Meet Tim Zaytsev, the Legion Spore’s external organic operating system!
(Tim would cringe so hard at that. The Legion Spore, and its successor the Manticore, are airships made from the bodies of shapeshifters forced to merge with technology. In theory, the resulting ships are supposed to be a blank slate. Instead, memories of the people who were tied into the ship cause destructive glitches, which Tim has been hired to find and purge).
Once, many years ago (because I’ve been combing through my old newsletters to find stuff I think is interesting enough to yoink and place here in this blog) I took a shot at using Daz Studio to create a figure who would represent Tim from The Glitch Saga. This was still pretty early in my attempts to use Daz Studio, and my asset library was a bit smaller to work with, so it took a few tries before I successfully made a design I was truly happy with.
I wanted to tie the render in with a quote from the book, so I picked a snippet from Spirits of a Glitch, the third book of the series.
Tim is dealing with the Manticore (who has a much harsher personality than the airship you see in Whispers in the Code):
So easily distracted. Surely you see the flaw?
I groan in exasperation. “Where is this other glitch?” Right now there’s nothing but an arrogant machine who keeps messing with my attempts to correctly program it.
The vessel sighs. The glitch belongs to our external organic operating system.
“You don’t have a—”
You, Master Zaytsev. You are our external organic operating system.
I wasn’t quite happy with this render… I wanted to switch the hair to something closer to how I pictured Tim’s hair, and I wanted to make him look a bit younger (I’m aiming for 18-19 years old).
(Also, I’m absolutely terrible at judging age in real life, let alone in renders).
Later, I took another shot at Tim’s design. For this version, I changed the hair I was using (I was thrilled that the hair I wanted to use for him went on sale almost immediately when I started eyeing it), and I did some work to his facial structure to make him look a bit younger.
There were still a few tweaks I wanted to do before calling it final (the back of his jaw/cheek was still too sunken in and the hair wasn’t quite sitting properly around his forehead), but overall, I was pretty happy with this variation.
I’m pretty sure I made a few more adjustments later, but I don’t think I have a fully rendered image with those adjustments. So, for today, we’ll focus on the early renders of the Legion Spore’s external organic operating system. 😉
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Read the tragic downfall of Tim Zaytsev as he navigates the perils of the Legion Spore…
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Happy reading and writing!
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 