The reference image for this render was an illustration by Jean Léon Huens. I found it in a wonderful old book of fairy tales which has been collecting dust on the attic for far too long. The tale, by Andersen, is called ‘The Princess and the Pea’. It is about a prince who couldn’t seem to find a real princess for him to marry with.
“One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.
It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate.”
I wanted to give this image a bit of a painterly style and a fairy-tale feel. I will probably post the beautiful reference image by JL Huens later on. I encountered big problems with different monitors. Mine is exceptionally dark and high contrast I think; the image was much brighter on a laptop and all detail was lost… I toned down the lighting for this online version. I hope that helps at least a bit.
@ Warder: Yeah, but I really think my monitor is the problem here. I noticed the materials look very different on other monitors.
@ DanielSDZ: The lightning strikes are completely 2D and are placed in one and the same plane. I used low resolution curves (DefResolU 3) to draw the jagged profile (fun to do!). Then I used another curve, which has only two control points and is really only a flat line, to bevel to that jagged profile. I could use shrink (Alt+S) to thin out the lightning at the ends.
The material is shadeless white, and a blur was added with nodes.
That’s indeed what I was going for. I find that more interesting than for example photorealism (for myself I mean, I admire people who can achieve photorealism).
I hope to see some of your work in a painterly style too!
Well the way I see it is the photorealist stuff is great for testing out and pushing the capabilities of the program, but as an end product; you’d be better just taking a photograph in the first place.
Blender of course does have a lot of features that make it useful for illustrators-the toon shader for example, and I hope this is one area that the developers might add some in the future.
