Fourth paperback book cover

Good News Everyone (as Professor Farnsworth of Futurama would say).
I now have four cover designs in print.
"The Women of the English Civil War" by Margaret Cooper Evans is now available in paperback.
Margaret was photographed over 3 hours in four different 17th Century guises, I then used Photoshop to combine the best images, scale, colour balance and add sunlight and shadows to the two images that were taken when the sky went out. The shadow is faked in Photoshop and the background is a photograph of a painting of the Great Fire of London that can be found in the Museum of London.

There are 40 images inside. Most are photographs taken by myself or the author. I then touched them up and made them print ready.

For those interested there are the three covers for Abbadon called
"Century of the Soldier" and "Monarchies of God" by Paul Kearney. I also created the elements for "Uprising: Heirs of the Demon King" by Sarah Cawkwell (though a designer at Abbadon put them together in a better arrangement than I did, so kudos to them!)

Just realised. I didn't blog about that cover, so here it is.

The crown is a computer graphic made in 3DS Max. The flag was originally created by Abbadon and given to me to make a high res version then I put it on a latice and used a cloth simulation and wind effector to get the ripples (that can barely be seen)

Halloween in Overdown: The fifth Hilary Long book cover

Halloween in Overdown (Part 1)

We took a range of photographs at Charlecote House a month before Easter. There was a range of brilliant squashes and pumpkins in the garden shop and it is one of those that makes the background.

There was quite a bit of re-touching and copying of pumpkin elements from some of the other photos.
On a separate image of a skull (cribbed off the internet) I drew over it to make an evil skull. This was then copied over the pumpkin and the blending mode changed so that it darkened and made it look like the pumpkin had been carved but not lit from the inside.

Since the character this represents smokes a cigar, the last element is a c.g. cigar and smoke effect done in 3DS Max with the smoke being comped from a photograph.

Movember time again!

So I had this great Dick Dastardly / Laughing Cavalier type moustache and then Movember rolls round again and I had to shave it off (yah boo sucks!)
Anyhoo, here is an animated gif of the disappearing 'tache...

If you would like to donate I will promise not to send this animated gif to your work email account (see, I told you it was a Dick Dastardly tache !)
If you don't know what Movember is all about, shame on you! It is kind of like the male version of the womens "Race for Life" but with much less effort and a lot less pink.
Here is my Mo page
http://mobro.co/andrewthechapevans
Here is the Movember info page
https://uk.movember.com/about/foundation

Women in the English Civil War Book Cover

Very happy with how my latest commission came out. It took a half day photo shoot of the author in four different guises and many different poses. The best one of each was then carefully cut out, exposures and white balance corrected, then highlights were painted on the two that were taken when the sun was behind the clouds. Can you tell which ones they were?

Then they were sized and arranged, the shadow created and then places on the background which is a photograph of a painting in the Museum of London that is actually of the Great Fire of London, but I think it suits the “world in flames” feel of the English Civil War.

The book is called “The Women of the English Civil War” it is by Margaret Cooper Evans, and will be on Amazon soon as both a Kindle e-book and a real life paperback .

Links here

Margaret's Amazon Author page is

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Margaret-Evans/e/B008MUN09S

If you want to find out more about the author you can read her blog here

http://margaret-evans-author.blogspot.co.uk/

Evolution of a character

A quick update to the Evil Genius Online thread (I really must get on and do that page!)
Here is Jet Chan. He was a character in the original game so I took the original mesh and skeleton and optimised the heck out of it. He actually ended up on a much simpler skeleton to the one on the left, but I'll go into that later. This was used in our Flash / Flare3D game.

We then needed 2D artwork for the menus where he interacts with you, the game user. To do this I made a whole new high resolution mesh, put him on a very complex skeleton with facial animation rig and ten twist bones per forearm etc. He was then put into twenty plus poses for approval by the powers that be. The top five were then given to a very talented paintover artist we used to have here called Randolph. He produced the finished image (on the right). This was done for the eight main characters. Some had only three paintovers. Penny, however, had ten images done this way.
Click the image for a larger version.

XM655 The loudest Vulcan :-)

Had a marvelous time at Wellesbourne Wings and Wheels show this weekend.
As well as a stunning display from the Rolls Royce owned Spitfire and a bonkers display from the Eagle 2 Muscle Plane, the XM655 Maintenance & Preservation Society (proud member) did two slow taxi runs and two fast taxi runs. Thirty feet away from 84,000 lbs of thrust certainly is loud!
Then, at the end of the day the Vulcan to the Sky XH558 gave a wonderful display to close the show.
I will be adding a new page soon with some photos and videos. Here is a piccy to put you on 'til then.

Wellesbourne Airfield is under threat from a housing developer. If the airport closes there is no way to get XM655 out so she will have to be cut up and scrapped. Please don't let this happen, To paraphrase the "Heros" T.V. programme "Save the Vulcan - Save the World!"
Join the Wellesbourne matters organisation to save the airfield - it only costs 50p (larger donations gladly accepted) - Go on: You can afford it!

Maya is a pair of Jimmy Choo's

If 3D software is like a pair of shoes then to me, 3DS Max is like a pair of old trainers. You know, a bit ratty around the edges and it trips me up every now and then, but I know it. I am comfortable with it. Autodesk Maya is like a new pair of Jimmy Choo's. For some folk that means it will be perfect. For me though, it may be stylish, a bit bewitching and slightly aspirational, but it is also spikey and a bit uncomfortable. It is taking a bit of wearing in, but I'll get there; I always do.

This will be my sixth major piece of 3D software and to be honest, none of them are "perfect". Not Symbolics S-World; not Alias Power Animator; not Softimage; not Lightwave; not 3DStudio Max; and not Maya either.

All I want is some software that actually does what it claims it is about to do and not something where I have to randomly guess at the correct settings and already know where the hidden tick box is that makes it "work".
For an example I give you this tutorial.