Digital I Designs
News Date: July 27, 2007: New Dinosaur - Camarasaurus...
June 29, 2007: New Fantasy Figure - the Biguana...
April 16, 2007: New Predator Dinosaur Launches at Rawart3D...
March 9, 2007: Tyrannosaurus is here!...
December 26, 2006: New Freebie Figure...
December 23, 2006: Soft launch of the new home-page.
December 6, 2006: New Dinosaur- Coelophysis bauri
November 8, 2006: New Set of Sharks - Shark Attack! Pack 2
September 2, 2006: New Freebie for the trendy Troll...
July 28, 2006: Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a...
May 7, 2006: New Dinosaur - Plateosaurus
Generally, the links below will take you to my current online stores:
| July 27, 2007: New Dinosaur - Camarasaurus... - at DAZ |
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I've been wanting to do this dinosaur for a long time! It may not be as well known as its fellow sauropods, Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, and Brachiosaurus, but it should be just as recognizable nonetheless, since its head was mistakenly used to represent Apatosaurus, back when it was still called Brontosaurus... Camarasaurus lived in the same time and place as those other, better-known, sauropods, and in fact, its fossils are the most abundant of the lot! The fertile plains of the Morrison formation, 150 million years ago in what is now the western US, were home to pretty much all of the best-known Jurassic dinosaurs. This figure, while fully-detailed, contains a little less skin and muscle detail when compared to some of my other recent dinosaurs. This is to make it easier for other artists to add 'displacement maps', which create folds and scaly bumps in the rendered animal. 'Fixing' the details as I had done in some of my other dinosaurs, amde it more difficult for others to create their own variations. Once again, the Camarasaurus adds to my ongoing project to see increasingly more accurate dinosaurs available for users of DAZ|Studio and Poser! The Camarasaurus sale page is at: DAZ 3D My Launch discussion thread (with additional promotional imagery) is located at: DAZ: The Commons - Return to Top of Page - |
| June 29, 2007: New Fantasy Figure - the Biguana - at DAZ |
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This big fellow has been a long time coming! After being frustrated with the UNfeasibility of a similar creature in the final Star Wars film, I first started working on him back when DAZ was developing their 'Desolation: Earth' theme, about mutated inhabitants of a future Earth... However, by the time I had created the Chicken-Raptor model for DAZ, they were ready to move on to a new theme... The next theme at DAZ was 'DragonWorld' for which my prime contribution was the 'Dragon-of-Burden' and its associated Accessory Pack. No Worries! Being a reptilian creature, this figure would fit equally well into the DragonWorld theme! But alas, once again, by the time my Dragon-of-Burden work was complete, DAZ had yet again ceased development of the theme. Still, I always secretly longed to have this figure see the light of day - besides which, my friend and texturing partner Rawart, had created some wonderful texture maps, which might similarly be doomed to languish in oblivion unless the Biguana itself got resurrected... Fortunately, after I dusted it off, reworked a few items to bring it up to my current skill-level in modelling and rigging, DAZ was still interested - but as a stand-alone figure this time, not tied to the vagaries of any specific theme! So, the Biguana, complete with saddle and a couple of decorative options (as well as those original add-on textures as a separate product) has finally seen the light of day! The Biguana sale page is at: DAZ 3D My Launch discussion thread (with additional promotional imagery) is located at: DAZ: The Commons - Return to Top of Page - |
| April 16, 2007: New Predator Dinosaur Launches at Rawart3D... |
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Just as I was finishing up my Tyrannosaurus, I learned that the Museum of the Red River in Idabel, Oklahoma, was sponsoring a contest for imagery featuring Oklahoma's Official State Dinosaur, Acrocanthosaurus atokensis ("High-Spined Reptile from Atoka County"). I was curious to see whether I could actually create a brand new figure in the month remaining before the submission deadline, and whether this would support my promotional claim that my dinosaur models were truly 'museum-quality'... Acrocanthosaurus was the second-largest carnivorous dinosaur known from North America, second only to Tyrannosaurus, and about 45 million years earlier. Little known since the first fragmentary remains were found, knowledge of this dinosaur received a major boost when an almost-complete skeleton was found in Oklahoma in 1983. A massive predator with 6-inch claws on its hands, Acrocanthosaurus was characterized by the tall row of massive spines on its backbone, probably an anchor-point for massive musculature... After creating the model in time to submit a couple of images to the contest, just before the deadline, I then set about refining the model for commercial release. By happy coincidence, I received notice that one of my images was selected for use by the museum, on the same day that the product was prepared for upload into the Rawart store! The Acrocanthosaurus sale page is at: The Digital Bestiary My Launch discussion thread (with additional promotional imagery) is located at: DAZ: The Commons - Return to Top of Page - |
| March 9, 2007: Tyrannosaurus is back, 65 Million Years Later!... |
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When I started the discussion thread on the DAZ and Rawart forums about some new dinosaur figures last year, my fictional alter-ego was heard to mutter something about "bringing one back from both ends..." - a somewhat cryptic comment at the time... The first product of that 'expedition' back to the prehistoric past was my Coelophysis figure, launched back in December 2006. Coelophysis was one of the first theropod (carnivorous) dinosaurs, back in the Triassic period. It can now be revealed what my comment meant: the second half of the 'expedition' was to bring back a Tyrannosaurus rex, one of the very LAST theropod dinosaurs, from the Late Cretaceous - at the other end of the Mesozoic... Since Tyrannosaurus is probably the most popular and best-known dinosaur in the world, I didn't want to attempt to create one until my modelling skills could really do the subject justice. I think I'm finally at that level, and I hope this dinosaur will be the most accurate model of its type available anywhere for Poser! The Tyrannosaurus sale page is at: DAZ 3D My Launch discussion thread (with additional promotional imagery) is located at: DAZ: The Commons - Return to Top of Page - |
| December 26, 2006: New Freebie - "Christmas Critter" -launches at DAZ3D Forums; part of 2006 Published Artist Give-Away! |
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Those of us who release Poser content through DAZ3D have, for the past couple of years, organized a separate give-away of free content, hosted through the DAZ Forums, but without any direct DAZ involvement. My contribution this year was released late on Christmas Eve, it's a simple Poser figure with 2 alternate texture maps, which could be either a child's toy or a strange alien creature, depending on context and the user's creative will. Update Jan 2007! "The 24 days of Christmas 2006" thread (with links to products) is now located at: DAZ: General Freepozitory - (My Christmas Critter is available on Page 1 of this summary thread from Christmas just past) Since the alternate map extends the usefulness of this little figure beyond the holiday season, I will eventually host it elsewhere as well, and will provide an updated link to its permanent home at that time! - Return to Top of Page - |
| December 23, 2006: Soft launch of the new home-page. |
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"Digital I Designs" started out as purely a personal site, back in the last millennium! Since then, I've become more and more involved in actual content creation, culminating in my publishing commercial products for Poser and DAZ|Studio, initially at the DAZ3D site, then more recently at Rawart3D, as that site turned into a multi-vendor store. Given that more and more of my time is now devoted to content creation, I found myself spending less and less time doing the sort of recreational renders that I used to post in my old gallery. Indeed, I was shocked to realize that it's been over a year since I posted an image that wasn't in some way tied to the commercial release of one of my figures. So, with that in mind, I decided it was time to overhaul the site. I am now planning to keep my recreational renders separate from my commercial line, as it seemed counter-productive, if not downright ridiculous, to continue to blur the distinction. In future this 'News' page, while not a blog per se, will focus on my commercial projects - I will certainly announce new product launches here in a more timely fashion than in the old galleries, and may discuss upcoming projects to whatever extent NDAs and common sense allow. The original site will continue to exist, but I plan to update its contents over the next while, in keeping with my revised mandate for the site. Hopefully, I will find time to do more recreational renders now that I'm drawing a line between the different areas. In the meantime, I'm going to start this page off with a timeline of my recent activity, going back to include my more recent product introductions... - Return to Top of Page - |
| December 6, 2006: New Dinosaur- Coelophysis bauri - launches at Rawart3D |
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After a teaser campaign that went on for 2 months in the Rawart monthly newsletters, my latest dinosaur launched at the Digital Bestiary, my section of the Rawart3D store. It's Coelophysis, the early dinosaur which was the 'star' of the opening segments of both the original "Walking with Dinosaurs" and "When Dinosaurs Roamed America" CG documentaries from a few years back. This little dinosaur was a contemporary of my other Rawart3D dinosaur, the Plateosaurus, so it made a great deal of sense to publish it through the same store site. As far as I can determine, mine is the only version of this very significant dinosaur available for Poser, and I'm very proud of how it turned out. As usual, Rawn, artist/owner of Rawart3D, also launched an additional set of texture maps for the model, which were published at the same time. The Coelophysis sale page is at: The Digital Bestiary My launch discussion thread (with additional imagery by myself and others) is located at: DAZ: The Commons (There's also a similar thread at Renderosity, but not much discussion on that thread) - Return to Top of Page - |
| November 8, 2006: New Set of Sharks - Shark Attack! Pack 2 - launches at DAZ3D - along with a new 'Combo' package of both sets... |
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A year and a half in the making! Well, that's not exactly true, I had planned to create this set soon after the launch of the first Shark Attack! set at DAZ in early 2005; but I got diverted by a couple of other DAZ-initiated projects, first Desolation Earth, and then DragonWorld immediately after that... With another chunk of time devoted to launching the Digital Bestiary at Rawart3D, it was much longer than anticipated before I was able to devote time to completing this second set. Shark Attack! Pack 2 contains three different sharks:
It followed on from a very timely, but completely un-orchestrated discussion which started a little earlier: here - Return to Top of Page - |
| September 2, 2006: New Freebie for the trendy Troll... Sunglasses! |
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I was lamenting the lack of anything other than fantasy armour for the popular DAZ Troll figure, and decided to try my hand at a couple of ideas in that regard. The first idea which bore fruit was a pair of vaguely Oakley-esque sunglasses, which I've made available for free on the Rawart3D freebie page. Will anything else ever materialize from this? We'll see - keep watching this page (or the DAZ or Rawart forums) for news! The freebie can be downloaded from: The Rawart3D Freestuff Page Discussion of the item (with additional imagery) took place at: DAZ: General Freepozitory - Return to Top of Page - |
| July 28, 2006: Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a...WTF is it? |
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The Digital Bestiary, my store at Rawart3D, was conceived as featuring alien critters and imaginary beasts as well as my prehistoric creations. With that in mind, the first imaginary beast in the store is the Sky-Manta, an alien flying creature, conceived as a denizen of gas-giant planets (such as Jupiter) which do not have solid surfaces. The figure is a low-polygon creation, designed specifically to fill the background of alien scenes in Poser, Bryce, Vue, etc... The Sky-Manta sale page is at: The Digital Bestiary Discussion of the item (with additional imagery) took place at: DAZ: the Commons - Return to Top of Page - |
| May 7, 2006: New Dinosaur - Plateosaurus - Back After 200 Million Years! |
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Announcing the launch of The Digital Bestiary, my new store at Rawart3D, which is now expanding to include other artists specializing in the fantastic! Established and popular DAZ Vendors such as etujedi, Gareee, and Faveral (in addition to yours truly) diversify and join Rawn (Mr. Rawart) as he expands his store to include additional content creators! The Plateosaurus is my first new dinosaur in over 2 years! Certain dinosaurs are non-existent in the Poser marketplace, and may lack the 'sex appeal' of some of the better-known dinosaurs. Having my own boutique store apart from DAZ allows me to produce some of these lesser-known creatures without having to convince DAZ to carry such a niche product. Rest assured, my figures in the Digital Bestiary will maintain the same high quality demanded of a product carried by DAZ. Indeed, I am convinced that this Plateosaurus model is truly 'museum-quality' - developed after rigourous study of skeletal and muscular reconstructions in current paleontology textbooks, it shows an attention to scientific accuracy which is sorely lacking in many of the dinosaur models available for the Poser market, and derives from the combination of a) a degree in zoology; and b) a lifelong passion for extinct creatures! The Plateosaurus sale page is at: The Digital Bestiary Discussion of the item (with additional imagery) took place at: DAZ: the Commons - Return to Top of Page - |