My Imaginarium - The Digital Artwork of Gary Vennié

The Gate at D'naal

Bryce 4.01, Poser 4, PhotoPaint 9, sPatch

smg (submachine gun) model by Kyrin
With a note of thanks to David Wiles (Hamfast) for allowing me to borrow on Malena's world for this work.
Added thanks to Will Kramer of Earthcurves and Sue Snowden for their hair tutorials.

The Story:

Logan didn't like this one bit. T'lkal had escaped his custody. After four days of tracking him, Logan knew he was up against a wiley adversary. This uncharted StarGate in the desert of D'naal was unexpected, but it fit what he was learning about T'lkal.

He was a creature of harsh environs, favoring deserts and able to survive with minimal resources. He'd have to, considering the StarGate setting. Logan recognized it...the Wesdraken system. He stiffened at the thought. The other gate was likely to be somewhere in the desert of Wesdraken IV. T'lkal was doing his best to shake him.

There would be real problems.

First of all, 'Those damn worms'. The locals called them sand salamanders, but that was too gentle a name for an animal like that. Big as a train with a head full of teeth, they could sense movement at long distances. Too much movement and you might as well be ringing a dinner bell. He tightened his grasp on the shaft of T'lkal's t'sook. It would make short work of a worm, but this still wouldn't be a cake-walk.

Problem two... moisture suit. Wesdraken IV would require it. Without one, a man would become nothing more than parchment over bone in a couple of hours. He hated wearing the thing. It was easier to blast a worm than scratch under the suit.

The third problem was the gate. Too small to transport his ship, it would force him to do this on foot.

Then there was Malena. She'd know the moment T'lkal arrived. Uncanny, the way that woman could sense some things. If she came across T'lkal before he did, bye-bye reward. Logan allowed a small grin of admiration. She was gutsy and skillfull but she had no sense of enterprise. The money wouldn't mean anything to her. She'd turn the bastard in, just out of principle. With any luck, she'd have her hands full with something else.

The grin faded. There would be a lot to think about on the way back to the ship. The 90,000 Federation Credits reward on T'lkal was going to be hard to earn.

Pic details for those just getting started (or anyone else who's interested):

The walls and steps are made from ten Bryce terrains. Three more make up the landscape. I drew the details in PhotoPaint 9 using a grayscale palette. I applied these as altitude maps for the walls in Bryce. I found a hieroglyphics translator at the Egyptian Tourist Bureau web site for reference (yes, there is a real message in the glyphs). The t'sook is made from Bryce primitives. Logan's shock vest is the P4 man's vest enlarged and bump mapped in PhotoPaint 9. The smg strap was modeled in sPatch. I shuttled between Bryce and sPatch to position and reshape it to fit Logan. His texure was painted in PhotoPaint 9. The head and arm hair as well as the tracks were added using layers in PhotoPaint 9. I spent considerable time adjusting the finer details of Logan's pose. I didn't want to have to correct the joints in post work (personal preference), so I took some time to work with the joint editor in Poser. One thing I learned is that, even with an apparent good pose in Poser, when it's rendered in Bryce, you often see things you missed. The whole image was done in my spare time over a period of two weeks.