#segnbora

30 Days of Pride, day 6: Off this previous post featuring the above lighting test...

I mentioned in a post the other day that the above image had popped up the other day in one of the routine promotional emails from Daz Studio, and it had been niggling at me... making me wonder which of my characters it could be used for.

At least one commenter—it was @rubbahslippah—suggested that it might be the Middle Kingdoms' Queen Eftgan. My first response was "Hmm, naah..." as I already had a figure I was using for her.

But after considering that for a while, it occurred to me that the figure in question had been giving me trouble. Over recent months I've been gradually converting most of the figures I use to the newer and somewhat more flexible Genesis 9 standard. But the earlier Eftgan figure hadn't taken well to the conversion, so that I was having second thoughts about its use and what to do next.

With that realization in mind, I took advantage of a monthly sale coupon and grabbed the figure attached to the face above—which is called KOO Esmee HD, from a maker called Kooki99—and started working with her. And I think she's a good choice for Eftgan. Here she is in daily casuals. (The Darthene royal arms are midnight blue and silver, and the "dress code" for civil service livery has a lot of wiggle room in it. So if you're wearing at least something in dark blue when you're at work, no one's going to make too much of a fuss.)

Anyway, a tip of the hat to @rubbahslippah: that was a good call. Thanks for that! :)

...By the way, for those interested: the blond hair color is natural for many darker-skinned Darthenes. Eftgan's former lover and now-wife Segnbora spends much of Tales of the Five #2: The Landlady staying with a family of whom about a third also feature this look.

In Eftgan's case, the Darthene royal line has a fair amount of Steldene ancestry scattered up and down its history... and those Steldenes possess the same TYRP1 gene that some Melanesian peoples (specifically the Solomon Islanders) on our own Earth have. This gene, on chromosome 9, produces blond hair natively and without the involvement of other ethnic groups whose blond hair is differently derived. (A team of Stanford University researchers and geneticists was responsible for tracking down and identifying this gene: an article about it is here.)

Meanwhile, here are Eftgan and Segnbora having a nightcap in that most famous of Darthis city's dive bars, the Stuck Pig. ...Apologies for not having done a full make-sure-everything-drapes-properly animation run on Eftgan's clothes... this being why her sleeve seems to have sunk into the surface of the bar. I started an animation run, and Segnbora's hair (which is also animation-sensitive) promptly exploded and tried to throttle them both. (eyeroll) Bloody dForce...

A targeting render to see how the lighting behaves in this scene. (These candlelit shots are always potentially dodgy.) ...ETA: original image replaced with a larger overnight render.

...I'd say this one is 90% to where I want it to be. There are still some contrast and lighting issues to deal with, but those can be picked at over the next couple of days. Meanwhile I seriously love it that for once it's okay for a character's hair to make him look like he's been dragged backwards through a hedge. :)

Context: they've both just been in a back-alley swordfight, she's just saved his (outlawed) butt from some people who wanted to kill him for the reward money, and he's now wondering whether this strange woman who suddenly turned up out of nowhere might only have saved him so as to score the reward money herself. She, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what kind of bizarre shit her tendency to feel sorry for underdogs has gotten her into now.

“Lunch Break.” (Because saving the world is harder if you skip meals.)

From The Door Into Shadow: A pause on the road to Barachael.

(This is a test of a new scenery/lighting setup. Also, looking to see how the new surcoats drape. [Without getting too technical about it, there are problems. ...So what else is new.])

Ye gads, have I finally got this poor woman's postwar hair sorted out...?

Right... the new cover’s sorted out now, has been added to the ebooks, and they’re in the store and ready to go. Don’t have a copy of this one yet? Now’s a good time to grab one.

(If you do have a copy of the ebook and you want one with the new cover, drop a note to the Ebooks Direct email support address, quoting your order number, and we’ll get the new edition [v.1.09] out to you in a day or so. This service is, of course, free, as we think selling you a given ebook once is plenty, and we don’t have a space program to fund.)

Thanks!