Can't Paint Can't Draw

'And So The Long Evening Wears On'

2009-05-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

Another Sophie and Mara image. The more I used this pair, the more I started to build separate personalities for them in my head. And also the more they started to become my 'ideal women', in the sense of reacting to situations in the way I believe everyone should. Here, trapped by a pub bore. Mara, receiving the lecture, doesn't bother hiding her boredom; Sophie giggles wildly to herself. Perfect women. It's probably a blessing in disguise that I lost them when my last computer crashed. I wasn't really heading down a very healthy path.

'Access Denied'

2009-05-17T12:04:00.001-07:00

There's a downside to taking your inspiration directly from the world around you. I do most of my thinking while I'm walking; most of all when I'm walking to and from my parents' house on a Saturday night. So I get inspired to create a lot of dark, shabby surburban streets. This one was worth doing, however. It's about the startling effect of walking past a house with the lights on and the curtains drawn; the clarity of the rooms inside compared to the uncertain darkness all around. The eyes are drawn to even the most mundane of houses. I wrap it up in some vague social message here by making the room rather posh and the wayfarer scruffy. Really, though, it's about light and darkness comparisons. It took an eternity of messing around with spotlights to get right. But an eternity, I think, that was worth it. I also tried a di Vinci-esque trick of drawing a straight line between the sole of the woman's outstretched foot and the top of her head. I don't know why. Why did di Vinci do that sort of thing anyway?

'A Message To The Cosmos'

2009-03-28T06:13:00.000-07:00

My comment on conceptual art, I suppose. Or on the reactions evoked by conceptual art; which here is shown as reverence, contempt and humour. I side with the giggling schoolgirls. A lot of modern art is funny, whether intentionally or otherwise, and this is sometimes overlooked. I guess this image was inspired by one trip to the Tate Modern. I was studying Cheri Cherin's Where Is The World Going?, a kind of 'all the ills of modern society' collage. One part of it was a grinning blond getting intimate with a dog. Stood alongside me was a teenage girl. I could tell when she noticed the dog and the blond because she gave a great laugh and ran away giggling. That's how you should treat conceptual art.

The sculpture here was the standard Daz Vicky model. She was given a bronze skin via some freebie I picked up and then had her arm rather brutally hacked off in Hexagon. The whole thing is half-sucessful. Of all the poses, only the intellectual's really comes off. The floor is also too dark (once again). Incidentally another comment is the two masterpieces of art, The Madonna Of The Rocks and The Night Watch, hanging on the wall entirely unnoticed.

'A New Morning'

2009-03-18T15:44:00.000-07:00

At the time I thought I'd overdone the redness of the lighting, meant to indicate a sunrise. And it's also a moot point whether I've overdone of the Dickensy sentimentality of waif-finds-new-hope-in-simple-cat. But frankly, I think this one rocks. Her expression and posture has come out just right. As has the light playing on her face; which is just as well as that one was a bitch to perfect. As ever there's no explicit back story. It's up to the viewer to decide why a girl is sitting on a street corner with a rucksack; and for that matter, why a cat has chosen to befriend her. The Carlsberg can has appeared in so many of my images it's almost a motif, so I should thank the curiously named TrekkieGrrrl for the free model.

Hallowed Halls Of Learning

2009-03-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

My latest finished one. I had a lot of fun making this, mainly for nostalgic reasons. It's based on my year at Cryfield Hall, the cheapest and most raucous halls of residence at Warwick University. Many happy evenings cramming into someone's far-too-small bedroom, drinking cheap alcohol before going to the pub or after coming back. And a talking a huge, huge amount of bollocks. The main trouble with this image - apart from the usual 'not very good' factor' - is that to focus on the students, I couldn't show much of the room itself. I may do another render to rectify this because our bedrooms had to be seen to be believed; basically a monk's cell with a leaking basin. A commentator on Renderosity said she was sending her son to college soon and images like this scared the hell out of her. I wonder what she'd have said if I'd managed to get a decent model of a spliff.

'3 And You're In'

2009-03-07T06:37:00.000-08:00

I know, it might just as well have been called "Jumpers For Goalposts." But every day in school yards across the UK, thousands of games did - and presumably still do - take place. You put down your bags or unneccesary items of clothing to form the posts. You get out a ball. And away you go. 3 And You're In, using only one goal, is usually played by the smaller groups and reverses the social status of keepers. In proper games the goalie is a stigmatised role, handed out to the worst player. 3 And You're In makes the position a reward, however, handed out to the first to score three goals.

Most of my attention for this image was concentrated on getting the positions of the figures right. I wanted to create a sense of action; and also imply that these kids weren't very good players. A reasonable job was done, though what the boy on the left thinks he's doing, nobody knows. Sadly I overlooked colours. The white shirts blend in with the brighter part of the background, while the darker trousers are almost swallowed by the tarmac. The ultra-glossiness of the trouser models should have been picked up and corrected too. Definitely a B- Could Try Harder.

'Transaction Complete'

2009-02-22T04:26:00.002-08:00

One of my best, certainly in times of lighting. The main effects have come out well: the hunched, semi-lit man in the foreground, the glow of his cigarette, the brightly lit woman with her huge shadow. Her posture is far from perfect, being a muddled compramise between intended and achievable. And I know the lamp looks rubbish. But great smoke, eh? - added after rendering by my own fair hand, but I can't quite remember how. The Jesus poster is another modification of the ever-useful pirate map on the Daz site. I remember reading somewhere that some prostitutes have religious pictures on their walls. Even if not true, I thought the image formed a neat contrast with the general mood of sordid disgust.

'500 Years After The Siege'

2009-02-22T04:26:00.001-08:00

The first image I made with the help of Hexagon. This is another Daz product which, in theory, should allow you to make complex objects from scratch. It's so difficult to use, however, and I'm such a dunce that I haven't got much out of it. I mainly use it for modifying existing models, usually by hacking bits off. Like here, where I kicked off the back of a gatetower so only the facade remained. Sounds easy, though knocking down an actual fort would probably have been quicker. I was inspired by Welsh castles like Cricceth where there is a big fuck-off gate and virtually nothing behind them. And their contrast, Harlech, which has opened its doors to any approaching army and consequently is still largely intact. The two tiny figures are supposed to be tourists parodying attacking & defending troops, though you can't really see them well enough.

'Huntington Road'

2009-01-31T03:37:00.000-08:00

My latest finished work. Huntington Road is a main thoroughfare near to my house in York. I was inspired by a particular stretch one night. The road curves to follow the river Foss, the houses are broken up by the grounds of a halls of residence and the streetlights march into the distance. Unfortunately I couldn't find skill or patience to make my own road curve. I also couldn't be bothered to put in as many streetlights, or reproduce the gardens properly. So this is more a 'based on...' than an accurate picture, and mainly an exercise in lighting. The bulbs of the street and car lights were done by point lights; odd little things which shine in all directions but only a very limited way. Their glow on the pavement and road was reproduced by spotlights, which shine as far as you want but only one direction. I also had to chuck in a couple of low-watt distance lights so the darker areas were actually visible. And if you think there were far too many 'lights' in the last 3 sentences, so did Daz Studio. If you put too many lights into a scene it goes into a huff, reproducing them all in the final render but refusing to show them in the active viewpoint. What this meant was that I was working in near-darkness most of the time. Just like the council workmen fixing a bust waterpipe on the real Huntington Road. And until the heater in my house spluttered into life, the temperature was similiar too.

I quite like the final result, though wish I'd done more to make the river more visible. It seems to have the empty, mundane menace of a surburban street at night. But it does inspire the thought, "My god, was this really worth the effort?" One of my favourite colleagues on Renderosity said it reminded him of a Surrealist painting from the 1920's, itself a nicely surreal comment.

'In The Bleak Midwinter'

2009-01-25T09:25:00.000-08:00

A recent composition. I took the title from the carol, of course, but the days I had in mind were more the ones immediately after Christmas. When families feel they should do something healthy together, like go for a walk in nearby woods, but the weather's so foul they don't last more than half an hour. Though these days are usually dark and drizzly, I chose fog here because it's more aesthetically pleasing. I made the fog with several cloud models, arranged in layers to create the effect of objects disappearing into the mist. That's worked quite well, and you can't go wrong with bare, ominous branches. But the landscape overall doesn't look very convincing, despite considerable effort. The contrast of the happy, scampering child also isn't as startling as I hoped.

Renderosity

2009-01-17T06:18:00.000-08:00

3D modelling, at least in its modern form, is a hobby existing almost exclusively over the internet. You cannot, to my knowledge, buy even the basic software for Daz Studio or Poser at your local PC World. You certainly cannot find a pair of high heels which look exactly right. (Yes, I've started shoe shopping since taking up rendering and, yes, I enjoy it. It's remarkable what a male can justify providing it only exists in virtual form.) Everything is done online.

And one consequence is that you learn very quickly how huge the rendering community, to use a very dubious phrase, is. You start a hobby you weren't even aware existed until a few months ago, which still still inspires bland looks when you try to describe it. Hunched alone over your mouse trying to make a thigh bend in precisely the right way, it feels like you're the only one ever to be obsessed with then. Then you wander just a little way online and rapidly discover thousands of people around the globe are similarly preoccupied. And, naturally, most have been doing it much longer than you and are much better. The fist indications I got were the forums on Daz Studio's own site. As with all forums, it was like wandering into a hundred different argument which have all lasted for months. But only after joining Renderosity did I realise how far this madness has spread.

Renderosity has various functions. It has a large shop, doubtless taking a cut from each sale to help fund the site. There is a freebies section, where people gifted and generous in equal measure donate their models and textures to talentless leaches like myself. The central part, though, is the gallery. Where all the thousands of amateur wannabe artists shyly upload their creations, hoping for a few kind words and just a morsel of recognition. The size alone is staggering. There were 22,056 of images when I just checked and approximately one new one arrives every minute. It is like the largest private gallery in the world. We only exhibit to our peers but still feel pleased to exhibit at all. As with most blogs, we know we will be largely ignored. That is, however, still better than creating something and just burying it away at the bottom of a hard drive.

Not all the images on Renderosity are renders. At least a third are photos. The breathtaking quality of many compared to my own efforts tempts me to mend the title of this blog to Can't Paint Can't Draw Can't Photograph. The bulk are created by software, however. By Daz and Poser; by Bryce and Vue, chiefly used for landscapes; by the optimistically labelled 3D Studio Max; by iClone (which only two people in the world seem to actually own) and Hobbyist and Rhino 3D and a host of other weird names.

Now, I have Issues with Renderosity. More precisely, with the images created by these array of technological wonders. The subject matter is rather homogeneous, which is a failing in itself. But even worst, the subject matter is very often fairies. Daz Studio gives away a few basic fairy objects with the software; wings, wands and so on. They're fine to use as practice when you're first learning the program. Why anyone would want to use them in an actual proper picture, and then advertise the fact to the whole world... Well, I once dated a woman who claimed with a straight face that she believed in fairies so I probably shouldn't judge too harshly. It is, however, hard not too. And many on Renderosity who don't clap their hands and believe in fairies put their energy into creating pretty women with big breasts. Sometimes they have chain mail and swords. Sometimes the context is a spaceship or that urban wasteland cyberpunk thingy. Very often they are just pretty women with big breasts, no background considered necessary. The overall effect is again like a gallery, this time one in a stately home. The technique is frequently amazing – many, many people can do lighting and textures far better than I can. But there is no meaning to the images, no intellect and little experimentation. The only difference is that instead of the self-satisfied lords and arrogant duchesses who decorate the walls of stately homes, you get fairies and pretty women with big breasts. I'm not sure which is worst.

Renderosity, it should be added, has Issues with me too. Uploading an image to the site has become my way of declaring I'm done. It Is Complete, and I will dick around with it no more. (Although, naturally, I have gone back and dicked around with a couple subsequently.) Sometimes I think this is the only positive effect the upload has. Members can post comments on the pictures. A good way of gauging popularity is to count the number of comments, since almost nobody is rude enough to offer anything other than gushing praise. The most mediocre of images, the least remarkable fairy illuminated by flat lighting, usually gets 10-20 comments. The site's star performers attract about four pages' worth. And I get 5-6 comments on a good day. There is one obvious reason, of course. My images aren't all that great. A lack of attention and talent will out, however wonderful your software; and Daz Studio isn't really the best rendering software around. But I like to think there is also another, darker, reason. Most members of Renderosity think that I'm not creating the right type of picture. Instead of the visions of heroic beefcakes and sultry babes in fantastic settings, there's just these little bits of ordinary life. Some – in fact most - of the people aren't even very attractive. It Is Wrong. We Will Reject It. And sustained by this hilariously presumptive comparison of myself to the Impressionists spurned by the Paris Salon in the nineteenth century, I continue submitting works to Renderosity.

Of course, there are always exceptions. I have a little band of supporters kind enough to offer comments almost every time. (Though the remarks of several seem to be getting less and less enthusiastic.) More importantly, there are still a number of artists with both talent and imagination in absurd quantities. The sheer size of the site means I've only been able to discover a handful. Here, though, are a few. Visit their galleries to see what can be achieved by rendering.

Jollyself

Absurdly talented, showing what a proper artist can do when she gets her hands on the right software. She has churned out a vast array of images. Most are surreal and many rather disturbing; peeling skin and reconstructed bodies are a favourite. Her output is also a little unsettling. She posts an average of one image a day and most, judging by their quality, must of taken her her a large percentage of that day. It's hard to avoid picturing someone as obsessed as Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.

Magnus 073

Specialises in multi-figured scenes involving children and parents. Can be a bit sentimental at times but generally redeemed by the details in the images, which show a more anarchic world. He seems to run a kind of site service, whereby he listens to an episode from another member's childhood and then illustrates it. If he ever asks me, I'm going to see what he makes of the Murder In The Dark we played at my sister's parties.

Kitzie 21

A great one for retro 20's images. Women in long ballgowns dancing in the arms of their lovers, jazz musicians with their eyes covered by their hats. A bit like something you'd buy from Athena, only good.

Topaz Rose

Like Jollyself, an alarming surrealist with a fondest for figures with peeling skin. Often throws in SF or horror elements (he particularly likes skeletons) to create some very unnerving images. He was also man enough recently to include a rant about the things I've been ranting about – Renderosity is full of talentless copycats. He probably included me in this morass but I included it nonetheless.

Cvrad

Only has a small gallery but it incorporates all sorts. Photography, SF, horror, a few pretty women with big breasts. Worth visiting for his wonderful 'City Blight' series, some of the bleakest and most depressing urban landscapes I've ever seen.

'All Blocked Up'

2009-01-14T14:54:00.000-08:00

A bit of a cheat, this one. What do you do if you're struggling for inspiration? Why, do an image of someone who's struggling for inspiration. Something you can only do once, however, because you can't really get a niche as the 'people struggling for inspiration' artist. This is just done for laughs, of course. The rather cliched pose of the writer. And the props - the Motivation poster, the guide book, the poster of Maya Angelou who I figured might be a heroine to a female black writer - being no good whatsoever. It's come out quite well though and the shine of the monitor, done by shining a very focused spotlight at it, more or less works.

'Babes In The Wood'

2009-01-13T12:01:00.000-08:00

I've done a few children/teenager images though not many. The Daz models rather put me off, getting more and more cartoony as they go down the age scales. And the tendency to over-exagurrate is too great for the 'artist' too. This is my favourite, unsubtle enough in its meaning though I like the different reactions among the characters. It also shows how clothes can influence appearance of age. The slacker in the foreground is the same model as the pair behind him/her but looks years older. The path was made from a photo I took at York's Clifton Ings; the woody background from another taken close by. Both fit into the forest models reasonably well, although you don't have to look that close to see the joins. Incidentally, it's no wonder they are lost. The map they are consulting is of the Helvellyn mountain range in the Lake District, an area not noted for its woods.

'Mid Morning Snack'

2009-01-12T12:03:00.000-08:00

Still the only render I've made without any human figures; even my few landscape ones have them in somewhere. This was done after buying a lot of textures for the Daz Millenium Cat. (A lot of the Daz models are Millenium this-or-that, a boast now dating distressingly.) I was inspired largely because the textures were ridiculously cute. And my subconscious reaction, I now realise, was to show a cat in as uncute a fashion as possible. Still unsure about the sizes. Both the cat and the dragonfly are alarmingly large in their native fashion and I'm not certain I've shrunk them both correctly. And the grass looks crap, but then grass generally does with these programs.

'Sunday Morning'

2009-01-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

Still the favourite of all my images. Trying to create the effect of sunshine through lace curtains, I got two nightie models, stretched them somewhat, put them at the windows and shone lights through them. It maybe isn't completely realistic but I do like the effect. The picture is Peter Doig's 'Architect House In The Ravine.' Hard to say why I like this so much. The lighting came out more or less perfect; and the mood is the ambiguous type that I love. It's just a bit galling that, a year and many images later, I still haven't done anything that I'm as proud of.

Big Night Out (Epilogue)

2008-12-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

Another appearance for 'Mara.' Somebody on Renderosity actually asked me the backstory behind this one. Let's just say it's 'River Walk' an hour or so later; when the large number of bacardi chasers and triple vodkas took its toll. The vomit was, I think, a picture of chillis which I found somewhere on my computer. Most of the effort for this one was spent getting the camera angle right. The bathroom was another model from Poser Nation. As with all small spaces, it was a hell of a job getting the camera back far enough to see the scene, but not so far back you're passing through the wall. I also couldn't take the usual step of deleting the far wall because of the mirror reflection. One day I may make another vomiting picture and this time capture how people actually crouch over toilets, instead of this weird posture I've devised here.

'River Walk'

2008-12-20T13:36:00.000-08:00

Another favourite from my earlier creations. A comment I liked on Renderosity remarked that this pair were the sort you avoid at chucking-out time. Actually they were inspired, in terms of general exuberance if not appearance, by most of the women I've ever been drinking with. Maybe it's a Yorkshire thing. Nick-named Mara and Sophie, they went on to feature in several other images. Sadly they are now lost forever in the faulty hard drive of my last computer. As is the pub facade; which took forever to build and was only used here, where you can barely see it. The trainer sign is one of those in-jokes only I will ever find funny, so I won't bother explaining it.

'Christmas Morning'

2008-12-20T05:28:00.000-08:00

A rather more cheerful offering this Yuletide, after last year's Gloom-A-Thons. It's loosely based on the chaotic Christmases we have every two years at my sister's. Though you'd have to throw in a few more people and quite a lot more mess to get close to those sessions. Even as it is, this one took forever to build. It also suffered the same curse as all my multi-figure images: as time drags on you get less and less fussy about perfecting postures and expressions. I think, though, that only the boy in the foreground has turned out poorly. Incidentally, I am not the maungy bugger in black nursing a hangover. My general demeanour is more like Grandad messing about with the children. Though philosophically obliged to be cynical towards it, I do love Christmas.

'Nativity'

2008-12-14T06:16:00.000-08:00

The second of my 2007 Gloomy Christmas images. Also a good example of idea being let down by execution. The theory is decent enough. A modern day Jesus is born on the streets to immigrant parents; the 'wise men' are two cops and a social worker who promptly whisk him into care. But the figures are all as stiff as hell, particularly the two men. The social worker's feet are also sinking into the ground; a common problem with high heels, which are almost as hard to model as they are to wear. (Although, I hastily add, I've never actually tried the latter.) Only baby Jesus comes out well, happily oblivious to the faults all around him.

'Something Missing'

2008-12-11T13:46:00.000-08:00

Done last Christmas. By now I'd discovered Poser World, a pay site particularly good at props and backgrounds. I still make my own backgrounds from scratch if necessary. But all too often I can't be bothered and use ones built by cleverer people. The one used here is a special Christmas lounge; it was simply a matter of stripping out pretty much everything festive. The pictures are both renders I did seperately and then imported; rather heavy-handed hints as to the thing missing. The book cover, meanwhile, is one I'd already designed for one of my own novels. And if he's reading one of my books, it's no wonder he's looking glum.

'A Fun-Filled Year In Finance!'

2008-12-07T01:16:00.001-08:00

A more recent composition, to break with the rather pointless chronology of this blog. The background is based on my own little corner of Hudson House, York, though it's probably a common scene. Someone on Renderosity even accused me of sneaking into her own office. The point, of course, is conveying the passage of the seasons through little details while the office drones continue with their identical tasks regardless. I suppose I could claim a statement about modern alienation from nature. But it's basically just done for laughs. The heavy-handed sarcasm of the title is probably unnecessary, but that's never stopped me from heavy-handed sarcasm before.

What The Hell?

2008-12-05T12:45:00.000-08:00

A big problem with writing novels as a hobby is that the first question people ask is, “Have you been published yet?” If you haven't, you can spend as much time as you like explaining how you write for the intrinsic love of it, and it still won't matter. You still end up sounding like a loser. A big problem with using Daz or Poser as a hobby is that most people don't know what you're talking about. And there's no easy way to describe the activity or even an agreed term for it. Some use “3D modelling”, which sounds too much like something done by men with beards who hang around Games Workshop. Others prefer “rendering”, conjuring up visions of a particularly gruesome process carried out in abattoirs. I favour “computer aided art,” rather pompous but that never holds me back. Or more usually, “that kind of, you know, drawing thing I do on my computer.”

And what the hell is it anyway? Well, rendering takes place initially on a virtual three dimensional canvas. Things are loaded onto this canvas. Each has various dials attached which determine various aspects of their being. In this sense, it is literally drawing by numbers. There are three basic types of said 'things.' The cameras control what is seen, generally called Point of View. (POV; and not to be confused with that distressing BBC programme once hosted by Anne Robinson.) You can make them move up and down, side to side, focus in and pan back, whirl around to look from any angle. The lights, obviously, determine how something is illuminated, and what angles, how brightly, in what shades and the strength of the shadows. And the objects are basically everything which makes up your image.

Objects can be whatever size you choose, whatever dimensions. Unless you are a design genius you tend to buy or crib a lot of the more complex ones already built. But you can fashion some from the basic cubes and spheres which come with Daz. Objects can also be placed anywhere you want, one factor making the process tricky. Gravity and solidity have no meaning in this universe. If you aren't careful you get a chair sticking through the floor or hovering half a foot above it. The simpler objects are, in themselves, static. Others are made up of separate parts which can also be manipulated. Perhaps the most complex, and also the starting point of many images, is the human body.

The Daz male and female bodies, called for some reason Michael and Vicky, are split into numerous components – neck, head, feet etc. The versions I grew up with had fifty five different parts though the latest have slightly less, inexplicably choosing to combine thighs and buttocks. You cannot actually split them up. But you can bend each one, twist it, move it from side to side. You can alter the dimensions and choose from a range of basic body types. (Which, inevitably, leads to many teenage artists selecting the biggest knockers possible for their female models). As for the faces... There are a fantastic number of ways in which expressions can be altered. The latest Vicky model has six preset ones: Happy, Sad, Afraid, Disgusted, Angry and Surprised. Presumably Daz considers these to be the basic emotions of humanity. But you can vary these in any number of ways or build your own expression from scratch. Facial features, from the temples to the chin, can also be manipulated at will. Interestingly, the figures start as a classical model of beauty. Each change you make will leave them a little bit uglier. This has to be something to be applauded.

Perhaps I have exaggerated the complexity of the whole exercise. But this is what, for example, the Michael model looks like when you first load it:

(Leaves added for modesty, though in fact they are hiding nothing. Michael is essentially a neuter and if you want genitalia, they have to be stuck on as an extra object.)
It is remarkably difficult to get him to lose all that stiffness, to adopt a posture at all natural. If you want him to, say, hold a mobile phone then you have to place it exactly right in his palm, get all his fingers curved so they are touching the phone without actually shoved into it. Then swing his shoulder and forearm up so the phone is somewhere near his head, a surprisingly tricky task. Then figure out what his other arm, the one not really doing anything, should look like. It isn't drawing properly. It is much easier. But you have to learn some of the same skills to turn a vague idea inside your head into a precise image. And along the way, rather a lot of different parts of the body. I now know what a lacrimal is, for example, and that there really are more muscles in the arm than there needs to be.

The other main part of an object is the surface colour; the texture, as it called. Unless you want the picture to look like it belongs in a children's colouring book, the texture for many objects has to be quite complex too. It is usually an image file done on something like Paintshop and then applied to the object. And the contours have to be exactly right too, otherwise you get weird white gaps appearing everywhere. You can control how opaque the model is too, how glossy it will be. And its reflective qualities, something called refraction, something else called displacement. And so on, until you start wanting to add a physics degree to the art and biology ones you have already had to get. Either that or you just wing it and hope for the best.

Finally, when you have all the objects positioned perfectly, when they are all coloured in right, when the camera angle is correct and the lights are gleaming... You hit Render. This turns the three dimensional model into a two dimensional image. More importantly, into a file which can be read quickly by any other computer in the world, rather than the 0.0001% which also have Daz installed. Or even something which can be printed out, if you are feeling quaint.

Then you peer at your render and finds it look rather different to spectacular figure which you first dreamed. So you go back to Daz, fiddle around with the dials again, bite your lip somewhat; and hit Render again. Then study the amended image, sigh some more, fiddle some more. And so the long night wears on; and so your youth slips away.

'Recovering From (This Week's) Seizure'

2008-12-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

This was my first attempt at serious 'postwork' i.e. dicking about with the image in a Paintshop-style program after rendering. The man and bed were left as they were. The background was messed up in various ways, to try and show how the world around you seems messed up when you're having a seizure. Then the pair were kind of welded together. It doesn't really work. Partly because of the annoying line which persisted around the figure. But mainly because you can't portray a seizure just using jazzy special effects. And the lighting, which makes the mattress glow like a candle, is ludicrous. I tried a similiar thing recently, with a new program and a whole year of experience to back me up. It also didn't work.

The figure originally wasn't supposed to be me. But any epilepsy image I do is going to turn into a self-portrait sooner or later; so eventually I just went for it. Not a bad likeness, though of course I never wear jeans. The dark patch on the mattress is supposed to be drool, an endearing feature of many of my seizures.

Origins

2008-11-30T06:07:00.000-08:00

Three factors led me to the practice generally, if clumsily, known as 'rendering'. One was an increasing interest in visual art. The second was my constant desire, retained since early childhood, to emulate anyone and anything I admire. And the third, hinted at by the title of this blog, was my intrinsic inability to paint or draw. And I mean that. Bottom of the class at art in school and never likely to go anywhere else. An unsteadiness of hand or some imbalance between left and right spheres of the brain or – or whatever. I will never be able to write like Margaret Atwood either, but I can at least knock together a halfway competent novel. And whilst being tone deaf, I could hitch a wagon to the music train briefly by learning the drums. The art thing, though, seemed insoluble.

Of course, in the era of Young – or nowadays, not so Young – British Artists, this shouldn't have mattered too much. Perhaps Damien Hurst or Tracy Emin can't sketch anything more sophisticated than a sun with a smiley face either, and this has never slowed them down. However, these were never the people who inspired me. I have never wanted to pickle sharks or fill houses with concrete, except for laughs. I was always drawn to the serious realists. Caravaggio, Manet, Rembrandt, Hopper, with their pitiless, often cruel depictions of alienation, pride and suffering. Put a mirror to the world, never mind whether or not it enjoys the experience. There was just the small drawback that I couldn't build the mirror.

So, as tends to be my response to any problem nowadays, I turned to computers and the internet. For some time I was aware of three dimensional modelling programs, where the software does most of the serious work and you are left free to tinker around. Or, to put it slightly more charitably, you provide the inspiration and your computer the perspiration. The brand leader is called, rather aptly, Poser. It costs a hilarious amount of money. I was trying to work out how to justify a purchase to my bank balance and soul when I stumbled across a cut-price version called Daz Studio. So cut-price, in fact, that the basic software is free.

This is of course a cunning marketing ploy rather than an act of benevolence by Daz. You end up buying so many add-ons and appliances to get that software to do anything whatsoever that the eventual spend is itself fairly hilarious. But you can't the stuff with you, I suppose. And now I can claim to have one more string on my creative bow. I can study a Brueghel and plan how to rip him off. I can pretend to be an artist.

'Artist and Easel Circa 2007'

2008-11-29T09:57:00.000-08:00

A fun one to create. Just a shame I didn't spend as much time on lighting and background as I did on the props. The juvenile clutter was inspired by my brother-in-law's computer room; he even has a framed map of Middle Earth on his walls. This and other details mark a start of a serious messing about with textures. The Sonic Youth poster was modified from a pirate map model; the Wallace & Grommit mouse map built from scratch. The image on the computer was a screen dump taken from Daz Studio, using the god-awful fairy models you get free with the software. It was supposed to be a parody of the many, many fairy images which clutter up sites like Renderosity. Though most of those artists, unlike myself at this stage, know how to use lighting effectively.

'Hoopoos Spotted At Blackmarsh Reserve'

2008-11-28T14:52:00.000-08:00

This is another early one I quite like. It was inspired by those birdwatching fanatics, my mum and dad. And of course, dad promptly informed me that real bird hides would never have a shelf on the outside. I reminded him what 'artistic license' meant. He didn't pick up on the fact that to get the look right, the man's binoculars were actually protruding several inches into his head. The shadows on the hide were quite a sucessful experiment, putting a bush model out of shot but just in front of the lighting.

'Meantime'

2008-11-23T06:35:00.000-08:00

My first halfway-decent image. I still rather like it, though the lighting's very crude. The grafitti was pinched from a photo on the web, except the York City Football Club bit, but I literally put the wall together brick by brick. I had an image of a single brick on my graphics program. So I had to copy that, paste it next to another, paste it again and again... A truly fun hour or so.

A friend claimed the blond girl's breasts are rather large compared to her body mass. I don't see it myself; and anyway, my main problem with that girl was getting her skirt to cover some of her dignity. An oddity of Daz Studio skirts is that they can't handle sitting postures. If you move the hemline in line with the thighs, chances are that the whole thing will be twisted practically off the body. As it is, too much of the poor girl's buttocks are showing; but it's the best I could do.

The postures copy Edward Hopper's old trick of ensuring figures are never facing towards each other. The title, meanwhile, is lifted from a Mike Leigh film. It's the first of several 'Disaffected Youth' pictures which are part social commentary, part wish fulfilment. I was never a disaffected youth myself. I wasn't always that happy, but was always too shy to sit on street curbs shouting at people.

The First One

2008-11-21T14:53:00.001-08:00

'The Conversation.' The first proper rendering image I did via Daz Studio. The word 'crude' barely does it justice. I had to turn the camera down in the street scene about 45 degrees to disguise the fact that I had absolutely no buildings to put behind the woman. And turn her arm at 90 degrees to her body to get her hand anywhere near her head. Also, try to not look too closely at the brickwork on the right.

It's a split screen thing, in case that isn't obvious. Two images done seperately and then welded together. The slightly obvious meaning is a bright, happy mother chattering over the mobile to her gloomy daughter, who isn't listening. The theme is alienation, of course, but I think we can say it's been done better elsewhere. It was, if nothing else, good practice.