Variations

Concept notes

The variation series was born from the "Assassin and his cats" pictures, and from the related demonstration scene. It was an accident bound to happen... Making images is a long process, anything but straightforward. Ideas come and go, and most of them never make it in the final picture. There are good reasons for this, but still, it is always painful to think that some interesting stuff has to go back to that fabled store of ideas, usually to never surface again. Many images in this website have already alternate versions, but the changes are usually only about the lighting. These series takes this concept a little further.

The 12 changes series: while working on the demonstration scene, I started playing with different colour schemes to take the boredom out of making such a bland picture. The result was cool enough and fast to create since all the complicated stuff was already done.

The 9 women of power came next. "Rules" emerged: I would keep the camera, the character, the building, the car, most of the lighting and texturing, but I would use different poses and add characters and props.

The 9 seasons series was a logical follow-up: the "rules" would be to change the scene as much as possible, illustrating different atmospheres. Only the camera/building/car/character would still be there. Of course, working on this series took much longer than for the previous ones: each image was now less a part of a series than a independent one! I was back at making complex pictures involving a lot of modeling, texturing and research, so it was time to stop. I have ideas for a 4th series, but it will have to wait.

Technical notes

All the images were staged and rendered with the Persistence of Vision Ray-tracer, versions 3.5 and 3.6. All the images use the following models (available here):

A Mini Cooper model created in Rhino
A building front also created in Rhino
DAZ's Victoria 3 character. It is mostly the same character with a slightly morphed faced and body in some cases. Her hair is usually the Arizona hair (also from DAZ). Her dress is the Poser 5 beach dress (12 changes series) or Serge Marck (Poserfashion)'s Dress1 (other series). Her purse was created in Rhino and "boned" in Poser.

12 changes

The textures are either bitmaps or procedural.
3 DAZ pigeons

9 women of power

In order of appearance:

Swamp scene: Sycamore tree created in XFrog4/Cinema 4D. Other plants created in Xfrog 3.5. These plants are available here.
Cow scene: Grass made with the Makegrass macro ; DAZ cow crossed with the DAZ pigeon.
Balls scene: isosurface balls
Cactus scene: desert plants from the Xfrog collections ; watering can created in Rhino.
Elephant scene: DAZ elephant.
Pipe scene: plumbing with the Makepipe macro ; other props downloaded from the internet.
Pigeon scene: DAZ pigeon and DAZ archer props.
Water drops scene: water drops created in Cinema 4D ; plastic basins created in Rhino.

9 seasons

In order of appearance:

Snow scene: DAZ penguins. Snow created with the Makesnow macro (modifed) or added with Rhino.
Ocean scene: Seaweed and plants created with XFrog 4 / Cinema 4D. The water effect is just a shadow effect not photons : I also did a photons version but the effect is less interesting ; fish models by Trout and Toucan.
Rain scene: snail modeled in Cinema 4D and textured with Bodypaint. It's my first true C4D model and it can be somehow animated. The rain effect is post-processed, by layering the rain on the image, though the rain layer itself was created in POV-Ray. This could have been done in one pass, but the render time was too high.
War scene: AK-47 modeled in Rhino ; various props from the internet, modified and retextured in Cinema 4D ; VW Golf car by DeESpona, deformed and textured in Cinema 4D.
Night scene: DAZ cat and chair.
Office scene: Jaime Vives Piqueres' Lightsys macro for the lighting ; Post-It? and flat screen display created in Rhino ; office chair of unknown origin modified in Cinema 4D ; DAZ clock, computer and mice (computer and animal one). "Alice" Hair by Kozaburo.
Night club scene: DAZ cat, microphone created in Cinema 4D. "Kyoko Mk3" Hair by Kozaburo (which looks a lot like Jennifer Connelly's hairdo in Dark City) ; Dress 3 by Serge Marck.
Sunset scene: DAZ updo hair.
Park scene: Xfrog planetree (modified) ; DAZ park bench ; grass with Makegrass.