really impressive stuff ! it seems you get alot of fun from zb3 
i personally love creepy stuff and the image i like the most is that posed skeleton you posted some day ago. really great pose!
Thanks everyone.I had to work on the weekend as I will for the next few days at least ,so I probably wonāt be posting as much.
Neimoid I believe that the image you were referring to is the one that I totally ripped off the pose from a Bouguereau painting. I donāt recall the title of it , but I did a copy of the painting for my wife so I will attach an image of that painting so you can see how I ripped it off.
A lot of the other poses for the skeleton figures were stolen from Gustave Dore.
hyper1 actually Iām in heaven playing with 3.0 .
I do tend to like creepy dark images but not the real thing.I canāt look at real gore or hurt people without passing out. Long dead things donāt bother me as much. I do own a number of skulls and skeletons and find them fascinating.
Threetails,When I saw the thumb nail of the La Specola image I thought that someone was ripping me off, when I opened up the image I realized how much I was ripping that stuff off. Yes I have the book and I recently went there and took a million photos. From the book I thought that there was a whole bunch of plague victims in wax, but in fact it is only one miniature diorama very cool still. An image from that book inspired me to do a still life which I will also include here .It is Modo render only zb was used on the skull.
Noggin, cool photo where did it come from?
Crusoe the painter, I havenāt seen Barlows book but did see some of the paintings on exhibit. I like Barlows work but these werenāt my favorites.
Billrobertson, You do have nutty thoughts you better stop looking at my stuff.
markkens, I donāt sketch stuff out. Many times in fact ,almost always I just start out not knowing what I am going to do and see where it leads, usually down a dark twisted path,the funny thing is people think when you do dark twisted images that you are a psycho killer or something actually, I am very much a pacifist I donāt even kill spiders or bugs when they are in my house I will catch them and take them out side and feed them to the demon that I have chained up to protect my house. Seriously I abhor violence and had hope that in my life time I would see man evolve past the point of being violent and having wars ,but Iām afraid that that is not going to happen. As a parent when I hear of the people dying on both sides it brings me to tears. will humankind ever learn to live in peace?
I think if everyone in the world was creative ,the world would be a more peacefully place.
Maybe ZBrush should be given to all of the worlds occupants and they would be so busy playing that they wouldnāt want to fight each other.
your work has a flavour all its own no matter the insperation, artists are filters of life, and memory is flawed, its one of the great advantages of being human, the varied, flawed perseptions of perfection are what make artist work special unto themselves, and thats what makes art, artā¦some people have just evolved or refined there filter to a 10,000 micron dual filter with a uv inhancment packageā¦:lol:
Very nice pcās. Iāve never worked with modo, just ZB, the renders look good.
monstermaker, not to mention that killing a spider means bad luck (If youāve read Adventures of Tom Sawyer:))
Iām for peace too. But about: āpeople think when you do dark twisted images that you are a psycho killer or somethingā well you know that saying āthereās no smoke without fireā so:)ā¦
I hope you donāt mind.
BTW, I can relate to how you feel about depictions āfantasticā (as in unrealistic) violence v.s. anything that appears realistic. The dark and out of this world stuff can be enjoyable if itās not done in absolute poor taste. However, I donāt have much of a tolerance for anything that seems like it could happen in real life.
I think if everyone in the world was creative ,the world would be a more peacefully place.
Right on Rick!
Weād also spend our time doing what some say our real job isā¦creating beautyā¦ that reflects the beauty, which surrounds us in the natural world!
If everyone was creative, they could make better and more deadly weapons. Only healthy brains with suspictiousness against religions, authorities, spoken words or fake images can help us. Pfff, there is a lot more to say about primates with brainsā¦
Ahhh I see, so you can move limbs around. That sounds like fun 
Canāt wait to try this.
Another nice image by the way bet heād be good at football
Pete B
Hey these later pieces are starting to get into the feeling of beksinski. I dont know if you know his work. he has been an inspiration for years. I have a few of his pieces, we traded some work before he died.but this is the piece i was thinking ofā¦ as always beautiful work. hopefully iāll be posting soonā¦
tomas
I really like the last pic you posted, Rick. So dark, but so visually intriguing. Great style. Going into my inspiration folder.
Jamie
T.S.Wittelsbach, I was thinking the same thing, Beksinski is one of my favorites. You actually own original artworks, not just reproductions? wow
Great work Rick!
yeah I was lucky to meet him and we hit it off. I am blessed I own 5 of his paintings. He liked my sculpture so we traded work.
I was destroyed when he was killed. it blew me away he was supposed to come to LA later that month. I was making him a piece based on a barlow painting. havent finished it, it reminds me of him every time I start.
he was masterful and he will be missed. Iām glad other people know him and love his work.
Tomas
Firstly I am not one of those that may regard Bakers work as some sort of depressed or morbid or dark form of art. It is in fact very simple and yet well made art and has many precedences in the history of art. To represent the āfeelingsā one has about, lets say violence, by corpses and such in various poses was also used by Dante and is well seen in the great sculpture āThe gates (doors) of hellā which is in a museum in New York (sorry I can not remember which museum - it may be the Frick).
The human condition has been plagued by violence and death ever since the beginning whenever that was. The fact that makes human violence so interesting is that we have the ability to think, recognise, remember and use these to assess our surroundings and yet we still have war and continue our inhumanity to ourselves. This has been the subject of countless artworks and literature. Monstermaker has stated that he has a great problem with this and that he is (I read between the lines here) very dissapointed by the present realities. I assume he refers to such present day conflicts as Darfur, Congo, Chechnia, Nigeria, Iraq and Afghanistan. All these places are areas where poor people with little wherewithall and bad religion have been oppressed by small groups of criminal and greedy people. Nothing new here. The end result is that a lot of people are killed and maimed.
Death is not particular - it is the same for all. A car accident will produce the same result as the guy who falls asleep with a burning cigarette. The way in which we deal with this is the definition of our own state of perception.
I personally am not seriously upset by the death of people, and that does not mean that I do not recognise that death will be very upsetting for close relatives and friends of any person affected. It also does not mean tha I am not affected by such an event as has happend a few times in my own life.
What it does mean and here we come to the point of these thoughts is that the manner in which we approach our existence defines our inner self.
Even though the desire to see perfection may be there it is the realist that sees the world for what it is and it is the realist that supports the survival of his āOWNā as a prime mover of his actions. A case in point would be the present situation that the western world finds itself in, in regards to the Islamofascist militant terror. I am strongly opposed to these fools and support any action that stands against them which immediately means that I support tha action of the US and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is not a pretty thing but the cost of freedom and our western lifestyle is painfull and always has been. I like our western ways although we have ugliness within it like arms trading etc. It is important to recognise on which team one plays and where ones loyalties are.
Our family was persecuted by the Russians (my grandfather was murdered by the Stalinist regime in a Gulag in Siberia, my father and uncle fought in the Hungarian revolutions of 48 and 56 and had to flee to the US to SURVIVE) and it is close to me. So where do I see the evil?
I see it in people who will not face reality and hide their heads in the sands of denial and in the sands of dreams and in the sands of self created art that allows them to escape from the truth. If showing evil and death is an artform then creating beautiful imagery is a weapon against evil just as powerful.
Creating monsters and images of death in many ways is self perpetuating and runs the risk of dimming the memmory of beauty and glory. So when people do their artwork I hope these thoughts may be of interest to their decision process.
Zoopi
Very interesting how the works of two great artists converge with the help of the wonderful ZBrush 3.
Absolutely amazing thread!!!
ā¦and donāt forget to buy the book :" The fantastic Art Of Beksinski" in the "masters of fantastic art "serie from Morpheusā¦since we not all have the luxery of having an original Beksinski !
And i wonder what he would have made of ZBrush , since he was experimenting with digital media in his later years ?
jantim
Frenchy, thanks for posting that Beksinski link.
markkens
I think all this new stuff is looking great Rick. Really inspiring work.
I too believe that beauty can be found in very different subjects. Something that looks ugly for some people have always some beauty on it because everything is part of life (even death), part of the human experience. People normally turn their heads when looking to something shocking represented in an image but, strangely enough, those very same people are also the curious ones when they look at an actual car accident and, for some strange reason, they want to see whatās going on. If someone is dead, hurt, alive, fine. I think all human beings are curious about the mysteries of life and death and itās our job, as artists, to explore every subject that matters to us, revealing the beauty in the most different ways. I think your work is beautiful and sincere because you really like this subject and you search for answers, as everybody constantly does. So, keep doing what you do, inspiring and making us think about what really matters in life.
-Kris
I agree with Antropus aboveā¦
art is the mirror of life, only through the exposure of the horrific in the safe a detached manner of art can some begin to open up to the horror around or in side themselves. art has always been used as a naming device for the unnameable events in our lives. from before language we have drawn or scratched on to the wall of caves the things that scare the hell out of us to try to gain power over them. Any art is only what you bring to it. in a gallery there may be a door with exit written on it one passes it and thinks it an existential statement about our condition another uses it to leave the show. everything is subjective.
Tomas