So here's that render I was working on

[telophase]

I titled it HAMMER OF ARMAGEDDON: A COLLECTION OF THE 25TH CENTURY from my milSF title generator because I felt like being ridiculous.





Postprocessing done in Photoshop to bump some colors and shadows, de-emphasize others, add a vignette, add a bit of texture, etc.

Closer on the characters.



Dude's got a lot of junk in the trunk. I gave him proper bodybuilder glutes and his pants apparently have a lot of padding there as well. I momentarily considered shrinking them and re-rendering, but figured dude worked hard to get those glutes; he's probably quite proud of them.

(His pecs are pretty impressive also, thanks to the chest armor, and he ends up with just a good a rack as his partner has when he's standing upright.)

And even closer. You can see where I added some texture because I don't like plastic-smooth renders if the scene doesn't call for it.





Anyway, I attempted rendering it with the characters and background separately and learned that of course that screws up all the shadows, so I ended up just re-rendering it at a large size with higher quality constraints.

I'm about to start putting book cover sample text on it for eventual posting to Etsy. Whee!

Comments

[yhlee]

Fantastic!!!

[telophase]

Thank you! :D

[yhlee]

Dammit, now I want to write that book, except I'm not in indie and have no control over covers...

[telophase]

Take the cover and concept to your agent. He can sell it to Baen. XD. (myrialux wandered in as I was working on text for the Etsy listing and said “That reminds me of Honor Harrington covers.” I said “That’s because it’s a Baen Cover.” XD)

[selenite0]

Which attracts a lot of readers . . . even if it repels critics.

[telophase]

Yup! Jim Baen knew his audience and knew what they liked.XD

[rushthatspeaks]

That reminds me of a lot of early Cherryh covers, in a good way.

[telophase]

The pic I can’t show yet whose lighting was what I was playing with in this one...well I’m getting tangled up in this sentence, but I looked at that pic and went “It’s a Michael Whelan cover.” And then went to see if I could find what cover it reminded me of and couldn’t. But there’s something really familiar about the cool blue light surrounding and behind the characters paired with the red light they’re advancing into that gives me that impression.

[havocthecat]

I love it!

[telophase]

Thank you!

[selenite0]

I like it. Scenery feels lived in, the troops are acting competently.

I have a scene like this in WIP (space opera #3), but it's unrepresentative of the book as a whole, so I should let someone else take dibs on it.

[telophase]

Thanks! :D The poses I used came with one seriously annoying element: fingers on triggers. I carefully unbent the index fingers and gave them trigger discipline. XD

I also had to do a lot of subtle re-jiggering to get the guns fitting them properly, since I wasn't using the guns the poses were originally designed around, but I eventually managed to make it look like they were holding the guns without clipping through them. It's also amazing how much the position of the hand can depend on the shoulder--I spend what feel like hours attempting to get the hands right, then discover it's actually a shoulder movement I need to adjust, not the hand...

[batwrangler]

>The poses I used came with one seriously annoying element: fingers on triggers.
>I carefully unbent the index fingers and gave them trigger discipline. XD

Yay, you! <3 <3 <3

[telophase]

XD

[selenite0]

I was at a con where Toni Weisskopf showed the cover of the upcoming "Wild Side" anthology. "Other publishers would get letters complaining about that much cleavage being demeaning. I get letters complaining her finger is on the trigger."

[telophase]

Hahahaha! Yeah, horse people and gun people are Very Particular about depictions of their passion! XD

[adafrog]

Cool.

[telophase]

Thanks!