Heed not Cassandra
“Another image based on the character of Helen of Troy from Homer’s “Iliad and Odyssey” The title refers to Cassandra, the most beautiful of the daughters of Priam, the king Troy. She foresaw the danger posed by the Trojan horse and Helen of Troy but the people of Troy ignored her warnings and the Greek soldiers hiding inside the horse were able to capture the city.
Cassandra doesn’t feature in this image, but the image shows Helen languidly resting on the buttresses of the city of Troy with the Trojan horse nearby in the city square. In the background behind the Trojan flags (the symbol on them is significant too) a brooding storm front looms, symbolizing the impending disaster for the City of Troy, foreseen by Cassandra, but ignored by the Trojan people…”
Technical aspects: I used the last 2 days I had left on the demo version of Marvelous Designer 2 to create Helen’s clothing, the bed on which she reclines, and the flags in the background. I will definitely purchase this software for my coming birthday! It is the best new bit of software that I have used in many years!
Hexagon was used to create Helen’s jewellery, the parapet of the walls of Troy, and the Trojan horse itself. I drew a lot of inspiration for the architecture and the horse from the movie “Helen of Troy” and “The Odyssey”.
I still had to use an older copy of Vue 8 to import the Poser-generated OBJ files – Vue 9 still gives a lot of problems with dropped groups and trashed textures – but once imported in Vue 8 and saved, Vue 9 behaved itself. The “global radiosity” atmospheric model gave a lovely glow to the skin, and a softness that I could never achieve with Bryce 7 – yet!
The final render was then brought into Corel Photopaint X5 and some minor level adjustments and boosting of detail was applied.