Indigo Dynamo: The Deep End, Pages 34 & 35

I missed a day's update a few days back so you get two images today. I like how menacing the villain looks in the second one. Cheers! Enjoy the long weekend, Canucks and Yanks!

Indigo Dynamo: The Deep End, Page 33

First off, in case you're wondering where the Cowhide Corsair went, he's off-camera putting his pants back on. A man's gotta have priorities. And standards.

Here is a bonus version of this image, captured from a different perspective.

Indigo Dynamo: The Deep End, Part 32

Okay, I'm cheating a little bit. I acquired some content to add tears. Couldn't resist using it; I think the moment calls for it.

Indigo Dynamo: The Deep End, Part 31

Once again I've had to be inventive. DAZ Studio also doesn't come with any "sweat maps" to apply to the figures, so I've raised the glossiness on Indigo Dynamo's skin to simulate the appearance of a film of perspiration.

Indigo Dynamo: The Deep End, Page 30

Indigo Dynamo: The Deep End, Page 29

I gotta tell ya, getting two figures to interact like this in Studio is a lot of work. So take a moment to appreciate it, will ya?

Indigo Dynamo: The Deep End, Page 28

Tentacle Trouble

There's a ton of free content for digital art available online and that's great, but it's also overwhelming for a newbie. There's stuff I spot that I know I'll definitely use, stuff that I could possibly see myself using so I may as well get it, and stuff I didn't think I'd ever need but now I'm creating an image or a character and wouldn't you know I need that innocuous little thing so back to ShareCG.com or Renderosity I go.

My routine with this material is to unzip it, copy it to my DAZ Studio library folder, scan that folder to load it into Studio, test it, and if I decide to keep it, I categorize it and sometimes add keywords to make it easier to find later. A bit of a time-consuming process, but worth it.

Every now and then, though, I load something for testing and go, "OOOOO!" Either because it looks really cool and/or it immediately gives me an idea for an image. Such was this case with Ghastly's Organic Restraint Table which you see here. I immediately wanted to see Duster in its clutches. Then I wanted to see her naked in its clutches (of course). Then I thought the scene needed something extra and wouldn't you know it I had previously downloaded these wonderful free tentacles and now we're off to the races and so much for loading and testing anymore new, free content today.

The tentacles require a lot of work. I found the best way to give them a truly natural, organic look is to select and pose each individual segment—and each tentacle has 20 of those. Fortunately they look even more organic when each segment has a slightly different twist, bend, or kink. I shudder to think of the day when I'll employ them as mechanical or robotical mechanisms, though, because I know for that too look good each tentacle should have a nice, smooth, orderly curve. That's gonna be a lot of work but I know one day I'll create an image that will require it.

The other free content on display here is the "chunky monkey" item from the free version of Squarepeg3D's Sticky and Stickier Messes. Very clever to market those items as "food". Yeah. Uh-huh.

I considered posting this on Deviant Art but I thought it would be pushing at the boundaries of their community guidelines. So here it is. I don't have a story around the image (yet); I don't even know where Duster is, but I'd say Japan would be a safe bet.

Indigo Dynamo: The Deep End, Page 27

Even with just implied penetration this would violate DA's guidelines, so that's why we're all here.

Creating Duster, Part 3

Once I had settled on Victoria 6 as the base figure for Duster I then had to go get some more tools. In particular I had to spring for the Genesis 2 Female Morphs Bundle from DAZ Studio so I could delve into shaping her body and especially her face. I had tried using SickleYield's conversion for G2F of DieTrying's 182 V4 morphs but I could see they weren't going to get me all the way there.

I won't bore you with all the details of shaping Duster's face because it took awhile and got me into the minutia of tweaking morphs in DAZ Studio. This video helped me by providing some overall principles to follow and techniques to use. I went back and forth between my substantial collection of Candy Loving photos (ahem, obsess much?) and Studio, getting as close as I could.

Here's where I eventually arrived. 

Pretty close, if I do say myself. Most importantly she looked attractive and had a distinctive look that was close to how I've described her in my writing. One of the key points of advice in the video I mentioned above was to focus on two or three significant features and get those as close as possible, then get the others close enough. This makes sense; humans mainly focus on a small number of facial features to recognize each other. So I focused on her lips (especially ensuring that the upper lip was bow-shaped and the lower one thicker), the eyes, and the nose (and the area around it, especially just below the eyes).

I made some decisions based on aesthetics; an adjusted morph was accurate but it looked better in a render when set to a different value. For example, Ms. Loving's eyes are actually smaller, but in Studio Duster looked better with bigger eyes. And when I considered that I'd be partially concealing those eyes a lot of the time behind a shaded visor, making them bigger to ensure they didn't lose their expressiveness made sense. And when I applied a skin shader, this happened:

Look in particular at the area just below her eyes. Suddenly she aged ten years! Well, that wouldn't do. I went back to adjust her nose and cheek morphs to smooth all of that out. This was challenging since it wasn't really visible in Studio's Wrapped Texture view where you do most of your work. I had to make a change, perform a partial or even a complete render, then go back and tweak things some more.

Eventually I got there.

Ah, yes, the hair. I'll grant that since Ms. Loving was Miss January 1979 her hairstyle is a bit dated, definitely mired in between the Farrah Flip of the 70s and the big hair 80s. Nevertheless she rocks it and I wanted a similar style. But of course the vast majority of hair available for Studio follows current fashions, so I'd set quite a challenge for myself. The best match came when I found the SAV Dynasty product, which emulates those colossal hairstyles featured on 80s prime time soaps.

Of course I had to dial it back. Here's what she looked like with the full do. (And oh yeah... bewbs!)

Fortunately the product came with many shaping morphs--which I imagine is why digital hair is almost never available free. It looks like in must involve a lot of work to create these.

I also had to try some different colours to match the dark auburn I wanted. Interestingly the SAV Dynasty package came not just with the hairstyle and about 25 colours, it came with three different gloss mats which when you think about it really adds up to a lot of possibilities. However each of the glossiness options significantly changed the hair colour. For example, here's colour #24, one of the ones I was considering although I eventually decided it was too red:

Now here it is with low gloss applied.

Yeah, it changed from ginger to dark brown! And that's with low gloss. Medium and high did the same thing but brought out more gold-coloured highlights. I eventually gave up on the gloss options as I couldn't find one that left the hair close enough to the colour I wanted. I settled on option #9 with no gloss.

With her face and her hair in place, I had Candy Roberts, Duster's civilian identity, ready to go. But of course a superheroine needs a costume. That was my next challenge which I'll describe in the next part.

Indigo Dynamo: The Deep End, Page 26

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Disclaimer: These images depict strictly fictional situations. They are not intended to portray any real persons, living or dead, nor are they at all intended to encourage the type of activity portrayed herein. The images depict extremely graphic sexual situations, including bondage, violence, and non-consensual sex. They are intended for ADULTS ONLY. If you are a minor, if works of this nature are illegal where you live, or if this type of thing offends you, you shouldn’t be reading it.

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As I promised over at my Deviant Art page, here is the continuation of my Indigo Dynamo superheroine-in-peril serial. It gets too racy from this point on for DA's tender feelings so I'm posting it here. (Zeta has also graciously agreed to host it at The Wizard's Lair.) I'll try to post a new one every day, when my schedule allows, until the story is done.

As I've said over at DA, this serial was among the first pieces I created in DAZ Studio. I set myself the challenge of creating the serial using only the content included with Studio. I felt this would give me a chance to explore the product and see what content I had and what was lacking. While I have downloaded a lot of free content and also bought some more since then I've stuck to that rule for this story. Yes, even as I've revised these images to take advantage of my growing skills with 3D art.

This is another re-do of an earlier render. I even decided to show the ersatz manacles in all their featureless glory. Because I'm rather proud of how that shadow behind her turned out and I wanted to show it off.

Creating Duster, Part 2

A few weeks ago I took the plunge, downloaded DAZ Studio, and started seeing if creating 3D art was for me. I stuck to just the included content and some free stuff from places like ShareCG at first. I was tempted (still am!) to buy a lot of content but why spend a bunch of money when I didn't know if I'd be sticking with it? So I created a few test renders... and I was pleased with what I saw.

My judgment so far: I don't know if I'll get as good with this as many other people I follow and admire on Deviant Art, but it's fun and easier than I thought to make some decent images, so I'll likely stick with it. Which means I've given myself a (very cautious) green light to go ahead and purchase a little content.

Now obviously one of my main goals is to create my own version of Duster so I can create images of her. I was tempted to commission one of the artists on DA to create a version of her I could use but... if I do that, how am I gonna learn how to create characters in DAZ? Besides, I know this will be a labour of love for me. Who else but me is gonna spend hours in DAZ Studio tweaking every little detail to get my vision of Duster just right?

Now as you read in Part 1 (and may have already known), in my head Duster is "played" by Playboy's January 1979 Playmate Candy Loving. Here's a refresher of what this babe of yesteryear looked like:

One of the first things I learned as I watched and read 3D art tutorials on character creation was to not work from a base character (like, say, the Genesis 2 Female), but from someone else's customized character that's reasonably close to the final result you want. From what I've seen already in DAZ Studio, it'll save you hours of work.

Coincidentally another thing I heard about digital art characters is that Victoria is one of the most popular around. My friend EXitZero, in particular, told me he works almost entirely from a Victoria 4 base character for his many superheroines—including his version of Duster. Well, wouldn't you know it, DAZ offered a great deal a few weeks back on four versions of Victoria: 4.2, 5, 6, and 7. So I snatched them up. Knowing how popular Vicky is with digital artists I thought it would be a wise investment.

I was still hunting for other morphed figures I could build Duster from, but then I had a close look at the Victorias. Now V4 has been around for quite a while and there's a ton of content developed for her, including a lot of free stuff. Victoria 5 was based on the first generation of DAZ's Genesis figures; I think they must have come out with Genesis 2 pretty quickly because there doesn't seem to be a lot of content available expressly for V5 or plain ol' Genesis. V6 is based on G2, while V7 is based on the latest and greatest G3. However that means there's currently not a lot of free content for those characters (certainly not compared to V4) and not even a lot of for-pay content yet for V7 either, though that is changing with each passing day.

This meant I had to make an important decision. Would I start building Duster on the very popular Victoria 4, or would I jump to one of the newer generations? My friends with Poser experience could probably help me more with V4 and I would probably find more content at lower prices for her. V6 and V7, on the other hand, offered a more realistic look and better integration with DAZ Studio. I would also need to invest in the head and body morphing tools for whichever figure I chose, so the decision (or the wrong one) came with a price tag.

Well, in many ways, the decision was made for me when I opened up Victoria 6, gave her brown eyes, and rendered her base appearance.

Take a good look at her and then look at Candy. And back again. I think you'll see what I saw: Damn, they could be sisters. Some alterations will be needed to capture Candy's look, but... it'll be fine-tuning, really.

So that's it, decision made. My version of Duster will be built on a foundation of Victoria 6 and, beneath her, the Genesis 2 Female. I'll be sharing my trials and tribulations of that process starting in part 3...

Creating Duster, Part 1

Those of you who know me know Duster.

The Mistress of the Winds, High Plains City's hottie heroine.

You may also know how she came to be. Or maybe you don't, so here's a little bit on that.

Duster began her life as a drawing by Vladi the Wizard, the creator and original webmaster of The Wizard's Lair. The Lair has been a beloved spot for those of us who like superheroines and like seeing them get captured, bound, and into all sorts of trouble. Way back in 1991 Vladi created the artwork at left.


Many years later he selected this image (along with two others) to be the basis for his 2003 short story contest. He had no information about her other than her name: Duster.

While I'd been actively following Vladi's site for some time I had not noticed this particular image among the plethora of artwork he hosted there. But when he highlighted it for his contest it struck me like a thunderbolt. Why? Because I thought the heroine depicted looked a lot like my favourite Playboy Playmate of all time, Candy Loving—Miss January 1979 (the 25th anniversary PM). If that dates me, so be it. At right is Candy's centerfold. I think you'll notice the resemblance pretty quickly. Both her body and her hair look like Duster's.

Well for me, this was the convergence of two obsessions: superheroines and my favourite PM. When I was a young, impressionable lad there was no Internet (yeah, there I go, dating myself again). So scantily-clad female crime-fighters and the girls in the magazines they quietly sold to you in plain brown paper bags became my sexual archetypes. Inadvertently Vladi had inspired my creativity by tapping into both of these.

I wrote a story about Duster for Vladi's contest: "Duster versus the Motormaster". I didn't win, but in my imagination Duster just couldn't keep herself out of trouble. To date I've written sixteen stories about her, many of them novel-length, including some now for sale at Amazon and Smashwords. I'm currently in the process of refurbishing the older stories and supplementing them with new ones and publishing those for sale as well.

But Duster doesn't just exist in written form. Several talented artists over the years have been inspired by my stories featuring the Mistress of the Winds and they've paid homage to her in their art. You can see pretty much all of these if you go to my Deviant Art homepage and browse through my Gallery and my Favourites. Here's one example by my friend EXitZero at left. I used this for the cover of the first collection of revised Duster stories, titled Beginnings: Duster Volume 1.

I'm continuing to write Duster stories but as my previous post explained I've also embarked on a new adventure of creating my own digital art. Of course one of my main goals in doing so is to eventually be able to create my own images of Duster. Slowly but surely I'm getting there. I'll share my progress thus far in Part 2...