Apostacy (2021)
[Original manuscript]
“The “Devourer” had laid bare the starship’s corroded carcass, buried for eons beneath the South Ashman’Rak’Sh. It’s metallic bones lay exposed to Wesdraken’s setting sun as far as the eye could see in every direction.
Yat’Duura, the Sadusi scout trembled with fear at the thought of facing the elders, but he was with Ashra Malena, his battle queen – she must have a reason for venturing so far into the South.
Towards the center of the wrecked ship a shallow bowl had been carved out by a whirlwind of the departing storm. The sand leading into this depression was hard packed and lighter in tone than the surrounding dunes and the scouting party had traversed the slope easily.
The device sat in the middle of the bowl, relatively untouched by the passage of time and sand, its surface shining duly in Wesdraken’s dying rays.
“Malena, this place is evil!” Yat’Duura hissed, “there are evil spirits at work here!”
She moved closer, sensing the timelessness captured in the place. “Be calm Yat’Duura, I think this object holds the answers. Look at those markings on the surface. It is a map of sorts.”
Malena’s hands clenched spasmodically as she clutched and lifted the metal sphere up slowly.
Suddenly the upper hemisphere of the sphere dissolved as Wesdraken’s sun rays hit its surface. A hologram sprang upwards filled with whirling colours, shapes, lines and images.
Malena began to recognize the patterns and markings swirling in front of her startled eyes. “It is a map of our heavens, starman”, she said to Braedan who was still climbing into the starship’s interior after he had secured his droma, “See the Sanazas Divider on the side, it mirrors our skies.”
Braedan moved closer Malena’s side studying the hologram. Yat’Duura growled uneasily, his head swaying from side to side.
Braedan reached out and traced holographic lines with his hand.
Malena’s last words hammering in his mind as a terrible realization paralyzed him.
The object told its story. The galaxy was mapped out there. Wesdraken was a world of exile for the Sadusi, Malena and lastly himself. It was an apostasy – a time where beliefs and foundations were shattered by revelations. The revelation that the secretive Sadusi, the desert-hardened princess and the broken and forgotten soldier all had the same enemy – the enemy that had turned Wesdraken into a planet of the forgotten, the unwanted, and the disinherited…”
Technical aspects: This image is the last in the series of “The Annals of Malena – 20 years later”. My original intention was to recreate all the original images using the latest software and computers and to see if I could improve the quality and also see if I have grown and developed as an artist.
I am quite satisfied with the results, although my perfectionism and OCD has already begun picking the images apart, and I already have thought of several ways of “raising the bar”
Blender is still proving to be a bit intimidating to learn and master. I have enrolled in a couple of basic courses on Udemy, but those will take time to finish.
By now I have a library of objects and settings that I can reuse, and this image was a bit of a kit-bash. However I did struggle with the metal beams of the wrecked ship, and after a lot of failed attempts I resorted to using Silo3d do create a basic shape and then used 3D-Coat to put patterns and surface detail on the object.
The hologram was added afterwards using some brushes that I had from Rob Deviney’s collection on DAZ3D, and I used Affinity Paint to combine them into the final image which was then worked on to create a painterly effect with a Wacom Intuos tablet.