Jackie O'Lantern: Come a Little Closer

Jackie O'Lantern: Come a Little Closer. Cropped version.

I was a little late with my Halloween picture, but I choose to consider myself very early with my 2020 Halloween picture instead.

I came up with the idea for Jackie O'Lantern partially because I studied Halloween pictures at ArtStation, and partially because I wanted to do a Halloween picture with some cross culture connections. In this case, Halloween -Voodoo. The Voodoo influence is not nearly as strong in the finished picture as it was when I started. Well, maybe next time around.

Jackie O'Lantern: Come a Bit Closer. Uncropped version.

Here is the full, uncropped version. This version wont be on Facebook, because if you look closely, you may spot a werewolf nipple. Because it is a female werewolf, Mark Zuckerberg, and presumably a large number of Facebook users, would go bananas if they spotted it.

I built the basic scene in Daz Studio, as I often do. You probably aren't interested in what the image produced by Daz looked like, but I'll show you anyway.

Image rendered by Daz.

As you can see, the original looks quite different.

I am an amateur photographer, not a 3D artist, so I do not build 3D models from scratch. On the other hand, I do a fair amount of kit bashing.

For example, look at the throne Jackie sits in.

The original throne is from Mort Augur, A commercially available 3D scene. I combined the original throne with a new stone texture, then layered three algae and moss textures, added vines, a rock, and a couple of skulls.

The throne has skulls carved from stone in the armrests, but I wanted more detail, and more control over the textures.

Just adding the skulls actually looked fairly good, but I wanted a bit more.

I added a layer of blood, and then a layer of moss on top of that.

When I render a scen in Daz, it usually comes off as looking a little too clean, a little too perfect.

Rendered 3D images often look a little too clean.

After compositing the image in Affinity Photo, where I also added the fire to the pumpkin head, I saved the image.

Then, I used Dynamic Auto-Painter to turn it into a painting.

Image painted with Dynamic Auto-Painter.

I like the painted version a lot. Sometimes, I like the painted version more than I like the more photorealistic end result.

In this case though, I added the painted version as a layer on top of the photo realistic version in Affinity Photo, and blended them together.

Final image, with painted image blended in.

That is it, for now. Be seeing you!