-descent-

posted 2009.11.27 at 03:29

20100104 : Re-covered. In this case, a re-interpretation of the original for the wider aspect ratio - the spread (below) really shows it off. This cover uses a lot of the same textural bits as the original, though in this case the "city" is a mix of Philly and Chicago. Yes, it's supposed to be Pittsburgh, but the last scene of the last chapter technically takes place in Monroeville or thereabouts - some gods-forsaken strip mall or mall or other chunk of suburban sprawl, barely acknowledged by the public transit system in much the same way that Firefox is barely acknowledging my keyboard. Seems to have something to do with Photoshop - eating 1.8g of ram and 2.4g of swap with no documents open. Quit that and the browser's snappy again. Go figure.

As planned at present, this is the only cover of the "back four" that demands line art - the remaining two should be a straight mix of rendering and photoshop.

Placeholder crop of the first edition cover is here.

Still the best cover of the book.

First Edition Metadata

Chapter Five - descent - is one big scene, and will be 22-24 pages in length.

For what it's worth, the vehicle took 193 hours, 21 minutes and 56 seconds to render on a 2ghz Athlon with 2 gigs of ram. Photoshop took considerably less time.

Chapter Five will begin full production in late March or early April and will proceed at the fastest possible pace until it is completed, after which I'll be taking a breather. I haven't had one of those in awhile.

13:21 < mdxi> heh. how the hell does a white car take 8 days to render?
13:23 < solios> 2250x2990 with ray-traced reflection maps.*

* Not that you really see any of it, but that isn't the point.