A Gold Tooth Named "Cedric"; Rats Instead Of Children; Some Methodology.

Rats Instead of Children?

Hello, thanks for looking at these.

They came about from doodles while I was chatting on the phone. Something that Coreopsis planted in my small brain.

I thought I might need a 'view' out the window one day, so I conjoured some up. They are variations on four different houses placed across a landscape, then treated differently in post processing. I've also thrown scattered lights at them to get some variations in the lighting, to dapple it up a bit - so to speak.

This is how I work. When I'm not doing an illustration I will be getting things ready for a future illustration. Like making an ugly child, in case I need one in the future. Or a cute dog with a silly hat....

About the Images:

The bottom left hand image is an example of what the render might look like a small amount of fiddling. (A 'render' is the image that I produce with my 3d modelling program.)

Initially, with the views over the house tops, I aimed for that French village feel that you might find round Haute Provence or maybe Languedoc (Language of  Oc .. isn't that amazing).

But of course I had that moon and a few birds just wanting to get into the pic, so there is a Japanese feel in some of them. Blame Hokusai. :)

For images 5 and 6, I thought I would change the weather a wee bit.

To make the rain? If you havn't seen a tut, here's one. In photoshop, fill a new top layer with black, render some 'noise' then do a motion blur at the correct angle to make the rain drops. This will stretch the dots of noise into small rectangles. Change the layer parameter to 'screen' - then play with the contrast and opacity settings to brighten up the drops. Duplicate the layer, shift it a little so that it is not lined up with the original layer,fuzz it slightly, and you will have depth to the rain. You can also use the threshold filter to make it even more black and white if necessary.

The third image down has a mud texture overlayed in a new layer - I think it's parameter is 'overlay". Just for fun. It adds another dimension - a muddy dimension.

As far as the layout of the images. Sorry about that. It's the best I can do with blogger ..... ugh. :)

The two images below this text you are reading at the moment are early work on the Pied Piper. The surf was pretty good today, so I didn't have enough time to do the children following him. I did rats instead.

Rats instead of children?

Who would have thought?

Of course I made the big mistake of not putting his instument in his mouth. I wanted that marching band feel.

Oh well.... He had a tambourine as well, but that didn't last long!

The rats were fun todo, but the little blighters won't keep still....

If you are wondering how to do the rats as they are?

In my three d program I have four different rat models that I have placed in different poses on the landscape. Then I make a copy of the landscape in 3d and use what we call a surface replicator to replicate instances of those four rats over the landscape surface. I can make the random in size and angle, but cannot change the original poses.

I then make the landscape invisable and 'render' the rats en masse against a transparent background -so it is like blue screening on television. I then bring the render of the rats into my image which just has the pied piper and trees and  ground in it. I place a few different renders of the rats en masse around the Pied Piper and erase those that look a bit weird. I have probably used five layers of rats, one upon the other. I then adjust the lighting and contrast and colour to make them 'sit' better with the original work.

If you look closely some of the rats have missing heads, or two heads if they are lucky.

I think there are about eight hundred rats, but you can't see them all because I have cropped the scene quite visciously.

There is also one Rat with a gold tooth named Cedric somewhere near the back....

Bet you never heard of a  gold tooth named "Cedric" before?