This picture has been following me since I read the Lord of the Rings many years ago. It came back when I first came across John Howe ‘s fabulous art. And it returned when I finally saw the conclusion to the movie.
I just had to try my own version.
As usual now, I used Poser to select, customize and pose each character. There are made up of a mix of different props and objects I have accumulated over time. Even though I am trying to get better at modeling, I decided long ago that I am a better photograph than sculptor, so modeling is reduced to creating models I cannot find or buy.
Vue d’Esprit was the next stop. Until I can try a plugin to import complete objects from Poser to Carrara, I will keep Vue even if the textures and options are more limited. Hopefully, the upcoming plugin announced for Carrara will fix that. The ground, sky and background mountain were added in Vue as well. I tried to add grass but the impact on rendering times was too high. I had to give up for hand drawn grass later.
After fining the right light, angle of view and touching up textures with something less dull than the original materials from Poser, I tried rendering at a few resolutions. It is still difficult to anticipate how long a particular scene will take. No matter how many polygons, lights and soft shadows involved, some complex scenes will be surprisingly fast to render while other apparently simpler scenes will take forever. Vue d’Esprit can be funny sometimes…
This scene required a significant amount of work in Painter before becoming presentable. The helmet of the beast, clothing of the Witchking, the hair from Eowyn and the horse, the grass and touches of dirt on the clothes had to be added by hand. I spend more and more time in Painter. I love how this program handles with large images. The grass gave me a good measure of how much work I still have to go. It was a frustrating experience to get it to look like I wanted. Even now, I am not very satisfied with the result. The atmospheric effects (dust cloud, smoke and yellow sky in the background) came last.
The last stop was Photoshop, to dull the colors, enhance the contrasts and give an overall greenish glow to the scene.
Given the response this picture received in Renderosity, I shouldn’t have much to complain about. Yet, the beast itself should have hind legs instead of arms. Ewoyn’s stance is still too ridig. The sky is too white and featureless. And there is the grass…
I am taking a break from this picture for a while – I have to start over when I finally feel like it.