Step a (Autumn)

 We are doing a lot of 2022 cast images, and I hope to have updated versions of some old favorites soon - those take a lot of work. These are helping establish the 2022 baseline, the skin detail up-close, shaders used, how figures are normalized so they look good together, and so on. If I am putting 3 days of work in on an updated main cast character, I want my fundamentals to be solid before I go down that road. As was, there was too much 'digital noise' in the artist setting up close with these figures, so I had to rebuild the base shaders and tweak to get the close-ups I wanted. And what looks good close sometimes looks too smooth far, so you shoot for a happy middle ground.

As it stands, I have finalized my process and I am just doing these proofs to make sure my assumptions work under a wide range of lighting and scene setups. And yes, we will see these characters in series as they get spots.

Supporters get all the fun angles today with a-e.

-Ren