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A circle (octagon?) of figures, holding hands, some low, some high.
Poser 4, Photoshop 4
This is 8 Michaels with two greyscale textures made from his original texture, a simple desaturated skin, and a contrast-enhanced skin. The cardinal point figures have the regular, the others have the enhanced. 8 spot lights and 1 distant light... which I think I turned off....
This wasn't as hard to set up as I had thought it would
be. I began with the back pose, which is fairly simple -- and symmetrical.
Then I saved that, and did the front pose -- also symmetrical and not
too difficult. I saved that pose. Then I created an 8 frame animation
between the two poses. This is where it gets tricky! There's
only one Michael figure in the scene at this point, and he starts crouched/bent
down at the front. Then at the end he's in the up position at the
back.
So I went to frame 4 and took an in between pose and
saved that, after tweaking it a bit. Then I had to move the start and
end (and middle) poses to fit all the in-between poses between them. I
did that by doing outline mode, then pasting the first frame to the background,
and then adding the last frame pasted to the background. Then I could
sorta figure where the middle pose went.
So then I had 3 cardinal point poses, and two in-between
poses. That I didn't like so much. So I put the up pose in the
second position and saved that. And then the #4 position pose.
Now it was time to start to work. I deleted the
animation and put the first Michael in the first pose. Loaded a second
figure and applied the second pose. Now I fiddled with the hands, where
they met so they sorta grasped. (All the hands use the Michael 'relaxed'
hand pose.) Then I hid figure 1 and saved the #2 position pose again.
Added Figure 3, in pose #3. Adjust, fix hands.... re-save
the pose, Hide #2 and add #4. Etc, until I had half the circle
complete.
To complete the other half, I loaded Figure 5 and gave him pose
#4. Then I used the Figure: Symmetry: Swap Left and Right. Then
I grabbed the hip and used the negative x-trans to get him into place.
Same with the rest of the left side, they are posed and mirrored from
their counterparts. (Note this method has one flaw: in a symmetry swap,
the torso and head are not swapped over, so they're not exactly symmetrical;
just the arms and legs.)
Now for lighting. I thought the spotlights would cast
shadows into the center of the circle, because they are all outside the circle,
pointing in. However, they seemed intent on shining across the circle
and casting the shadows out. ::sigh::
I took the first light and made it a low-intensity infinite
light at the top of the ball, as a sort of ambient lighting. (No shadows.)
Of course, that killed all the shadows in the center, so I had to turn
it off. Then I added, one at a time, new spotlights (set to white).
I pointed them at their respective figure's chest, so I wouldn't have
to keep aiming them as I moved them. When I loaded a new light, I lined
it up with the first from the front view (to get them all the same height),
then eyeballed it into place outside the circle from top view. If I
were really on the ball, I would have then parented the lights all to the
first one, so when I had to lift them up, they all would have moved at once.
(I didn't, I moved 'em one at a time.)
Not too much in the way of fancy post work. This
is my Michael with back morphs, and he still has a cracked hip. I fixed
all those. Lightened/darkened some problem areas. The second
guy on the left seemed to be missing his back hand... so I copied and mirrored
one from his mirror double.
Added text and that was it.
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