DoC: Eastern Barrens (Hi-Res)

"If you're actually thinking of heading out there, I suggest keeping to  the Eastern Barrens first, 'less you're wanting to get yourself  killed..."  

Another piece for Sombreve's game, Dawn of Corruption! A landscape piece for the Eastern Barrens, a  zone low level players are encouraged to start at. Tried to go for a  wide open, but bright, sort-of welcoming vibe, with a few landmarks to  tempt exploration.  

Hit a small snag during part of this where I lost all my Painter  configurations, so I'm a little frustrated with bits and pieces. I  cleaned it up to my standards, just took me longer than I'd like, and  lost some of the texture settings I liked along the way that I'll need  to futz with and recreate or re-save. Ah well. Maybe this is a stronger  reason for me to get off my butt and start getting messier, with the  advancement of certain tech out there. 

Anyways! Rambling aside, I did still have fun with this. Thank you once  again, Sombreve, for trusting me with doing work for your game. And I  hope you all enjoy as well!

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I really am cursed when it comes to hardware, it feels like.

When I say I lost Painter configurations, I mean everything. Brushes, brush settings, texture settings, customizations, layouts, even how much RAM and how many cores I was telling it to use. Basically a full factory reset. On one hand, it's frustrating, because I had a lot that I kind of grew accustomed to that is gone, and I need to kind of work around that or re-create it. On the other, this is kind of another kick in the butt for me to get used to messier brushes and things.

See, a lot of my customizations and things were to try to get my brushes to blend better and smoothly, with a few rougher ones for quick underpainting. I'm a very opaque painter. I tend to use full opacity, I completely obliterate the underpainting, I work on one layer, all of that. Despite that, I have always kind of felt like my stuff feels like it's overworked in some areas, underworked in others... And now AI is here.

"oh god he's bringing up AI again--" yes I am, but it's because: Have you seen the style that every single one of them seems to emulate? Smooth, vibrant, wonderfully rendered characters and scenes. Smooth edges, buttery gradients, soft shadows. It's, essentially, the ideal I've been attempting to reach for a while. Now that it's staring me in the face, able to create images hundreds of thousands of times faster than I could even dream to... I sort of sit here wondering where I go from here.

I've always idolized people like LD Austin, Dave Rapoza, people who are big names in the field, who have a style that hits that same vibe. My style has never really hit that same note. My brushwork is still a bit messy despite my efforts. My ccolors are slightly off when I start saturating things, despite my intentions. And after all of this time, I don't have any foot in the door or even any claim to fame on my style. So if AI is here, and its doing what I wish I could, in a matter of -seconds-... Is that a reason to start getting messier? And how do I do that?

It's like realizing I'm not even interacting with the second half of a manual. It might take me some time to figure the tools and processes out but... My brain obviously doesn't want to work in that very smooth, vibrant, clean way.  You can kind of see that here in the trees, rocks, clouds... So why try and force it? Maybe I'd be happier if I just did my thing, even if that comes with some chaos.

But that's just musing and thinking. I'd have a lot of work to do before I can get there. Thank you guys for reading, if you've gotten this far. I really appreciate it. Goolashe, the husband, has still been being beaten down by work, and we're trying to find something better in the meantime, so more of the financial burden we share is on my shoulders as we do so, which means your support is especially helpful at this time. <3 Thank you all so much. Stay safe out there. I'll have another piece soon, an NSFW piece though, within the next couple of days. Cheers! Love you all.