 Morph for M4
dyald - Fable for M4 (+ update)
Vacasoft - GuyVest
mrsparky - French Village
richabri - Fire Hydrant (from New Graffiti Wall)
Null Entry - No Nose Morph (requires postwork)
Philosopher's Egg - No Ears Morph (requires postwork)
DAZ3D - Stylin for M4, BMX Bike, and, of course, the Michael 4 figure.

modpods

This was my first attempt (4th revision) at sculpting some "conforming" clothing, finished in early December. As usual, I've been a bit distracted with other stuff since, but finally got back to genning up some demo pics for the blog.

Connoisseurs of what is, in my humble opinion, the finest erotic science fiction graphic novel on the web will recognize the "re-imagining" [Hollywoodspeak for "blatant remake"] of Lucy Lastique's original costume-- her remarkably convenient ["SPROING!"] Deltiles.

The set is the "Cliffside" mesh by S L F, smoothed slightly, and with a simple planar UV map applied. Its textures are FranOnTheEdge's RustingGreenishPaint for the diffuse channel (tinted a bit), with ConcreteOldLichened as the bump map.


Our model's hair is, once more, by the indispensible Kozaburo -- this is his second Updo, with a texture of my own trial-and-error devising.




Finally, the brilliantly talented Reciecup created the delectable "Doll" skin texture. Again, I applied some tinting-- although the hue was inspired by her other fantasy characters.








I don't suppose there's an amateur photographer alive who could resist using a naturally-occurring frame in the scenery like this...

Hmm.  It does seem a bit dodgy to apply the term "naturally-occurring" to a virtual universe, doesn't it?  But what the heck, it conveys the idea.

Flyers

R3 Jam: Flyers

Here are my avatar and his sweetie, aboard (for the moment) a Flexible Flyer™.

Obviously, thanks & apologies go to Bill Watterson. Now I see why he chose to draw a toboggan for this situation, during those eleven years...

Gnabbist