#47 - a bridge troll

You can download this entire project and its scraps on MEGA. Only uploading a few pics onto Patreon directly. Let me know if the link isn't working properly.

From ~Dec. 2016. This project has quite a few unfortunate distinctions about it.

This is currently the final project that was a result of a free request. Everything I've made since then has either been a commission or personal project of some kind. After #46, my gears started to shift a bit when I realized I was "commission worthy", so I phased out doing free requests.

I also recall this project being very difficult to work on. It mostly had to do with the set; in 2016 I really had no idea how to do a proper looking "external" set, so I "faked" it with screenshots, clever image editing, and strategic object placement. The great difficulty in creating the set really stigmatized the project for me for several years.

But in retrospect, I'm actually extremely impressed with what I was able to pull off. Consider the fact that besides the little bit of "land" that the couple are on, the armor/weapon models strewn about, and the bridge itself, everything else you see is a screenshot. So the rest of the land that they're on, beautiful river, scenery off in the distance, etc., that's all from a screenshot. I think it's pretty damn cool that I was able to so smoothly blend and transition the set objects together with the screenshot.

This style of compositing is still something that I utilize today, though for the most part my sets are all very "real" now, with very few "fake" parts.

The BE x Troll couple on other hand, I still think that was a bit of a letdown. I think the biggest problem there was that I didn't really have a lot of direction to work with, so it didn't really inspire me to be creative. Here was their request, verbatim:

I'd love to see them engaged in a reverse cowgirl position, [Troll] on bottom and [BE] riding him. Do you have the ability to add any sort of props, like a collar and leash? If so, the leash could be making his [BE's] back arch.  If you choose outdoor, somewhere in Eversong Woods would be nice.

Yeah, it was rather lacking. I suppose I could've asked them for more input, but this was a free request, not a commission. I hope they got what they asked for.

The POV shot is probably the only silver lining from this request. It's a shot that I actually like quite a bit (and use quite a bit if you know what I mean). Overall though, this project was pretty disappointing. I would consider remaking this since we could all use more Troll content, but not with a BE.