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| Biker Girl | ||||||
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| Artist | Steven Stahlberg - (View all artwork by this artist) | |||||
| Ranking | ||||||
| Software | Alias Power Animator version 7 | |||||
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| stahlber@yahoo.com | ||||||
| Website | Android Blues | |||||
Description
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I started with a quick sketch of an idea I had (while commuting one day) - about an antigravity motorbike. Such a bike would only need one wheel I imagined, and without the frontwheel the riders position could be more aerodynamic and more in line with the direction of force. Antigravity also means a road need not be a flat 'ribbon', but can be tilted, or even upside down, or tubular (you could ride inside or outside the tube, this would give you more usable road surface for the same volume of space). I admit the gun is a bit gratuitous, but I couldn't resist, it seems to fit the agressive feeling of the bike quite well. I started in Alias Power Animator version 7, with my sketch and some references cut from motorbike ads spread out on the table. I revolved the wheel, and kept the construction history (which I usually don't), since I knew it was a tricky shape and needed to be test rendered with more of the geometry around it to be able to finalize its shape. Then I built the blue bits and the exhaust pipe and the engine one by one, using 'skin' or 'bi-rail', at first only doing the right hand side, and then copying some parts over to the left. But not all, as you can see in the screen shot, I never planned this for an animation, just a one-shot still, and I didn't want to weigh down the file to much (my hardware is old). Then I brought in my virtual actress Ariana, and started to bend her into position with the skeleton she has. When it looked close enough I deleted the skeleton and continued finetuning on the cv level, something very hard to do otherwise, in an extreme pose when you have live clusters created in a neutral pose. I also painted some new clothes for her in Photoshop. She's wearing her high heels, which looks a bit strange, but I imagine her on the run and having stolen this bike in an emergency get-away attempt... The hair is simple geometry with complex pix files and masks, except a few smaller strands at the back that have the Alias solidCloud shader in the transparency channel. Shading: the skin is slightly translucent, and has two layers to have more control over the highlights. The blue enamel is also two layers, the bottom one to get the skylight type highlight that surrounds the sun, and the top transparent one just to get the stronger and harder sun-highlight. Separating them also enables you to add starry glow to only the top sun layer. The background and the road-tube are very streaky, to make them look motion blurred. Changes I'd like to do, when I get the time: brake, clutch and throttle handles with their cables, and rear-view mirrors, a more aggressive design on the blue panels and a bigger meatier engine, mabye a wind-shield, and maybe try a prototype-jetplane type silver finish or black or red instead of the blue... |
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| Comments |
Note: Please login to type in your comment Good grief this is ACE! The bike is like a mix of Kaneda's machine in Akira, a lightbike and something from Iain M Banks; it's such a pleasure to find some fun, beautifully executed SF design on the web, as normally all my searches come up with is rubbish! And as a uni student and novice user it's great to see what the pros can do, and what I can aim for! Regards Al Brady Al Brady |
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