Daz render | Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist

Many, many Distant Horizon Universe newsletters ago, back in early 2019, I had a poll for which Distant Horizon beast subscribers would like to see me try to render in Daz.

Keyword being “try” to render, because I was still learning the program and uh… even my drawn attempts to create beasties hadn’t been that great.

At the time, I had a lot fewer assets to work with, and a lot less practice with morphing the figure’s features to get the desired look.

Anyway, with a lot of Photoshop post-processing…

This was my take on a plant beast “candid shot” caught in the wild by a rebel photographer.

The image was inspired by this section from Distant Horizon, where Jenna sees a picture of a plant beast for the first time:

The image had been taken in a jungle, with thick ferns and tall trees spiraling around the frame. It focused on a vaguely humanoid creature. Thick, woody vines wrapped around its hands, twined across its shoulders, and curled around its collarbone. The vines rested loose against its bare chest. The creature—male—was naked, with pale, green-tinted skin and a thicker brow. Like the beast we’d seen in the security feed, this one had cat-like eyes and pointed ears.

Anyway, there you have it!

First attempt to create a Distant Horizon beast in Daz.

Should I give it another go sometime, try a then and now?

* * *

Discover what the Camaraderie doesn’t want the Community to know exists in the Distant Horizon…

Book Cover for Distant Horizon, with a gold title. A young woman faces a sterile white hallway with faces in the doors. She has vines around her arms.

Book cover for Fractured Skies with gold text. A young woman in a coat faces a wintery, pink-tinted forest. She has vines around her arms.

* * *

Happy reading and writing!

I’ve been having a bit of fun learning Daz, a 3D modeling program. Long story short, the base program is free, but you can buy additional assets–clothes, hair, facial morphs, etc–that allow you to customize your characters.

It’s fun, because it’s been giving me freedom to create characters from my stories that I can pose and light without searching through endless stock photos. (There are other limitations compared to photomanipulation, and avoiding the uncanny valley is tricky, but each type of art has its trade-off).

A few weeks ago I grabbed a bundle on sale for face and body morphs, and it’s been giving me a lot of room to tweak characters how I picture them.

The first character I completed (face, anyway), is Siklana Covonilayno from The Wishing Blade series.

Siklana Covonilayno

SBibbPhoto - Siklana from The Wishing Blade Series

Siklana is Toranih’s sister. While Siklana plays a fairly minor role in the first two books (Magic’s Stealing and The Shadow War), she has her own point of view and plays a major role in book three… Magebane.

Excerpt from Magebane:

After Shalant paid for a room at the nearest inn, Siklana and Daernan left their horses with the local stable girl and went upstairs to a small, square bedroom that offered little privacy. Mid-afternoon sunlight filtered through a window’s canvas covering. Shalant ordered them to unpack anything important from their saddlebags into the room so he could ward the area for protection.

“Perhaps we could ward the stable instead?” Siklana suggested. The cramped room hardly had enough space for all the books and scrolls stashed in her mare’s saddlebags.

Shalant glanced up from tucking a bag of dry goods into the corner beside his bed. “The stable hand wouldn’t be able to tend to the horses.” He pushed the bag aside, stood, and then dusted his knees of dirt. The smoke from Ashan had brought a thin layer of soot to everything in town.

Siklana shared a nervous glance with Daernan. The mage would find out about the books eventually. “I doubt we can fit all your word magic scrolls.”

Shalant turned around, puzzled. “Word magic scrolls? What are you…” His sentence trailed, and from the flicker of his eyes to the door, Siklana suspected he was using scrying ribbons to see what was in those bags. He gave her an incredulous glare. “You brought my library?”

She smiled sheepishly. “The books might help us find a way to bring Toranih back from the shadow realm. Besides, if Ashan has been overrun by Lord Menchtoteale, do you really want him finding your books? Imagine what Isahna could do with them.”

“You brought my library,” Shalant repeated, as if the notion couldn’t register in his brain.

She nodded. “Obviously I couldn’t take everything, but I tried to grab the ones that looked useful. There are still a few things left in your attic.”

SBibbPhoto - Siklana Full Body Render

This is a full-body render using only image-based lighting (IBL).

It’s the first test run of Siklana’s 3D model with her new outfit (trying to find something that reasonably fit her character, which I didn’t initially have). I need to find and fit shoes for her, too, but this is a start.

I’m still learning Daz, so more work needs to be done, but it should give an idea of her character. 🙂

Interested in seeing the development process? Let me know. I have some notes on the process, and I’d be happy to go more into it if anyone is curious.