About Weekly #4 picture
Mortze speaking.
I wanted to talk about this picture. Why I felt about doing this and what inspired me.
You surely know that I'm an unconditional fan of Star Wars. My avatar should be evidence enough. But I'm also a huge fan of the Alien franchise (without the Predator mix-up). I genuinely think Alien is one of the best movies ever made, and Aliens, Alien3 and Prometheus are amongst my favorites too. As I get older it seems that this franchise is getting ahead of the Star Wars franchise in my hearth. Maybe my soul is getting darker.
Anyway, I will always be glad to render scenes that emulate the claustrophobic and primitive and feral mood that Alien franchise promotes. It doesn't show much in the games I made so far because these dark themes aren't compatible with erotic material in my modest opinion. But I like them, and I'll always want to work with darker themes.
Finding Miranda ended with an ambiguous dark ambience. Some of you may have been happy seeing Chloe changing sides, being on Xara's heroic team, but what I saw was different. I saw a troubled girl, cornered in darkness, devoid of hope and light, with nothing else than her monsters to face. Nothing else save for Xara, the only thing that she can hold on to. And Xara is about doing the right thing. She may have her troubled past but she stands up fighting the good fight. Whereas Chloe is broken, Xara is strong.
I hoped to portray that.
The lighting was set to show a dual contrast. Between light and dark, and between red and blue.
Xara has more light into her. She has light on her back actualy. She represents the light facing the dark. The blue flame lit of her flamethrower is also an interesting detail, like she is lifting the torch to repeld the darkness. Chloe is in a dark corner, and the only light nearby - the flashlight - is facing away from her. The blue light comes from Xara's side and lightens the room, whereas the red/orange light (associated with alarm lighting) comes from the corridor with the xenomorphs). Note that the beasts are dark and unfocused. It's sad not to focus on the xenomorph (what a beast!) but they are accesories in this picture - they represent The Monsters and not xenomorphs particularly.
I also like the dichotomy between Chloe's red hair and Xara's bluish/greenish hair.
This isn't a teaser about things to come in the next game. I don't know much more than you. I've purposely agreed with Tlaero that I'd be kept in the dark regarding the whole plot so that I'd enjoy it as much as you. This is what I've interpreted so far with the games, shorties and other material Tlaero have been releasing about the Elsaverse.
Cheers,
Mortze
Comments (7)
"XARA! Watch where you point that thing!" "Calm down, I know what I`m doing". Very Inspiring, Mortze. Sometimes a single picture triggers a whole story in your head. I always picture the girls in a fantasy setting. Xara as the party leader, a fighting monk of the cult of the all-seeing eye, Miranda as a cleric-prophetess of the all-seeing eye, Elsa as a sorceress, Jessika as a spell-singer (what else?) and Chloe as a seductress-assassin.
OMGosh, Mortze, woah. You just earned every cent I have paid and will pay in the future with this post. You put the Art in what you do. I remove my hat to you, sir. <a href="http://i.imgur.com/MLezO.gif" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://i.imgur.com/MLezO.gif</a> In regards to the darkness discussion the image looks fine to me. I have 2 computers with 2 different monitors (different manufacturers). One is a touch darker then the other but only when you look more closely at the details. These are desktop machines and I haven't noticed an issue with any of the other weekly images. A friend told me a while back that laptops, when not plugged in, dim their monitors a bit to save battery life. I have just been reading up on specular lighting and JFR might be onto something. At least something to tweak and see what you think. <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/vidsums/26c62dd9-c8e1-431f-9ea6-fcad7991044c_text.gif" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://storage.googleapis.com/vidsums/26c62dd9-c8e1-431f-9ea6-fcad7991044c_text.gif</a>
After looking at this again, I am suspecting this is more a problem of contrast than of brightness. The highlights tend to burn out into almost specular white while the shadows tend to fade into darkness close to full black. As an example, in the original #3 I saw Sarah's face as burned in white with little detail and Sylvia's as almost full black. My adjustments brought out Sylvia but also toned down Sarah so I could see details in both.
Frankly, all of the "Weekly Pictures" have been too dark in places for me except the first one. I brightened up both Jessika in the "red room" and SeraB+Sylvia in bed, too. With Jessika in the red room, I couldn't even see her legs at all until I opened up the shadows - and they are one of her best features. :-) The "scissors" with Sarah and Sylvia was also too dark in places to appreciate until I did some work on it. You aren't the only one. I have to adjust some of Wolfschadowe's images as well. Not all by any means, only the ones that are intended to be dark, such as a dark bar or club scene. I see the same with yours. Almost all of the game images are fine. It is only the "dark and moody" scenes that seem to get a little too dark in the shadows. The whole image is not usually too dark, only the shadow areas. My process to correct it usually involves brightening the shadows and darkening the highlights a little to balance them out and then tweaking the contrast, noise reduction and sharpening. The NR and sharpening is just for my taste, not really needed. I don't know if this helps you but is my experience.
Are there other pics that you've found too dark? I understand monitor calibration is a serious issue for a 3d artist. I'm always concerned if the picture I make would be too dark or bright for others. But for this particular picture it looks ok on my laptop. which uses to be the checkpoint for me.
I don't want to make this sound like criticism. I like the image. But it is so dark on my monitor that I really couldn't see details. This may be an adjustment issue on my laptop, although I do keep it calibrated for photo processing. I had to import the image into Photoshop so I could brighten up the shadows a bit in order to see everything. Once I did that, I could see the really dramatic pose of Chloe cowering in the corner while Xara faces whatever is coming through the door. Once I could see everything, the image really jumped out and created a "story in my mind." And confirmed once again just what a bad ass is our Xara.
its dark for me too