Nomad

Member : steve

Image description
This image was inspired by someone I know that recently visited Dubai. Apparently, he discovered some 'desert' paintings (as apposed to cave paintings) that no-one had seen before, and at the same spot there is also an unknown burial ground (they found human bones). This got me to thinking about the subject and thought that the desert paintings would fit quite well in a scene. So, taking it a little further, I added some fossilised shells into the rock to kind of express that both the people that painted the images of their tribe (and the unfortunate beefstock), and the fossils, are both ancient in their own rights. Of course, the Nomads of this day and age are still doing exactly the same as their very distant ancestors playing alongside the forces and beauty of nature around them.

Description of how this image was created
All Wings models apart from the shells which were produced by a program called Shellylib (http://www.shelly.de/). The paintings themselves are two models where I selected some faces from the rock, then selected 'extract region' and moved them a touch away from the rock and then applied two PNG image maps to them. I then applied no_image to both, so what you actually see is an illusion - it's really showing the shadows of the images. I think this works quite well to get the desired effect in this example. I painted the 'tribe' image (haha), and the beef is an actual image from the 'net of a cave painting from somewhere in France which has been heavily edited. Focal blur was used to give more focus on the rock and paintings.

General statistics
No of ratings	:	12
Min. overall rating	:	17 (8 / 8 / 1)
Max. overall rating	:	47 (15 / 17 / 15)
Sum of rating	:	414 / 720
Date uploaded	:	2009-06-09 17:59:20

Specific details Note: The maximum value below is misleading as the voting system has changed. If the member votes for all the entries and has created one him/herself, there is an automatic 20/20/20 score added to the value (This encourages all members who enter to vote).
Rating type	:	Min : Max : Sum : Out of
Artistic	:	7 : 15 : 139 : 240
Concept	:	7 : 18 : 148 : 240
Technical	:	1 : 15 : 127 : 240
Overall	:	17 : 47 : 414 : 720

Comments by members when rating this image

1.   23-06-2009 I like the interpretation a lot. Still the fossils are small and not easily seen so I had to read the text to realize they were there. 2.   18-06-2009 For more realism the shadow of the palm should be softer. This would give the viewer the impression that the palm is further away from the other objects casting shadows on the rock. 3.   17-06-2009 Steve, oh Steve! Why on earth did you not use a proper sky and an area light... it would have made for such a terrificly realistic scene! (And please use a less nasty color for the signature next time :P) Aside from that, the only flaw I find are the footprints, which could have used a bit randomness. I do really love the concept, too.