2021 Hopepunk City Pictures

The 2021 Picture of the Week gallery was getting too big, (same thing happened in 2020) so I’m splitting it in two. This one consists of 2021 Pictures of the Week that came from the development of Hopepunk City.

  • This week’s picture comes from the new game Hopepunk City. This is a new character, but uses a model I used before in Something’s In The Air as one of the supermodels Rachel worked with in the magazine layout. I like the mostly teal blue look of the picture which is why I picked it as a picture of the week.
  • I’ve been so busy working on the next game all week, so I thought I’d take a picture from the game I am working on.
    This is the beginning of a scene where Rachel offers to take your photo. You can see on the wall her modeling pics on the left and her photography pics on the right.
  • This week’s pic of the week is one I made for a scene in the next game “Hopepunk City”. Ariane is talking to an old friend at a public pool. Some of you might recognize the friend (hint, she changed appearances throughout the years). I wrote and illustrated a whole scene (about 8 pics total), and thought this would be the best to share.
  • I felt the need to do some pictures with the characters happy and having fun. This one may or may not make it in the game, but I had fun doing it, and it looks like the girls are having fun too.
  • Feeling down, I decided to make some random pictures of my characters having fun. This is my favorite. I added some depth blur on this one with focus on Mia in the middle making Rachel and Ariane slightly blurry, but not as blurry as the background. Love the dog looking in.
  • I made a series of “happy” character pics. This is the last. A hot tub party! There is a little depth of field happening here so Mia and Rachel look slightly out of focus, but not enough to blur them, just soften their looks. These pictures will show up in Hopepunk City as transitional scenes. The ones with nudity like this one will be in the later part of the game.
  • I’m sharing with you a picture from a scene I am working on.  Rachel is meeting with a client who is a nude model, an “only fans / cam girl” type of nude model, and wants to do an outdoor photo shoot, but between logistics and security, they are stuck in Rachel’s studio.  Rachel sets up projection screens and spotlights to approximate sunshine. The interesting thing here is that the green background in this pictures was shot with a digital camera literally about 10 yards from my new house I moved into, in a tree covered vacant lot adjacent to the property.  Looking forward to see the colors change as the months pass.
  • Over a year ago I posted this picture which was based on this series of pictures online. My original intent was to use it as a starting point for a scene in Hopepunk City, my upcoming game. Finally got around to creating the scene, and with a little help from a Poser 12 upgrade, I created a much more interesting picture.
  • This is a picture of a character from Ariane in Paradise, who also appears in Hopepunk City. If you don’t recognize her it is understandable, but it is the female avatar player character. Between the posed hair, the big eyelashes, and the Poser 12 Superfly render, it is easy not to recognize her.
  • As you can see, the differences are major. The top one has better lighting, more realism, and most importantly it is prettier. Aesthetically pleasing is the most important thing in my art philosophy.
  • You might have seen my teaser trailer for Hopepunk City I posted a month ago. Up to that point I was doing the game in Poser 11 firefly graphics, because I spent over a year making it that way and it felt like too much work to upgrade it all to Poser 12 Superfly. Well I did it anyways.
  • Many of my games had sci-fi elements, like the weather control in SITA, and the Dodo sanctuary in AiP. This is the weird sci-fi scene of Hopepunk City.  There are also robot police and other normal sci-fi tropes, but what goes on here is weird (hint: Futurama did it.)
  • This is an image of a minor character in Hopepunk City, my upcoming game. She is a delivery girl, but I could not help dressing her like my favorite delivery boy from Futurama. Hopepunk City is set in the near future where many jobs are replaced by robots. You can see one such robot reflected on the side of the van.
  • There are two obvious references back to Date Ariane.  One is the blue dress, the very blue dress you buy Ariane to get the “Devil in the Blue Dress” achievement.  The second are the poses. I basically use almost the same poses here at the poses used in the backyard barbecue scene in Date Ariane.   I do not use the eat/drink/talk/compliment mechanic here as by the time you go on this date, you and Ariane have established a friendship already, but I use the same poses in a conversation relative to the plot of the game. 
  • A second picture from the Dating Ariane section of Hopepunk City, this is dinner at the Drive-N-Dine with much better lighting.
  • One of the last things I did graphically before releasing the beta was revamp the pictures in Maya’s office. Before this, it was represented by basically a single picture. Maya’s T-shirt is dynamic, which is computer simulated draped cloth. Setting up dynamic clothing is annoyingly complicated in Poser. It is easier in Daz Studio with dForce, but dynamic cloth in Poser looks a lot better animated. Of course I’m not creating animations here so not a big advantage.
  • This is a transition picture used in Hopepunk city. This is the 4th or 5th incarnation of this picture, but this is the one that made the game.
  • One of the last scenes done in Hopepunk City was Rachel living in your room.