Peaceful Evening

Finally another update! I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I made this; it was late and I was tired, so I've forgotten what was on my mind at the time.

Most of the furniture in the picture was already there. I just added the characters, replaced the TV with another one, changed the skin of the painting on the right and added that "pillow" (actually a garbage bag) the girl is resting her head on.

I initially had another image on the TV monitor, but I replaced it in pixlr with a picture I've already posted on this blog.

I made some minor color adjustments, both in-game and with pixlr, and I also experimented with bloom effects.

ADDONS USED:
Map: gm_highriseapartmentiguess
Stuff on screen: See this post.

Barricade

Right, so I'm back again with another picture. First of all, I would like to say that I intended to have Male_1 standing somewhere in the picture holding a Molotov cocktail. However, I couldn't find anywhere to put him that fit. Second, I wanted to have a bloom effect in it, but attempting to apply one made the picture look overexposed.

Anyway, I wanted it to seem like the guy near the barrels had, along with a group of other people, constructed a makeshift barricade out of objects they could find at the train station in order to keep the raptors (that are there for some reason) away. It didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped, but that's pretty much how most of these pictures are.

As for post-processing I used colour modification to give it a colour tone reminiscent of A Rainy Day Near the Beach, my so far most successful picture in my opinion. (Goddamn you Google Spellcheck! Spelling colour with a "u" is not incorrect! It's just as valid as "color".) Then I used Super Depth of Field to make the focus blur.

Addons used:
Dinosaur Ragdolls

Duel

I started making this picture with a much bigger project in mind, but got tired of working on it and decided to keep it simple. I originally planned to have that ME3 phantom fighting alongside Chell (from Portal) against a whole wave of xenomorphs. Still, this looks pretty ok anyway in my opinion.

It's been a while since I played Mass Effect 3, but as far as I can remember, phantoms were the most annoying enemies in the whole trilogy. They were so fast that you couldn't outrun them, they moved back and forth with various types of acrobatics, so they were hard to shoot, and I remember there was one point in the game where I kept dying over and over again because of them.

It might be a bit hard to see, but the xenomorph is actually a re-used dupe from Siege. It's the one you can see right next to the muzzle flash.

Due to the angle, it might also be hard to see the phantom's sword. Luckily, I took pictures from several different angles. However, I haven't done any post-processing in them, so the colours might look a bit weird. (The post-processing in the main picture of this post was made in pixlr.)

Addons used:
ME3 Cerberus Soldiers
AvP Corporate Megapack

The Door Won't Close!

Man, it's been a long time since I posted anything on this blog. Anyway, here's a new picture at last. I haven't been playing Garry's Mod at all in a very long while, and like I've said before the update frequency of this blog depends on how much I play Gmod. Anyway, I recommend watching the full-size version of this one, because otherwise it might be hard to see what's going on by the door.

I wanted the story behind the picture to be as follows: The guy under the desk was sitting on the chair on the left keeping guard for [something] when all of a sudden the man at the door bursts into the room with a xenomorph queen right behind him. As the man at the door attempts to close it, but can't because the xenomorph is blocking it, the man at the desk throws the chair aside and hides beneath the desk, forgetting in the heat of the moment to take his shotgun with him, leading to the situation shown. The matress on the floor was put there to imply that the guy at the desk has been staying there for a long while. My explanation might sound a bit fuzzy, but that's because I'm tired and can't think properly. Also, it's been quite some time since I wrote about anything this way so I haven't got back into how to do it yet.

Addons used:
Enhanced Citizen Redux
avp3 queen

Recorded Sniper

I couldn't come up with a good name for the picture. Anyway, I'm finally updating this blog again after my longest period of inactivity so far. It might be a bit hard to see in the picture due to the low resolution, but there are two people standing beside the building the sniper is aiming at. I strongly advise viewing the full-size version of the picture.

Addons used:
Suits and Robbers
Mass Effect: Weapons
gm_Valley

Good News

I found instructions for how to make it work, so I will probably start updating this blog again some time soon.

Current Status

Just in case anyone is wondering - this blog is not "dead". It's just that for some reason Garry's Mod won't start when I try to open it, and thus I'm unable to make any pictures at all. That's why this blog hasn't been updated in a while. Once I'm able to use Gmod again, I'll start updating this blog again.

My explanation for the recent lack of posts

I haven't updated this blog for a while. It's not my fault - there's some glitch that's causing Garry's Mod to not function properly. I can't load any HL2 maps into it, only custom maps and TF2 maps. Therefore, I'm waiting for some update to get released, hoping that that might fix it. Last update only made it worse.

I've made another blog

This post is not about a picture I've made, but instead it's an announcement. I've recently created another blog, where I post flash fiction (not slash fiction) short stories. You can find it at http://nonexistentworlds.blogspot.se/

Infodump Part 2: Early Versions

Right. So, my previous post was a set of rejected pictures, and this time I'll show some examples of what some of the pictures I've published looked like before they were finished. Right after I got Gmod, I had a tendency to only make the pictures after all posing and post-processing was done. However, I had to learn the hard way that if the game crashes before you've either saved it or taken a picture, all your work is gone. Therefore, I nowadays take pictures of not every, but many steps of the making process. However, I very seldom take "production photos", so there won't be any "making of" pictures. Also, since most early versions are not very different from the final ones, I'll only show pictures where the difference is noticeable in this post. I will also omit early version pictures that I've already posted here. (In some of my posts, I've included the early versions for comparison purposes, to show what face posing and colour modification can accomplish.)

Here we go:

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This was the first picture I took of what would later become Try to Come Up With a Context That Can Explain This Picture. At first, I thought this was enough, but then I decided otherwise and packed it full of other stuff.

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This is Defending White Forest Base shot from the angle I originally intended, without Gordon Freeman and without Colour Modification. And since I published shots of both angles in the actual post, I might as well do so here too:

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The angle I originally intended to use in Another Cross-Franchise Battle. The second predator (seen in picture 2) was removed from the final picture.

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Mourning, before everything went wrong.

And two alternate-angle shots of the final picture. All of these are better than the one I ended up publishing.

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A little colour modification can make a huge difference.

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At least there's a bit less smoke in this one, so you can see more details. The smoke blocked a lot of it in the original.

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This isn't actually an early version of something. It's just another rejected (and unfinished) picture, but I forgot to put it in Infodump Part 1, and figured that if I sneaked it in in an update to that post, it would not be noticed. So instead, I put it in this post.

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Two (instead of three) vortigaunts relaxing at a campfire.

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A Rainy Day Near the Beach, from a different angle, with only one emitter and no post-processing.

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The first picture is Retro Metro, without any post-processing. The second is my attempt at a bluish colour scheme. The third is with high contrast and really low saturation. I think the last of these three looks just as good as the one I ended up publishing, while the other ones don't.

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I don't have very much else to say about these pictures.

Addons used:

Dinosaur Ragdolls

Gordon Freeman fixed

ME Quarians

avp3 predator

rp_apocalypse

Metropolice Pack (NPC's, playermodels)

Suits and Robbers

Enhanced Citizen Redux

More Emitters

1969 Dodge Charger

Shibboro Cigarettes

Infodump Part 1: Rejected Pictures

Not all of the pictures I make in Gmod are published to this website. Some because I think I've put to little detail in them, some because I think the posing or colours look bad, and some that I just don't like. During the short time I've had this blog running quite a few pictures have been rejected. I figure I can show them here, all together in one post. I'll provide a short summary for each of them.

F***. I just discovered there's no "insert horizontal line" feature in Blogger. I guess I'll have to keep stuff apart with rows of dashes instead.

Ok, let's start with some many of the pictures I made before starting the blog.

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First picture I ever made in Gmod. I don't want to talk about it.

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A very failed attempt at remaking this picture in Gmod.

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The angles are bad, the posing is even worse, and I don't even want to talk about the face posing. Actually, I'm still terrible at face posing. I think this specific place in HL2 is a good environment for picture-making, but I still haven't managed to take a picture here that looks good.

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These are actually not that bad. I just rejected them because they weren't detailed enough.

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I liked the concept, and there's nothing wrong with the posing, but I couldn't find a good-looking angle.

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Did these a few minutes later. By this time, it was getting a bit late. I'm a slight Alien fan, ok?

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By the time I made these, the time was 1:00 am. My mind doesn't function properly when I stay up that late. This is probably the most ridiculous idea I've ever come up with.

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I don't consider any of these to actually be bad (except the last one), but they're from a project I never finished. "How to understand Inception, explained through Garry's Mod". Maybe some day I'll pick up the project again. I'm annoyed by everyone saying "Ooooh, Inception is sooooo confusing". If you don't understand the film, look a bit closer. Everything that happens is explained at some point (except those details that the viewers are supposed to interpret individually and discuss after the movie is over). For example, I've heard some people say it's confusing to keep track of what's going on on what dream layer. What the hell? Each layer has its own goddamn colour! How can you not keep them apart? It's like they're holding up a freaking neon sign saying what layer it is. I'm not calling people who don't understand the film stupid. I'm just saying that if you have trouble understanding it, look more closely and it will all make sense. Should you still have trouble understanding it, I suggest reading the script. I remember finding it online at some point, but I don't remember where, so unfortunately I can't give you a link here. However, some notable information you can get from it is summarized in this article.

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This marks the beginning of a period when I made a whole bunch of pictures featuring Garrus Vakarian and/or Legion. This was just something I threw together. It looks terrible.

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This one is allright, I'm just a bit unsatisfied with the posing. It's a remake of some picture related to Mad Max 2, though I'm too tired at the moment to try to find the original.

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I think these are pretty good, though a bit too dark. The reason of why they haven't been published here earlier is that they aren't actually finished. I wanted to put in more characters and objects in the scene, but I didn't have time to do it, and I forgot to save before I closed Gmod.

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Like I said before, when I'm tired my mind doesn't function properly.

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And now, the pictures that follow are from after I started the blog.

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Don't even ask.

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Four pictures showing some posing I did that was later used in Siege. I also duped the pose and put it in the workshop. (Note: Requires the AvP Corporate Megapack addon.) For about a week, the dupe was pretty high on the "most popular this week" list. I suppose those were my fifteen minutes of fame.

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I think this one is pretty good. The reason I rejected it was that I put in too few details.

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I duped the xenomorph queen from the previous picture, too lazy to pose her again. Here, I had a really hard time getting Tali's arms right. This was also rejected for having too few details.

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I vaguely remember making this picture. I found it among the production pictures from the making of Defending White Forest Base, and I think the time was like 1:30 or 2:00 am when I made it. Rejected for obvious reasons.

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The idea of this picture seemed better in my head than the final result turned out.

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Alternate perspective view of Some Things Look Better in 3D. The first one was rejected because the light is visible, and the second because the focus is all wrong.

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I like the idea, and it turned out somewhat ok. There are two reasons of why I rejected this picture. The first is that I think the posing isn't good enough, and the second is that when I was done cropping the picture, the final result had such a low resolution.

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I'm not sure why I didn't publish this one. Maybe I forgot I made it. Anyway, it's a remake of this picture.

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I like the idea, but the pictures got too dark.

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This was an experiment. I was messing around with fog, trying to make it look like night on a daylight map. I did allright with the light, but I discovered that the decals sprayed by the spray tool turn invisible when the fog surrounds them entirely (i.e. they are outside the fogEnd range), no matter how light or dense the fog is, and therefore there were a couple of details I wanted in the picture that I couldn't get in it. So it's incomplete. The fog-to-make-night technique was later reused in Dam(n), along with some heavy colour modification.

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Well, that was a bunch of rejected pictures. Since this post is called "Infodump Part 1", i suppose you understand there will be more parts. I'm planning the next one to consist of published pictures, the way they looked in their early development stages. We'll see when I post that.

Addons used:

AvP Corporate Megapack

ME3 Legion

Mass Effect Varren

gm_atomic

Garrus Vakarian (Mass Effect 3)

Dinosaur Ragdolls

gm_BlackMesa_Sigma

John Shepard player model

avp3 queen

ME Quarians

avp3 predator

Enhanced Citizen Redux

(At least I think that's all the addons I used in these pictures. There may be some that I don't remember.)

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UPDATE: You know what? I'm gonna throw in a picture I made in Unreal as well. I made this one with the purpose of posting it on the blog, but it didn't turn out as good as I wanted it, so I didn't post it (until now):