First attempts

[voodoodad]

Corey; Thanks! I'll address your tips here

1. The color of the forcefields. /sigh That's my color blindness showing through, once again. I'll fix that soon in either the original model or in Photoshop. Thanks for pointing that out cuz I never would've spotted it myself.

2. I didn't have a lot of time yesterday due to a family emergency, but I did try messing around with the lightcap strength and shadow settings and kept either ending up with pretty much what you see or a totally washed out model with no shadows on top at all. I'm going to study up more on lightcap shadows and in the meantime I'll just darken them a little in PS.

3. Those pinlights are something I definitely want to do and I really wish there were a way to do that directly in Zbrush. But I'll figure out how to do it in PS for sure and post here as soon as possible. Thanks for bringing this up, as that's one of the details I originally wanted and totally forgot about.

4. The fighter idea is great. I'll play around with that one too!

Ericshawn and Ezra; Thanks guys!

Glenn; Thank you so much, man! That's another thing I didn't even think about! See below.

Took Glenn's IDEA (caps intentional for the awesomeness of the tip) and ran with it! It created a (in my opinion) much more subtle but at the same time more dramatic backgound. Five total minutes in PS and this is what I have now:

[voodoodad]

That's right! I LIKED the lens flares in the latest Star Trek movie!

[voodoodad]

Testing the addition of some navigation type lights. Not sure if I'm satisfied with them. Tell me what you guys think.

[voodoodad]

Updates for today; (so far)

All current updates done in Photoshop.

1. Added lens flare effect to star directly behing the ship to enhance its brightness.

2. Added some nav lights. May edit those.

3. Darkened entire ship overall, hopefully enhancing the shadows.

4. Combined the galaxy background with the nebula, totally changing the background and enhancing its effect.

[voodoodad]

Added some more lighting and reduced the images size to preserve image quality.

[coreyschroeder]

Really love the edits to the ship and the background.
The lens flare just peeking over the edge of the ship is a very nice touch.

I keep seeing all of these crazy guns on your ship, and secretly wish they were shooting down some crazy alien destroyer..

Keep it up Gary, your skill increases every time you post on ZBC, I swear...
Corey

[voodoodad]

Thanks Corey. I started out with the idea of making a naval type battleship combine with a sleek space battlecruiser. That's where the back half of the ship and the guns come from. I hit pretty close to the mark of what was in my head I think. At some point, I'll turn her around and show the details on the engines. All credit goes to ThePriest and his fantastic insert brushes on those.

Who knows, maybe one of those alien destroyers will show up one of these days!

[voodoodad]

Since I know a little more about lighting now, I decided to take one more pass on the mech. I think it turned out fairly well.

[voodoodad]

For my next "first attempt" I'm roughing out a car design. I'm skeert!

[EZRA52]

Those are great renders of the spaceship and mech Voodoodad and good luck with the car.

Ezra

[SpiritDreamer]

Hey VoodooDad...Excellent.....That deeper and richer color on the space ship really makes the image pop now, and also ties it together nicely with the background enviroment..Great job there..
Luv what you've done to improve the tie in with the enviroment on your robot machine also..Huge improvement..funny how all of those suble effects of light/shade and shadow can really enhance a piece....
Just a passing thought on my part here about the robot machine piece...don't know if it will be useful to you, but think it worth mentioning, just in case it may be...The large white areas on the right side of the composition really catch my eye every time I view the piece...wishing that there were a little more depth in that right side of the composition..Maybe something subtle in that area..grey distant silver clouds in an atmospheric perspective with maybe a bird or two flying back into the scene, heading towards the machine..something subtle and almost subliminal that will carry the viewers eye back into the scene,..countering the end of the guns carrying the viewer out of the scene and composition..Like I said..just thoughts crossing my mind as I view your excellent creation and work..
Anyway VoodooDad...Keep up the Fantastic progress..Really enjoying seeing it evolve here in your thread..
Glenn

[voodoodad]

Thanks, Ezra.

Another great idea, Glenn. That really is a lot of dead real estate in that area. There's an idea or two already rattling around my brain now. I'll try to roll on that sometime this coming week.

I made some pretty big mistakes in the initial construction of that first car which couldn't easily be fixed, so I started over with a more basic style and this is the progress for today. It's based on the '32 Stutz Super Bearcat.

[voodoodad]

Running with Glen's idea (sort of). I do need some advice on this one. First and foremost, is the whole concept of using the ruins of the WTC an offensive one? What I mean to say is, almost 3000 people died at this location and even though it's a heartfelt attempt on my part to convey some meaning, it still feels a little sacrilegious to use an image of that day for the purpose of creating a simple piece of artwork.

Secondly; what do you guys think about the overall composition? I started out with the mech dead center of the image, but it covered up quite a bit of the devastation in the background, and it just didn't feel right to me. I think it flows pretty well, but my sense of composition is anything but spot-on and I would appreciate any advice concerning this.

Lastly; the details. I did a virtual ton of editing on the image of the WTC to remove construction workers, extraneous lights and such. I also changed the tone, contrast and colors of both images to make them blend together better. But with my partial color-blindness this is probably my weakest area. I also would like to know what you all think about the edit job itself. I used the clone-stamp tool extremely heavily on the rubble and want to know if you think the patterns are too repetitive or if there are areas that just don't look right. I'm going to add a layer of misty smoke around the mech and between it and the rubble to add some depth and I'll need to do some additional work around some of the edges of the mech to remove a few leftover pixels from the original background.

[KC-Production]

Really cool artwork, totally love the mech robot design.
Are these all made in zbrush? The hardsurface robots?
Looking forward seeing more from you,
Peace
Kenny

[voodoodad]

Thank you Kenny. Yes, all the models here are completely done in Zbrush. Most of the parts are started in shadowbox, taken to a high resolution dynamesh for major edits then finished off with details at a high subdivision level. And I'm relearning Photoshop for major post work right now.

Glad you like them! Gary