I've been using Poser since I first created that horrible cover for Alexandra Quick and the Thorn Circle. I have assembled an extensive library of figures, but I hadn't touched the Alexandra model in years. So I had to age her up a bit. This isn't quite the same figure as the one I used for AQATTC - I think I changed the base model sometime around book three, and now I fiddle with a few settings to make her a little older with each book. I'm always switching hair out - hair is a PITA in the Poser. Better artists just paint hair and clothes in Photoshop, but I can't do that.
I said before that no piece of art ever exactly matches the pictures I have in my head, and this is equally true of the images I create myself. But I admit I've been influenced by years of creating Poser images, so the "Alexandra" who is represented by a collection of props, settings, and morphs injected into a Victoria 3 base comes about as close as I can get.
Anyway, I should probably wait until I'm done editing my manuscript before I start trying to do digital art again. In the meantime, I have a bunch of new commissions done which makes me very happy. Some of them I may share before I start posting the story, and some would be, heh, spoilery.
I am working on Chapter 46 now. This is where a lot of stuff starts to happen. Not that nothing happens in the preceding 46 chapters... but it's building to the climax, while at the same time, a new setting and a ton of new characters are all introduced. And this is where I kind of just plunged ahead to get the first draft finished, and now need to unravel a bunch of silliness and plot holes and numbers and locations that change from one chapter to the next.
Optimistically, I would like to say my target is to get this done by the end of the month. That is not a hard and fast deadline, and I'm taking a vacation at the end of the month, during which not much writing will happen. But it is my hope (not a promise, but right now it looks doable) that I will be able to inflict the next draft on my beta-readers before the end of March.
In the meantime, here's Alexandra, age 15, with a little bit of an Uncanny Valley look because I did no Photoshop postwork.
