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Description
Welcome to the premier issue of Tantalizing Tales! This 1950's-style pulp comic cover was created for the DAZaholics group's current "Retro Sci-Fi" weekly themed challenge. It's been a long term goal of mine to submit something for an art contest and I finally decided to go for it when I spotted this one last weekend. (Update: My image was voted Pick of the Week. Woohoo!)

My journey began with a bunch of image research (Google image search: retro/classic sci-fi comic cover and X-ray delta one's Flickr). While I'd come across many such covers before, I'd never taken the time to study one in detail. Several themes stuck with me as I browsed through the large collections of examples and I became quite energized by the wide range of possibilities. Early on in my search I came across a tutorial by Adam Levermore for replicating an aged comic look in Photoshop . I loved the concept and determined that I'd need to achieve a final render quickly in order to leave time for the significant post-work that I now had planned.

The next step was to comb through my Daz library to identify any potentially useful content. Very little immediately revealed itself when I searched Install Manager for the expected keywords: classic, retro, etc. I did uncover a nice, long-forgotten Classic Rayguns set. With nothing obvious to work with for clothing, I started to tediously check each outfit for G1, G2M/F,and G3M/F for usable parts. What I ended up with was a mish-mash of piecemeal items which were cobbled together into what I feel is a pretty successful costume.

The space helmet provided the most challenge. I didn't really have anything which hit the look I was after. After unsuccessfully dredging a few freebie sites, I eventually came back to my library and took a second look at all of the available headgear. This time, I had a moment of inspiration when I browsed over my Motorcycle Helmets set. The scooter helmet had a great visor and side connectors. Hide the rest of the helmet, cannibalize some Raygun barrels for antennas and voila, welcome to the future.

The scene progressed quickly from there until I added the Alien Collector . Posing tentacles to provide a realistic grip took as much time as the entire rest of the scene composition. The rocket proved another challenge until I unearthed one of my ancient freebies from Aery Soul. Along the way, everything was re-textured with Iray materials. My two favorite shader sets for this work are Fisty & Darc's Fabric Basics Mix & Match for Iray and Mec4d's PBS Shaders vol.1 for Iray .

All told, I spent about half the weekend composing the scene and eventually set it to run overnight on Sunday. Luckily, my machine didn't crash and I had a great render waiting form me the next morning. Unfortunately, I noticed some flaws which required another two render runs. I still wasn't happy with the quality of the ground textures, but knew it wouldn't matter much after the heavy Photoshopping that was to come.

Here's that final render:

I'd thought the hard part was out of the way, but the Daz work was only about a third of the overall time put into the project. Coming up with flavor text, generating logos and shapes, designing a successful layout, and tweaking the endless fonts with intentional errors and interesting effects took the better part of two days. It was an amazing learning process for me as far as dealing with text in Photoshop. By the end I was able to discover quite a few shortcuts which will be very useful down the road. There's likely a future tutorial to be made from my experiences. The text work was wrapped up Wednesday afternoon.

Here's the shiny, unblemished version of the cover:

Expecting another long labor, I immediately dove into the distressing process to find it wonderfully straightforward. Adam's tutorial from above took care of a large portion of the heavy lifting. The bulk was done in two hours. Another hour of tweaking and I had my final copy.

The entire process was a blast. Working under the crunch of a deadline, in a genre I'd never explored before was an incredibly valuable experience. I expanded my skills not only within Daz Studio but also within Photoshop. Additionally, I have a piece of unique art that I'm very proud of which wouldn't have ever existed if I'd stayed in my comfort zone.

For anyone interested, I also created a Pinup Version of Queen Andromeda:

~Raxatech

Software
Scene Composition: Daz Studio 4.9
Rendering: Iray in Daz Studio 4.9
Postwork: Photoshop CS4
All 3D assets licensed through Daz Productions, Inc. unless otherwise noted.

Heroine
Figure: Genesis 2 Female by Daz
Character: Norma for G2F by Daz, Silver, Countess
Hair: Jewell Hair by Daz, SWAM
Helmet: Scooter Helmet from Motorcycle Helmets for Genesis by Daz, Valandar (Hid all but visor and connectors)
Helmet Antennas: Raygun Nadine from Classic Rayguns by Daz, Valandar (Hid all but barrels)
Shoulder Guards: GIS for Genesis Male by Daz, Ravenhair
Armlets: Caped Rogue for G2F by Daz, Bobbie25, Sarsa
Arm Guards: Fantasia for G2F by Daz, Mada, Sarsa
Top: Enchanted for Genesis by Daz, Bobbie25, Sarsa
Bottom: Magna Hart for Genesis by Daz, Anna Benjamin, Bobbie25
Belt: Liquid Halo On Sky 16 by Daz, Uzilite
Boots: Sky Chaser for Genesis by Daz, Midnight_stories
Starting Pose: Superhero Poses by Daz, Val3dart
Expression: Terror from West Park Horror Movie Poses 2 by Daz, FeralFey

Scene
Rocks: The Colony by The AntFarm
Ground: Custom Plane
Background Stars: The Heart of Space by Daz

Vehicles
Tentacle Drone: Alien Collector by Daz, Petipet
Rocket: Rocket 50 by Aery Soul (Ancient freebie still available on the Internet Archive)

Shaders
Ground & Rocks: FSL Filthy Dirty Iray Shaders by Fuseling
Metal & Plastic: PBS Shaders vol.1 for Iray by Mec4d
Clothing: Fabric Basics Mix & Match for Iray by Fisty & Darc

Photoshop Resources
Brushes: The Ultimate Grunge Brush Set by Ardcor
Fonts: FontCab

Description
Welcome to the premier issue of Tantalizing Tales! This 1950's-style pulp comic cover was created for the DAZaholics group's current "Retro Sci-Fi" weekly themed challenge. It's been a long term goal of mine to submit something for an art contest and I finally decided to go for it when I spotted this one last weekend. (Update: My image was voted Pick of the Week. Woohoo!)

My journey began with a bunch of image research (Google image search: retro/classic sci-fi comic cover and X-ray delta one's Flickr). While I'd come across many such covers before, I'd never taken the time to study one in detail. Several themes stuck with me as I browsed through the large collections of examples and I became quite energized by the wide range of possibilities. Early on in my search I came across a tutorial by Adam Levermore for replicating an aged comic look in Photoshop . I loved the concept and determined that I'd need to achieve a final render quickly in order to leave time for the significant post-work that I now had planned.

The next step was to comb through my Daz library to identify any potentially useful content. Very little immediately revealed itself when I searched Install Manager for the expected keywords: classic, retro, etc. I did uncover a nice, long-forgotten Classic Rayguns set. With nothing obvious to work with for clothing, I started to tediously check each outfit for G1, G2M/F,and G3M/F for usable parts. What I ended up with was a mish-mash of piecemeal items which were cobbled together into what I feel is a pretty successful costume.

The space helmet provided the most challenge. I didn't really have anything which hit the look I was after. After unsuccessfully dredging a few freebie sites, I eventually came back to my library and took a second look at all of the available headgear. This time, I had a moment of inspiration when I browsed over my Motorcycle Helmets set. The scooter helmet had a great visor and side connectors. Hide the rest of the helmet, cannibalize some Raygun barrels for antennas and voila, welcome to the future.

The scene progressed quickly from there until I added the Alien Collector . Posing tentacles to provide a realistic grip took as much time as the entire rest of the scene composition. The rocket proved another challenge until I unearthed one of my ancient freebies from Aery Soul. Along the way, everything was re-textured with Iray materials. My two favorite shader sets for this work are Fisty & Darc's Fabric Basics Mix & Match for Iray and Mec4d's PBS Shaders vol.1 for Iray .

All told, I spent about half the weekend composing the scene and eventually set it to run overnight on Sunday. Luckily, my machine didn't crash and I had a great render waiting form me the next morning. Unfortunately, I noticed some flaws which required another two render runs. I still wasn't happy with the quality of the ground textures, but knew it wouldn't matter much after the heavy Photoshopping that was to come.

Here's that final render:

I'd thought the hard part was out of the way, but the Daz work was only about a third of the overall time put into the project. Coming up with flavor text, generating logos and shapes, designing a successful layout, and tweaking the endless fonts with intentional errors and interesting effects took the better part of two days. It was an amazing learning process for me as far as dealing with text in Photoshop. By the end I was able to discover quite a few shortcuts which will be very useful down the road. There's likely a future tutorial to be made from my experiences. The text work was wrapped up Wednesday afternoon.

Here's the shiny, unblemished version of the cover:

Expecting another long labor, I immediately dove into the distressing process to find it wonderfully straightforward. Adam's tutorial from above took care of a large portion of the heavy lifting. The bulk was done in two hours. Another hour of tweaking and I had my final copy.

The entire process was a blast. Working under the crunch of a deadline, in a genre I'd never explored before was an incredibly valuable experience. I expanded my skills not only within Daz Studio but also within Photoshop. Additionally, I have a piece of unique art that I'm very proud of which wouldn't have ever existed if I'd stayed in my comfort zone.

For anyone interested, I also created a Pinup Version of Queen Andromeda:

~Raxatech

Software
Scene Composition: Daz Studio 4.9
Rendering: Iray in Daz Studio 4.9
Postwork: Photoshop CS4
All 3D assets licensed through Daz Productions, Inc. unless otherwise noted.

Heroine
Figure: Genesis 2 Female by Daz
Character: Norma for G2F by Daz, Silver, Countess
Hair: Jewell Hair by Daz, SWAM
Helmet: Scooter Helmet from Motorcycle Helmets for Genesis by Daz, Valandar (Hid all but visor and connectors)
Helmet Antennas: Raygun Nadine from Classic Rayguns by Daz, Valandar (Hid all but barrels)
Shoulder Guards: GIS for Genesis Male by Daz, Ravenhair
Armlets: Caped Rogue for G2F by Daz, Bobbie25, Sarsa
Arm Guards: Fantasia for G2F by Daz, Mada, Sarsa
Top: Enchanted for Genesis by Daz, Bobbie25, Sarsa
Bottom: Magna Hart for Genesis by Daz, Anna Benjamin, Bobbie25
Belt: Liquid Halo On Sky 16 by Daz, Uzilite
Boots: Sky Chaser for Genesis by Daz, Midnight_stories
Starting Pose: Superhero Poses by Daz, Val3dart
Expression: Terror from West Park Horror Movie Poses 2 by Daz, FeralFey

Scene
Rocks: The Colony by The AntFarm
Ground: Custom Plane
Background Stars: The Heart of Space by Daz

Vehicles
Tentacle Drone: Alien Collector by Daz, Petipet
Rocket: Rocket 50 by Aery Soul (Ancient freebie still available on the Internet Archive)

Shaders
Ground & Rocks: FSL Filthy Dirty Iray Shaders by Fuseling
Metal & Plastic: PBS Shaders vol.1 for Iray by Mec4d
Clothing: Fabric Basics Mix & Match for Iray by Fisty & Darc

Photoshop Resources
Brushes: The Ultimate Grunge Brush Set by Ardcor
Fonts: FontCab