Warning: Nudity up ahead, so if you’re at work, you might not want to scroll down.

Okay, so I foiled it again with the regular postings. I’ve been put to task for that many times already, so here I am, trying to make up for it.

Here we have the drafts I sent for a book cover I did some time ago—Deanna Lee‘s Still Waters, A Kyra Moray Mystery. Like the original Charming the Snake version, where I promised I would show my process for that style, it’s a Poser-Bryce-Photoshop creation.

Draft 1 – The Poser Render

This is probably the least fun part of the process for me as I’m really not all that comfortable working with Poser. I know a lot of Poser artists who can churn the renders out every hour or so, complete with backgrounds, props, characters that are clothed, coifed, and posed, and set lighting all included, their libraries so comprehensive and their workflow so well refined that all it takes is a bunch of clicks and tweaks, and voila: Poser art.

Me, I take forever in this stage. The posing kills me because I do it practically from scratch every time. I always try to start with a library pose, but I never have anything that is remotely close to what I want, and I am completely anal about making the pose look as natural as possible, checking everything from all angles, zooming in, zooming out. I pay special attention to the hands and the face, and I look out for the models’ “center of gravity” to make sure they look properly balanced. Posing one model is hard enough; posing two is three times harder. Bear in mind that I don’t even bother with the clothes, which makes it four times harder, or props, which makes it five times harder. And did I mention hair? Heck, I do it all in post to spare me the grief.

In the time it takes a good Poser artist to make an image complete with a setting, costumes, make-up, and hair, with the models all posed in a clinch and lit in a golden light, I manage to create a render of two bald and naked Poser models in default lighting against an awful gray background. I am so … damn … good.

For absolutely nothing.

The Poser artist is done at this point. Me, I’ve only just begun.

Draft 2 – The Bryce Render

Okay, so I lied. I don’t actually render from Poser at all. What I do is export the models, in their poses, as an .OBJ file, which I then import from Bryce, where I am just slightly more comfortable. Here is where I then texture the models, create their environment, and light them. This draft is a render from Bryce, after I created a water plane and a 2D plane for the rain image I created in Photoshop. The texturing of the models in Bryce is a pain in the ass, as it requires selecting all the different body parts and finding the texture files—lots of minutiae and tweaking involved. The actual rendering, at high resolution, could take up to an entire day, which means leaving the computer alone while I find other things to do.

While I’m in Bryce I also render two alpha masks—one for the man and another for the woman. Each render takes less time than the first render because only two colors are involved—black and white. The alpha masks are so I can easily isolate the models when I paint in Photoshop—in case I need to tweak their color or copy them to a new layer.

Draft 3 – The Postwork in Photoshop

For me, this is the fun part of the process—painting hair and clothes in Photoshop. A lot of artists who use the same programs I do will smudge the render to make it look painterly, so that it matches the clothes and hair that they’ve painted in. Me, I’m so silly, I do it the other way around. I keep the render sharp, and I paint the clothes and hair to match, making them as sharp and as detailed as the render as I can.

Even more fun is the creation of all the effects and ambiance. Again, more Photoshop—I really couldn’t explain how I do my work at this stage as there’s no single set of techniques I use; I use them all, as needed, and I create new ones whenever necessary. But I typically end up with a lot of layers set with various blending options and at various opacities, using masks, paths, layer styles, groupings, and what have you. Everything you’ve seen in my tutorials section? Those are just the tip of the very tip of the iceberg. I use all that and more.

The Final Draft

And voila. The final, after feedback from Loose Id‘s Allie and a nod from the author—slightly different from the previous draft in that the couple is much closer (a simple crop) and the man is much darker (thank goodness for alpha masks, this was just a simple Curves tweak). I’ve also added a glistening wetness on their skin because, hell, they’re in the rain and it seemed the right thing to do.

And that, my friends, is how I do a Poser cover.

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